Yo La Tengo (with Tortoise and Lenny Kaye) December 27th, 2005 Hoboken, NJ @ Maxwell's (Hanukah, night 3) 2 source audience matrix: AKG C1000s-Nomad Jukebox 3 (x/y 65, 8' at the soundboard) + Binaural Cardiod mics > Sony MZ-NH900 portable minidisc recorder (in Hi-SP mode) > 13 remaster > flac > CDR Disc 1 (First three-quarters of the set with various members of Tortoise.) 1. Bad Politics 2. Green Arrow 3. Everyday 4. False Alarm 5. Autumn Sweater 6. The Last Days of Disco 7. Barnaby, Hardly Working8. 8. How To Make A Baby Elephant Float 9. Madeline (false start) 10. Madeline 11. Sugarcube 12. Artificial Heart 13. Decora 14. Tom Courtenay Disc 2 1. I Heard You Looking *(encore)* with Lenny Kaye on guitar and vocals 2. No Time Like The Right Time (Blues Project) 3. Night Time (Strangeloves) 4. Shock Me (Lenny Kaye) 5. Pushin' Too Hard (The Seeds) 6. Moulty (The Barbarians) Remastering notes: Source one takes advantage of yltfan's nicely captured and full-bodied recording. Source two from Brandon fills in a midrange depth, plus adds a bit more ambience and space to the whole thing. One is used more than two, but both were important in making this sound this good. While the room sound is still present, the RM really enhanced the music considerably, and to me this sounds quite good. Here's Ira's report from http://www.yolatengo.com Every time we put on these Hanukkah shows, we make a lot of calls and write a lot of emails, and try not to take the rejections personally (oh sure, Roger Waters has time to sit courtside at a Knicks game and jaw with Al Trautwig, but try and get him to come to Maxwell's and sing "Porpoise Song" and suddenly he's Mr. Busy). A lineup like last night's makes all the no's worth it. Tortoise came in from Chicago for an unpaid one-off, and we still can't quite believe it. Luckily we've got photgraphic evidence. Next up was Demetri Martin, who brought along his Findings, poster-sized charts propped on an easel, and actually got the overstuffed back room, each and every person, to follow along, including me, and I couldn't see a thing. We not only laughed, but we learned a little bit too, like how to spell the plural of dildo. We took the stage as a sextet, with Doug, Jeff and John McEntire from Tortoise, opening with "Bad Politics" (that's what's going on in this photo—Jeff's hidden behind Doug, and Georgia's jamming on the guitar just to the right of where the photo ends). We did a few more songs together, then they started drifting off—I think the no-smoking request we've made for these shows did them in. John Herndon came on and did a few songs too. As Demetri pointed out during his set, you either thank someone once or you thank them a million, nothing in between. Thanks a million to Tortoise. And then Lenny Kaye joined us for the encore, on his 59th birthday no less, for a salute to his incredible Nuggets compilation, a record that almost singlehandedly created the genre of garage rock. So many classics (that new year's resolution's working out great for me) and so many written by Jews. We did "Night Time" and "No Time Like the Right Time" and hell yeah "Moulty," how did we forget "Let's Talk About Girls"? For good measure, we did "Pushin' Too Hard" (Lenny's not positive, but pretty sure that Saxon was shortened from Saxonberg) and "Shock Me," the b-side to the, yes, classic Link Cromwell 45 "Crazy Like a Fox." Lenny even referenced "Burnin' for You," unaware that James had sung it the night before. A great night. See you tonight. And actually we never approached Roger Waters—who knew he had time to sit courtside at a Knicks game and jaw with Al Trautwig?—Ira Another review from http://www.wunderkammern27.com/ Splendid night in Hoboken, and kinda the reason I keep going back to Maxwell's. Seeing Tortoise on a tiny stage was a treat, and their additions to Yo La Tengo's set were exactly what guest appearances should be. Switching off on various basses, guitars, and drums, Messrs. Hendon, McCombs, and Parker strengthened the songs in all kinds of subliminal, unpredictable ways, from McCombs and Parker's spine-like guitar/bass groove underneath "Autumn Sweater," to McCombs' one-chord drone below "Last Days of Disco," to McCombs putting down his guitar altogether after seemingly deciding that "Barnaby, Hardly Working" was working just fine with the core YLT trio (and it was), to Herndon returning to help guide the song through a magnificent coda. The appearance of Patti Smith Group mastermind and legendary rock scribe Lenny Kaye (on his 59th birthday, no less) was also glorious. The curator of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era -- the punk-era equivalent of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music -- led by example, running the Tengos through a handful of, er, nuggets with passion and graceful humor. Happy birthday, dude.