Yo La Tengo

L to R: Georgia Hubley, James McNew, Ira Kaplan

I started writing this post when I was in Connecticut but never posted it because I fell asleep. I was writing about the time I saw Yo La Tengo in Albany at a club called Bogies back in the early 90's. I was a huge fan and had never seen them. So I was pretty psyched they were playing. I can't remember how many bands were on the bill, but Yo La Tengo was the headliner. When I walked into the club I was pretty surprised to see Ira Kaplan working the merchandise booth. I figured they had someone to do that for them. But that what was great about bands like them. They were approachable..to a point. So I went up to him, introduced myself, told him my name, told him about my band DRYER (1991 - 2001) and how we loved his band and then I shamelessly begged him to play the song Griselda off of the record FakeBook for me. I mean it was shameless. I think I even grabbed his shirt and begged. He just sort of nodded his head and said "we'll see". They weren't going on for another hour or so, so I figured he'd forget about my request. Which was fine with because all I really cared about was the fact that I was seeing Yo La Tengo. After sitting through the openers, they were finally onstage. They played a great set of songs all night. They were just so amazing to listen to. They played for awhile and right at the end, when I figured I wasn't going to hear my request, Ira starts to tell the audience about how some guy came up to him and begged him to play a song..and that my entire self esteem was riding on it. He even remembered my name. Then they played Griselda. It was awesome. I'll never forget that show. One of my top 5 favorite live shows.

Here's the song from Fakebook. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.