Yo La Tengo puts a new spin on touring
-
Yo La Tengo -- Georgia Hubley, Ira Kaplan and James McNew -- will let the audience decide the playlist.
Share with others:
Aside from those freewheeling jam bands, most touring acts play roughly the same songs every night, and ticketÂholders can swiftly remove the mystery of the show by looking up the set list online.
For its current tour, Yo La Tengo is leaving things to chance.
Taking a page from Elvis Costello, the veteran New Jersey indie-rock band is traveling with a wheel of fortune, which an audience member is asked to spin. Unlike the Elvis' wheel, which went song by song, Yo La Tengo's wheel determines the entire first set.
With: William Tyler.
Where: Mr. Smalls, Millvale.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets: $18-$20; 1-866- 468-3401.
The categories include: The Name Game (songs that feature someone's game); Songs Starting with "S"; "The Sounds of Science" Parts 1 & 2 (the instrumental score they did in 2001 for shorts by Jean Painleve); The Freewheeling Yo La Tengo (a Q&A with the audience) that prompts song selection; and Condo [F----], songs by YLT's cover-band alter ego. There's also Sitcom Theater, in which the band will actually act out a classic sitcom. Hard to say whether any audience wants to see that.
With all these possibilities, this was not the easiest tour for which to prepare.
"It was a lot of work," says singer-guitarist Ira Kaplan. "We did an uncharacteristic amount of rehearsal for going on tour. One of the reasons we had to rehearse so much is that frequently we'll use the soundcheck to rehearse a song, knowing that it's gonna be in the set that night. The unpredictable nature of this means we have to be ready to do any of them on any night."
If there are categories the band is leaning toward, it's the ones that haven't come up yet. By last week, two of them had come up twice and four hadn't come up at all, including the sitcom.
First Published February 3, 2011 12:00 am
