Groovy, Groovy, Groovy

So my copy of Yo La Tengo’s new record finally arrived today (courtesy of this “Season Pass” preorder scheme that Matador Records cooked up), and while I’m annoyed with Matador for reasons undoubtedly too petty to go into here, the record is a great grab-bag of pop sounds, more grab-baggy and more poppy, I think, than any other Yo La album. It may easily end up being my favourite Yo La album period.

Also today I learned that Yo La’s Ira Kaplan has written about a dozen of his favourite albums for eMusic, and man, he’s a really good writer, funny & persuasive – he got me excited about the records I hadn’t heard & eager to revisit the ones I had.

Reading the eMusic list also brought back fond memories. About 15 years ago, I wrote a couple of fan letters to Kaplan as a big admirer of the first few Yo La records (Fakebook was the most recent at the time). He replied graciously, and I immediately pushed my luck and – inspired by some of the weirdo covers on Fakebook – asked if he’d do a couple of cassette mixes if I mailed him the tapes. Looking back, I’m mortified at my own gall, but even more astonished that he actually agreed to do it. I mailed the tapes, he filled them up, and a few months later he ended up handing them over in person at the first Yo La Tengo gig I ever saw (Horseshoe, May 1992, touring for May I Sing with Me). I remember him calling out, “Hey, Georgia, this is the guy I made the tapes for!”

Those tapes really opened up my head. They had everything from Duke Ellington (though I didn’t truly fall in love with “Money Jungle” until I heard it by chance in a bar years later, and in that moment I fell hard) to non-LP Television and Neil Young cuts to the Stalk-Forrest Group (predecessors of Blue Oyster Cult) to fantastic semi-novelty stuff I would never have come across in my life. Some of the cuts have turned up on this site directly (Sun Ra’s “Love in Outer Space”) or indirectly (Van Dyke Parks’s “Jack Palance”), and the only reason more haven’t is my vague sense that too much bandwagoning onto Ira’s mojo would be some kind of impropriety.

Over the years I’ve seen Yo La Tengo must be close to 15 times, interviewed them, and probably heard everything they’ve ever put out, barring some ultra-rare singles or something. And even though I’ve liked some of their albums less than others (well, really only one, maybe one and a half, less than others), they’re still, to paraphrase a friend, “one of the only bands around that I care about with the naked enthusiasm of a teenager.” There’s something about the band’s tastes & sensibilities I just feel simpatico with, in a way that’s hard to pin down. (Though I suspect their love of comedy a la Mr. Show, Kids in the Hall, Larry Sanders, etc. is somehow a not-insignificant factor.)

So, anyway, impropriety or not, here are a couple more gems from the Kaplan Tapes. With belated thanks again to Ira, should he ever happen to read this. However much I thanked him at the time, it probably wasn’t enough.

• Joe Dodo & the Groovers, “Groovy”
• The Twinkeyz, “Aliens in Our Midst”
• Marty Neon, “Voila, Pronounced ‘Wal-La’”
• DMZ, “Mighty Idy”