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dollarbin · 7 months

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Dollar Bin # 13:

The Mountain Goats' Sweden

Here's a (Mostly) True story:

In the fall of 1995, John Darnielle, the founder, songwriter, frontman (and, occasionally, the sole member) of The Mountain Goats taught me how to cook.

As a second year student at Pomona College I took the one on-campus job no one else wanted: fast food line cook. No one wanted the job because it required actual labor; every other on-campus job involved sitting at a desk in a library, museum, gym or office while doing your homework. But I was ready to heat oil, and labor. I was ready to eat as much free ice cream as I could in-between orders.

The job was an odd choice for a vegetarian like me at the time: I spent the first hour of every shift slicing enough partially thawed, homogenized meat for the full day of orders ahead; once both of my hands were entirely numb from the meat's cold it was time to drink a giant vat of free Sprite and then move on to other prep tasks. Slice the tomatoes. Fire up the grill. Then, once the place opened, I'd spend the rest of my shift burning all that sliced meat to a crisp for altered and/or indifferent fellow college students.

John Darnielle trained me. He'd already released two records at that point, but I had no idea who the hell he was. My ignorance drove him nuts.

By the time he arrived each day my hands were already numb and my personally selected music was already on the stereo system. In the fall of 95 that meant a heavy rotation of Guided By Voices' Alien Lanes, Uncle Tupelo records and Yo La Tengo's Electr-O-Pura. I'd put on Tom Waits' The Black Rider at closing time so everyone would go the hell home; that always cleared the room.

But I never played The Mountain Goats; I'd never even heard of them. Throughout that fall I worked alongside a blossoming rock star. And I had no clue whatsoever.

John was the first and only friend I've ever had who wore a leather jacket. He was also ridiculously old for an undergraduate; we're talking mid-to-late-twenties. Every day he'd arrive, compliment my taste in music, trade his jacket for a weathered apron and then look at me earnestly. It was weird. I saw that he wanted me to say something, that he wanted me to know something. Desperately. But I had no idea what the hell it was.

After a bit he'd sigh and begin the day's training. Here's how to flip 'em kid; here's how to fire up that grill.

Then, at some point, he just broke down and told me: he knew James McNew; he had a record deal; he was just back from a tour of Germany, where people were crazy for any kind of American music; he was starting to make some real money (hence the leather jacket). He thought I'd like his music.

At that point I'm afraid I made the situation much, much worse. I laughed at John Darnielle and accused him of lying.

"Yeah right, dude. You're a rock star. And I'm the queen of England."

He listened. He paused. Then he shut down the register and said we needed to go outside. And so we went. College kids stood about, confused. Who was gonna get them their curly fries if the kid in The Dead t-shirt and the weird old guy took a break?

I remember, like yesterday, standing next to him in the sun. He'd taken off his apron and put his leather jacket back on. The vibe was very weird.

"Look, I'm not joking," he said. "My band used to play shows here on campus, but we're just too big for that now. Go to Rhino records; you're a vinyl guy, right? They've got my latest album on vinyl for like 7 bucks."

(Remember: this was the secret golden age of vinyl: CDs cost $12-15 and records of the same thing cost $7-12. And we all thought we needed to spend more for the CDs! If I had a time machine, I would not go back and see who killed JFK; rather, I'd spend a sweet summer with Jane Austen and then propose marriage to her, then I'd travel to 1969 to see Neil and Crazy Horse live, THEN I'd go back to 95 and buy everything I could grab on vinyl CHEAP.)

Okay, back to John Darnielle in 95: "Look: my new record is called Sweden," he said. "Only it has absolutely nothing to do with Sweden. That's the joke. Listen to it; you'll know it's me right away. I sing like I talk. People think we have like 25 members in the band, but it's really just me and this girl who plays bass. I lie in my songs, all the time. But I'm not lying to you."

And then he just walked off. In the middle of his shift! I was left to man the counter on my own. Fries were ordered; burgers were burned to a fabulous crisp. And The Black Rider came on way early. I had something I needed to do.

As soon as the quitting bell rang I hopped on my bike and road straight to the record store. As usual, the counter was manned by the angriest guy in the whole world. His name was probably Haemon, and he always sneered at whatever I was buying. This was years before High Fidelity, but he was already auditioning for Jack Black's part. The dude just hated me. I remember buying a Sonic Youth Tee in there one time. He ripped me apart while ringing me up. Is it any wonder that a few years later we all decided to shop on Amazon?

Anyway, by the time I got to the store, I'd pretty much decided John Darnielle was for real. And quite quickly I found his record, walked it to the counter, handed it over guiltily (Rhino Records had their workers stand behind a counter that was a full two feet higher than the sales floor so as to allow Jack Black Sr. behind the counter, who was tall to begin with, maximum superiority over his pathetic customers), and then, for the first and only time, the guy did not give me a hard time.

"Well, well, well," he said. "You're finally buying something of value. Poser."

(Remember when we all called each other "poser"? Now we all call each other unprintable things. Ah, the 90's...)

Well, you can see where this is going. The Mountain Goats were indeed that guy John from my day job. His singing was ridiculous, like Lou Reed if he was a passionate player of Magic, The Gathering. His melodies were infectious, like Bob Pollard if he was earnest, not drunk. His lyrics were cute and bizarre, like Dylan if he actually attended college, then managed to double major in Classics and English. The recording process was infantile, like me in the kitchen. Or rather, like me in life.

It was all precious. It was all awesome.

I returned to work a day or six later, eager to see my new friend John and tell him all about it. He was a genius! He was Robyn Hitchcock meets Johnathan Richman; he was Thomas Pynchon with a guitar; he was my new hero.

And then, I never saw him again. That moment in the sun turned out to be the last moment we ever spent together. I guess he went and got a life.

Hello out there, John! It's 28 years later and your recent publicity pics make you look, in the words of one of this blogs' 40+ (wow!) readers, like an alternative high school teacher: he sees you; he respects your pronouns. Guess what, John? That's a better description of me than you these days. You're playing the Belly Up this fall. I'm not even playing Magic, The Gathering.

So go, take a listen to Sweden! It's great. Check out the hilarious T.S. Eliot intro to I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone. Enjoy the alternative Swedish titles for every song. Be reminded of how Hercules died: consumed by an article of his own clothing. Flip to the B Side and enjoy a nice coconut cream pie.

And while you are listening, picture an earnest and very talented guy in a leather jacket in 1995, patiently teaching a very young and hopeful kid how to flip burgers and fry up the grill. See him. See me. We're both dreaming of incredible futures: incredible futures that came true.

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Happy Friday everyone! And John, while I've got you here: thanks for being patient and nice to me way back then. I'm sorry I needed you to introduce me to your music. Please tell Stephen Stills he sucks.

#the mountain goats #stephen stills still sucks #pomona college #pitzer college #tom waits #Youtube #james mcnew #guided by voices #guided meditation #uncle tupelo #the black rider

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roughridingrednecks · 13 days

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McNew

#mcnew #long beard #gray beard #OK #redneck #cap #beard

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sitting-on-me-bum · 5 months

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An explosion of wildflower species appears to paint Temblor Range, a mountain range that rises from the east side of the San Andreas fault at Carrizo Plain national monument near Santa Margarita, California, US. Spectacular wildflower blooms, referred to by some as a superbloom, are occurring across much of California following a historically wet season that drove 31 atmospheric river storms through the region, resulting in widespread flooding and record snow depths in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The extreme weather comes after years of record drought for most of the state

Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

#david mcnew #photographer #getty images #wildflowers #aerial photography #temblor range #san andreas fault #carrizo plain national monument #santa margarita #california #nature

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doomandgloomfromthetomb · 8 months

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Sloppy Heads - TV Eye, Ridgewood, New York, January 27, 2023

Is there a new Sloppy Heads record out? Yes, there is a new Sloppy Heads record out! Sometimes Just One Second just dropped on the Shrimper label and — dare I say it — it's the best Heads yet! Ariella Stok, Bill the Drummer, and Jimmy Jumpjump (AKA your friend and mine Jesse Jarnow) have crafted a sprawling masterpiece this time around: 75 minutes of sweet jams, fuzzed-out pop, cracked balladry and even a delicious Dead boogie.

Extra props to Yo La Tengo's James McNew, Ladybug Transistor's Gary Olson, Pee Wee's Playhouse artist Gary Panter and legendary animator Al Jarnow for making this a truly special collection. For a little more detail, check out this recent Jarnow + Jarnow Q&A on Aquarium Drunkard.

I like the RIYL that came along with the Sometimes Just One Second promo, so I'll just reprint it here:

RIYL: WFMU, Mutant Sounds blog, Half Japanese, Yo La Tengo, The Fugs, Seastones, Kluster, Crazy Horse, The Godz, Yoko Ono's Approximately Infinite Universe, Bonzo Dog Band, Pep Lester, Spotted Dick, X, Jefferson Airplane, The Vaselines

You like all that, don't you?! I do. I also like this short live video via the great Roolin YouTube channel of Sloppy Heads out in Ridgewood. Loose as a goose, right as rain.

#sloppy heads #james mcnew #jesse jarnow

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bluetapes · 11 months

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Sanders McNew

Fog on Craggy Pinnacle

Platinum-toned kallitype printed onto Legion Revere paper. Tech stuff: Rolleiflex 3.5E with 0.7x Mutar, Kentmere 100 @ EI50, one second @ f/16.

#Sanders McNew

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spilladabalia · 1 year

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Yo La Tengo - Sinatra Drive Breakdown

#yo la tengo #sinatra drive breakdown #ira kaplan #georgia hubley #james mcnew #post punk #noise pop #noise rock #psychedelic pop #this stupid world #2023 #Youtube

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martystlouis · 2 years

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#ira kaplan #georgia hubley #james mcnew #yo la tengo #fade

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aquariumdrunkard · 2 years

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oldie, but GOODIE

Dump :: That Skinny Motherfucker With The High Voice? http://aquariumdrunkard.com/2009/06/08/tha

#dump #prince #yo la tengo #james mcnew

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whoevengaf · 2 years

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Farting currently

#lb #Mcnew #I still believe i still believe

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fadedday · 4 months

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Baker, New York.

Photography by Sanders McNew

#Sanders McNew #nudephotography #artistic nude #art nude #photographic nude

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dollarbin · 7 months

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Dollar Bin #15:

Gordon Lightfoot's Summer Side of Life

Forget Dylan going electric; let's talk about when Gordon Lightfoot did it.

I said so early on in our quest through the Dollar Bin, but I'll repeat it here: Gordon Lightfoot is The Lord of the Dollar Bin. He dwells there and holds the title because he recorded a zillion albums in the 60's and 70's that people are too dumb to seize.

Why don't they get seized? Maybe it's his perm; or maybe it's his occasional corpulence or his often regrettable mustache: Gordon always used his album covers to show off his latest look, and I'm not sure that was the best call.

Consider the cover for Dream Street Rose. Gordon presents himself as the stepdad you keep a leery eye on, the mechanic you supervise, the dentist you keep your mouth shut for, the first guy to get bounced out of the bar. He sure doesn't look like someone you should invite onto your turntable. He might knock it over.

His male peers were either handsome and/or goofy enough to grace their covers (Bob Dylan is a handsome dude and a goof; Bruce Springsteen is freaking hot) or they were smart enough, most of the time, to focus their album covers on something other than their gangly looks (here's looking at you Neil Young!).

But don't be fooled by Gord's covers; every Lightfoot album, from the greatest hits collection Gord's Gold (for which he wears the most pleather of jackets) to Back Here On Earth (for which he sniffs a daisy, sensitivey) is a Dollar Bin steal. And Summer Side of Life is a Dollar Bin behemoth.

Summer Side of Life came out on the heels of what most Gordos (that's what you can call the most serious fans of Gordon, like me) consider his masterpiece, 1970's Sit Down Stranger (which was reissued almost immediately as If You Could Read My Mind). That record saw him do more than offer up one of the greatest songs ever written (that would be, of course, If You Could Read My Mind; and if you don't consider that song to be one of the greatest songs ever written, please, reader, read my mind: you are wrong.) 1970 also saw Lightfoot pivot up to Neil's own Reprise Records, and with the move you can hear him beginning to trade his humble Canadian penchant for simple folk-country production for the orchestration and grandeur one associates with "serious" 70's artists.

Take a listen to his expanded palate on Poor Little Allison. The guy who once lived off rice, beans and brewskies has ordered up some guac.

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So, let's call Sit Down Stanger/IYCRMML his version of Bringing it All Back Home: new instruments come in, and there is even a whisper of drums in the mix, but he's not ready/allowed to leave his winning folky formula behind for good.

Summer Side of Life, recorded in late 1970, is where Gord puts his foot down and declares full revolution, complete with bayonets, cannons and intrigue; Summer Side of Life is therefore his Highway 61 Revisited. Is it as good as that? No. Nothing is! But Summer Side of Life is awesome enough for the analogy to (mostly) hold up.

Let's go song by song on this edition of the Dollar Bin, and thereby demonstrate that Gord is indeed gold.

Side 1.

The record opens with a reminder that Lightfoot likes to write about the weather. The sleigh bells in his classic Song for a Winter's Night take us out into the glistening snow; and of course he knows all about the Early Morning Rain. And so we are instantly comfortable and hooked by 10 Degrees and Getting Colder.

And the characters! By verse two I'm already anxious about the roving musician who's trying to get home to mother. Listen for the tambourine to come in, especially during the bridge. No one is playing the Moog or a sitar here, but Gord's already on track to redefine his signature sound.

And then we come to the second track, Miguel. Drop the needle immediately on Gord's passionate, stirring and straight-up lovey rewrite of Spanish is the Loving Tongue.

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Was Gord reading All the Pretty Horses while he wrote this? Hell no; that book came out 20 years after this song. Rather, Cormac McCarthy must be a big deal Gordo. Feel free to skip the novel, says I. You can just listen to Miguel instead.

The third track, Go My Way, is classic Lightfoot: three minutes of note perfect confectionery. It's like eating cream puffs while drinking beer. They're good together!

And then there's the title track. The omnipresent Kenny Buttrey shows up in a big way on Summer Side of Life, reminding us that this is a Nashville Record. What doesn't good old Kenny play on from this era? Was he the only drummer in Nashville? His Wikipedia page must be as long as Chewbacca's. They're both in everything, and they are always driving the beat/spaceship. They even kinda look alike!

But the real jedi master on Summer Side of Life is Richard Haynes on bass. He sounds like Jaco Pastorius here, and that dude was probably about 6 years old at this point. Listen to Haynes riff above the melody rather than dwell passively below.

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I love this track. Everything swells and sways. Gord was always too polite to write anything abrasive and reckless to compete with Like a Rolling Stone. But I'd argue songs like this one show he could write on an epic scale all the same. I'd be good with this song playing, alongside Carefree Highway, on giant speakers while my grandkids spread my ashes about in the backyard while cracking jokes about their crazy grandpa. Check that. I'll be stoked if that's what happens.

I suspect that the next track, Cotton Jenny, is why this record is not considered a masterpeice on par with IYCRMM. There's nothing wrong with the track - the arrangement is dense and complex and, when compared to what Dylan had done early that year to Little Sadie in a studio next door, the song is utterly masterful - but the melody falls into Gord's bubblegum category alongside other Lightfoot lightweights like Rainy Day People and Boss Man.

Perhaps it's because of Cotton Jenny's upbeat, sing-song riff that it was chosen as the only song from this record, other than the title track, to appear on Gord's Gold.

For anyone out there who doesn't own Lightfoot records and yet is, bizarrely, still reading this: Gord's Gold is your best first purchase. The Dollar Bin has plenty of copies, despite the fact that I routinely buy the record for my friends. I just feel like everyone deserves a copy.

I came of age listening to Gord's Gold. My buddy Eric and I would jubilantly declare our own bedtime long after midnight during our middle school sleepovers by blasting his dad's copy of disc 1. Lightfoot's trembling vibrato served our teenager idea of irony well when paired with our favorite song of that era, Dinosaur Jr's The Wagon.

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Purberty was dropping our voices in its uniquely erratic fashion at that point so singing along with good old Gordon about the Ribbon of Darkness checked every box of hilarity we needed.

But we'd fall asleep long before Cotton Jenny ever came on, and whenever I did make it that far in Gord's Gold I always found the track skip worthy. It was too happy, too pop-infused, too sweet. So when my wife brought Summer Side of Life home from the thrift store for me 6 to 10 years ago, I was polite but not stoked. I already had the song Summer Side of Life on Gord's Gold, and none of the other titles looked promising. Plus Cotton Jenny was on it.

However, my wife, for reasons best known to her, loathes Gordon Lightfoot. So her gift was a very generous one, even it had cost a grand total 50 cents. So I played it. No one else in the family cared too much, but I was instantly ashamed of having passed Summer Side of Life by in the Dollar Bin for 20+ years.

Let's all pause for a moment and acknowledge my sainted wife. She isn't Dylan girlfriend material: she doesn't cook, sew or make flowers grow for me; rather she is the greatest human in the history of humans. And she bought me Summer Side of Life.

Back to our song by song meander:

Happily, after we make it through Cotton Jenny, Gordon ends Side 1 with one of his greatest and least appreciated songs. You won't find Talking in Your Sleep on Gord's Gold, or even on any of the subsequent and expanded "best of" packages that followed. But it's a better love song than Softly or Beautiful and it's a worthy successor to the best story of strained love this side of Blood on the Tracks, If You Could Read My Mind.

Enjoy the perfect picking, sway along with Buttery's driving murmur, reach out for the pulsing bass, and then, midway through, marvel at The Jordanaires' odd, yet perfect, backing vocals. Slow down, my friends. Slow down and listen to Gordon Lightfoot calling out to us, lending each of us some pure Dollar Bin beauty on this fine Friday.

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Side 2!

We open with a bilingual piece of grace, Nous Vivons Ensemble. I love hearing English speaking artists sing in French, a language I cannot count past un du tua in. Think of Leonard Cohen crossing that surreal, trembling border in The Partisan, or Sandy Denny explaining Dylan to French people in Si Tu Dois Partir. Remember Mick Jagger busting out his grammar school knowledge of the language in Brussels in 73 while he struts and sweats and whoops. Best yet, think of James McNew mangling the language and probably the entire culture on A Plea for Tenderness.

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Lightfoot, alternatively, clearly speaks French well enough to write a song in the language, then warble it over a hunting piano borrowed from the Bryter Layter sessions. Hey Gord: Je vous aime. Like, totally.

And then there's Same Old Loverman. Yes, Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song with that title and he sings it with a straight face. It's pure and perfect schmaltz, and I love every note. Again, listen to the bass! There are two separate and glorious lines of it side by side in the opening, then again in the bass solo at the 2 minute mark. Yes, this song has a bass solo, and that allows Gordon ample time to drop in on seven separate ladies midsong. All of them swoon.

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I find it incomprehensible that Dylan, who is a huge Gordo himself, has never covered this track. My Famous Brother is probably standing up and shouting at this moment that Dylan did indeed cover Same Old Loverman in February, 1996 while touring Sweden on the Neverending Tour. If that's indeed the case, spend me a link Bro! I'll bet Bob sounds like he's singing about a Sane, Bold Lumberjack. I hope he plays Handy Dandy directly afterwards.

Redwood Hill finds us suddenly in Cajun country; Lightfoot sets the stage for much of the rest of Paul Simon's career here by successfully dipping a beautiful big toe in a foreign genre for one single song before abandoning that genre and moving on. If I was a Ragin' Cajun I'd call this cultural appropriation. But I'm not Ragin' or Cajun, so I'm into it.

Love and Maple Syrup should be as awkward as the title, and the transition between verses is a bit clunky, I guess, but otherwise this is classic hometown Lightfoot. People in Gordon's hometown don't just talk about the home team, which is still on fire. They also contemplate the laws of nature and line up to rob the forest of her wine; everyone longs to be understood.

Three different times in the track there's a slightly unhinged guitar piece that Gordon doubles with his voice. Keep in mind that this was recorded pretty much at the same moment as Moondance and Stephen Stills' paean to all things terrible, Love the One your With. In 1970 Stephen Still was just beginning his reign of harmonic terror and Van Morrison was still figuring out what music could be made with his voice. Meanwhile, Gordon was recording his sixth album. Five years later Van the Man would record the greatest jazz/pop live record of all time by any grumpy, anti-vaccing white dude, but in 1971 Gord was his Dad. And Stephen Stills forever trembles before them both, cowering.

Cabaret ends the record and is its oddest song. The track definitely is not Lightfoot's Desolation Row, so my Highway 61 analogy has fallen on hard times at this point. But the song's title is apropos: this is really a collection of unrelated side by side performances rather than a unified song. Belle and Sebastian's future horn section jumps in and out early on; the guitar work initially doodles without any direction. It all sounds odd, especially for someone as finicky about arrangements as Lightfoot.

But then, mid-track, we find ourselves in a totally unrelated road song. We're on our way to Reno from north On-tar-I-0. And that's a long drive! I checked Google Maps and they refuse to even calculate the distance or drive time. But the bass is once again bubbling conversationally and we fade out of this wonderful record wishing we were taking an even longer drive with good old Gord.

Rest in peace, Gordon Lightfoot. Thank you for forever lording over the Dollar Bin; you made timeless beauty for us all to treasure.

#Youtube #gordon lightfoot #james mcnew #van morrison #stephen stills still sucks #bob dylan #dinosaur jr.

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roughridingrednecks · 5 months

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McNew

#mcnew #tatted up #torso tats #redneck #tats

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year

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Yo La Tengo Live Show Review: 3/24, Metro, Chicago

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When Yo La Tengo released “Fallout”, the lead single from their latest album This Stupid World (Matador), journalist Matthew Perpetua likened it to “them doing their best to answer the question ‘what's so special about Yo La Tengo?’ and nailing it.” The name of the album comes from a refrain in the title track, wherein Ira Kaplan sings, “This stupid world is all we have.” The two ideas are connected: Throughout their almost 40 years of existence, the Hoboken indie rock band have engaged with the globe, musical and otherwise, by shapeshifting and always experimenting, not even ideas like performing an hour and a half drone set instead of actual songs too outlandish. They’re still looking for “something interesting” to them, but it seems like they’re always questioning and ultimately deciding what makes them interesting to listeners. For lack of better terms, their music--gentle even when noisy--has always sounded gorgeously internal. Appropriately, This Stupid World was made without outside producers, mixers, and recorders (Greg Calbi mastered it), and it was billed as the most “live sounding” Yo La Tengo album in years. As it turns out, “most live” is not just an aesthetic descriptor: like the best YLT live sets, the album’s lyrics are filled with encyclopedic references to music history, warm tenderness, and dry and dark humor.

Not since the Fade tour have I seen Yo La Tengo divide their setlists in two: one generally gentle, one generally loud (as opposed to arbitrarily acoustic vs. electric). The songs on This Stupid World perfectly fit this dynamic, as evidenced by the band’s masterful show Friday night at Metro. Ever since I heard album opener “Sinatra Drive Breakdown”, I figured it would be an ideal set opener, perhaps for years to come, effectively building up with steady drums and nervy guitars. “Until we all break,” Kaplan and Georgia Hubley repeated on Friday, as if to refer to anything and everything from the songs themselves, scrawling into a noisy mess, to even the human race that’s spurred the band’s sardonic attitude. The Hubley-delivered melancholia of “Aselestine” and “Miles Away” were wonderfully atmospheric, the calm shoegaze and drum machine skitter of the latter acting as a segue into the increasingly swirling noise of the second set. The James McNew-led “Tonight’s Episode” and jazzy “Apology Letter” settled into playful grooves, rifle with playful call and response (about yo-yo tricks, nonetheless) and self-deprecation.

The album’s title track and lead single found their way into the band’s second set, the former leading them off with a cornucopia of squeaking guitars and pounding percussion. “Fallout”, meanwhile, is already on my shortlist of top YLT fuzz-pop classics, up there with “From A Motel 6″, “Tom Courtenay”, and “For You Too”. “I wanna fall out of time,” Kaplan sang, as if to recognize the timelessness of the sounds the band was conjuring. It should fit nicely in future sets, sandwiched in between songs like “Evanescent Psychic Pez Drop” and “Drug Test” released decades prior. If there was one song from This Stupid World I wished they had played during this set, it was “Brain Capers”. (According to setlist.fm, the band has been playing most of the record each time out, switching off night by night which songs they exclude.) It’s quintessential Yo La Tengo, referencing tunes by Alice Cooper and The Kinks, and a Rick Moranis Second City Television sketch where he plays Michael McDonald singing backup, walking into the recording room for only seconds at a time to belt his notes, before walking out. The sketch reminds me, funny enough, of whenever Yo La Tengo perform “Ashes”, as they did during their first set of the night: When it was time for the cymbals to be brushed, Kaplan nonchalantly walked over, brushed them once, and walked back to the microphone. The crowd cheered and laughed.

After I took photos during the first three songs of the night, as per venue policy, I checked my camera bag, missing the fourth song of the night Yo La Tengo played: a cover of Wilco’s “If I Ever Was A Child”. If I had seen it, and realized Wilco had an off night during a three-shows-in-four-days stint at the Riviera, I would have expected something was up. Nonetheless, when during the band’s per-usual covers encore, Kaplan admitted to the band being “really beat” and needing help, the last thing I thought I would see would be Wilco walking out on stage to burn though Beatles, Dylan, The Heartbreakers, and Fairport Convention covers. It was a fitting moment, the stage full of the members of two bands who continue to thrive by listening to the crowd and each other, paying tribute to what compels them.

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