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Yo La Tengo Concentrating
On Their Craft, Not Their Image
BY WENDY MITCHELL
SENIOR WRITER
Yo LaTengo’s Ira Kaplan has had only
a few guitar lessons, and it shows. He’s a
brilliant guitarist, but his sounds are cre
ations, not repetitions of anything others
could have taught him. He agreed tradi
tional training had little relevance to him:
“It seems like most of the things I play are
just from being brave enough to play them. ”
His —and drummer/vocalist Georgia
Hubley bassist James McNew’s brave
ness is apparent when you hear Yo La
Tengo’s textural and structural experimen
tation. At Saturday’s Cat’s Cradle show,
the band shifted from heartbreaking bal
lads to delectable cacophony which left
your entire digestive system vibrating. Af
ter an exhausting series of two encores and
on-the-spot covers (including Fleetwood
Mac’s “Dreams”), the band left the crowd
with a feedback-drenched version of the
Velvet Underground’s “I Heard Her Call
My Name.”
While The Velvets provide a starting
point (literate, artsy, experimental), YoLa
Tengo sets off on a path completely their
own, only occasionally detouring with
other reference points: Their“ Shaker” takes
cues from Big Black’s “Kerosene,” and
“Tom Courtenay,” rollicks along like
Crooked Rain-era Pavement.
The current eight-date East Coast tour
provides a break from their wintry home
town, Hoboken, N. J., to spend a few days
in sunny Florida. The tour holds another
benefit, guitarist/vocalist/organist Kaplan
said from his hotel in Burlington on Sun
day. “We tend to buy most of our records
on tour.” While he’d already picked up a
singles collection from Flying Saucer At
tack and some David Kilgour solo mate
rial, Kaplan was ready for more—nothing
specific, but whatever strikes him. “Alotof
it depends on what we see in the used bins,
we’re as thrifty as the next consumer.”
You’re more likely to find their summer
album, Electr-O-Pura, on any respectable
Best of 1995 list not the used bin. In
addition, Yo La Tengo recently released
Established Artists, Mediocre Gangster
Rappers Release Weak Hip-Hop Albums
BY TODD GILCHRIST
MUSIC EDITOR
This year’s hip-hop selections were a
threadbare amalgam of weak selections
from established artists, mediocre debuts
from gangsta rappers and badly-produced
East Coasters.
In short, they were the worst collection
of singles since Hammer hit it big.
LL Cool J “hardened up” his image and
enlisted Easy Mo Bee, hip-hop’s quickest
style burnout (beat, beat, beep, beat, beat,
beep), to produce the very depressing Mr.
Smith.
Redman’s sophomore effort, Dare Iz A
Darkside , was frustratingly similar to his
debut, due largely to the weak production
by Erick Sermon (how many times can he
sample his own songs and think it’s clever?).
Sermon’s Double Or Nothing “smoothed”
itself into innocuousness, much like the
majority of tracks on Black Sheep’s Non-
Fiction.
Several albums, though they met with
small financial success, proved to be su
perb entries into this currently waning
musical genre.
The Roots, Pharcyde and Aceyalone all
failed to bring in significant revenues, but
they were critically revered and actually
developed a small but devoted following.
The following are my 10 top picks for hip
hop for the year:
1) Roots — Do You Want More?!!!??!
Geffen’s first hip-hop record of the year
was also their best.
They reintroduced what hip-hop origi
nally rebelled against live instrumenta
tion —and produced a work that has
tighter beats than any drum machine, hom
riffs jazzier than any sample could ap
proach, and lyrics so intelligent and tight
that they almost revolutionized emceeing.
A true classic in every sense of the word.
2) Pharcyde— Labcabincalifomia —Like
the Roots, Pharcyde broke down the fourth
wall between two genres of music, in this
case R&B and hip-hop, and created the
most soulful album of the year. The pro
duction, almost entirely by the group itself,
demonstrated a growth that suggested even
more about the future of rap than about the
group itself. They combined smooth pro
duction, honeyed vocals, hard beats and
intelligent lyrics to escalate rap to anew
level.
3) Guru Jazzmatazz Volume II: The
New Reality The first volume of Guru’s
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Camp Yo La Tengo, an EP with reworked
songs from Electr, as well as a Seeds cover.
Kaplan said Matador would be reissuing
the bands old albums this summer, as well
as possibly a compilation of previously
unreleased (at least on album) songs. He
said, “It’s not so much anew album, but a
filling in the cracks kind of thing.”
What follows are excerpts from our
conversation:
How much of your shows are improvised?
Obviously, you’re not saying, "We’re gonna
play this song,and it’s going to last exactlyfour
and a half minutes."
Well, we have a set list, and we practice
(laughs), but I think one of the things we
strive for is to trust ourselves to do things
we don’t know are coming We never plan
whatwe’regoingtodoforan encore before
we get out there. We’ve done really embar
rassing things like stand there deciding, it’s
just riveting entertainment. Luckily, last
night we were able to make up our minds.
Are you like that off-stage, too—do you "roll
with the punches"?
Probably not as much, I try to be. I think
what we’re trying to do on stage is create an
environment in which we can then roll
with the punches ... That’s not exactly a
good expression. I think it’s more like react
with the punches.
On the notes on the back o/Electr-O-Pura
I know they can’t all be taken seriously
but one of them says, "The sound of a guitar is
with me all the time—oramlwith it?” Are you
one of those guys who hears music in everything:
the can opener, whatever?
I think we probably do. One of the
things we thought were funny about those
liner notes is that they’re a joke that is dry
enough that can be taken seriously, or has
elements of seriousness to it, that’s our
favorite kind of joke.
7 was intrigued last night when you said
people think you 're sarcastic even when you’re
sincere Why do you think that is?
I just have that sound to my voice, the
wise-guy. I was thinking about that this
morning in the shower, I was blabbing
away.
It just seemed like you were having a lot of
solo work sought to unite jazz and rap in a
new and interesting way by targeting the
fundamental virtues ofboth musics—their
improvisational purity and spontaneity—
but he partially failed.
This time he hit the nail directly on the
head, and he brought the best artists from
each genre together and made an album
that is brilliantly produced, entertaining
and often poignant.
4) AZ Doe Or Die —At first, I didn’t
want to like this guy (I still don’t like
“Sugar Hill”), but the album’s non-single
songs and his tighter-than-tight delivery
made for one oftheyear’s strongest debuts.
Much like Nas, he enlisted several big
name producers who recognized his talent
and helped him put together a coherent
album that matched his frenetic and artis
tic style.
This partially slept-on album will years
from now be highly revered, much like the
D.O.C’s debut is now.
5) Gangsta’s Paradise —Again,
not an album I would have expected to
like, but the end result of Coolio’s sopho
more record may be the best-produced
album of the year.
The infectious “Gangsta’s Paradise” and
“Too Hot” now dominate the airwaves
and'MTV, but the other songs on Gangsta’s
Paradise indicate that this is one gangsta
who feels his words can do more than
simply make money while glorifying vio
lence and misogyny.
6) KRS-One s/t KRS-One has
been reborn. After the death of Scott
Laßock, he foundered around in maudlin,
harangue-heavy albums with generally
weak production and lyrics that indicated
Knowledge Reigned Supreme, but no
longer over everybody.
The Return Of Da Boom-Bap shone just
above rap’s surface, and with the release of
his self titled KRS-One, our first and fore
most hip-hop dialectician returns to his
earliest glories.
Premier’s production sparked up KRS’
especially energetic lyrics, and we see a
combination of the old and the new with
such singles as “MC’s Act Like They Don’t
Know” (with piano samples reminiscent
of “The Bridge Is Over”).
“I come with my skills and leave with
your motherfuckin’ respect.” Indeed.
7) All Wu-Tang releases. Although
Method Man’s album came out very late in
1994, he makes it into this list on the
strength of his “All I Need” remixes alone.
DIVERSIONS
fun.
I was.
You aren’t afraid to do ballads or long songs
A lot of bands shy away from those, why do you
do them?
Our own feeling is that there is no for
mula for what a good song is, and anytime
anybody says, “rock and roll means two
and a half minutes,” or any formula, that’s
not very effective for us. We feel like a song
can be long, short, fast, slow, loud, quiet,
anything. I think we would like the idea of
the show and the record changing in con
tours and things in the course of it. For us,
it makes it easier and more rewarding to
play for a long time.
You’ve done stuffwith people around here...
Chris Stamey (on various projects, recently with
his duo with Kirk Ross), Mac (McCaughan,
who invited Hubley and Kaplan to collaborate
onaPortastatictune). How didyou get involved
with them?
Being fans, and they asked us. But I
think it’s more from knowing them. We’ve
done a number of things with Chris over
the years. He was extremely helpful to us
when we first formed. He played guitar
with us, he produced a single, gave us a lot
of really good help. That was really impor
tant to us because we were such fans and
admirers of him and them (the dß’s), and
when they thought we were worthy of their
time and attention, it was important to us.
You guys don’t necessarily have an image.
Do you think you’re an image-less band? But
not in a bad way... you just play your music. I
guess there's always the marriage thing (Kaplan
and Hubley are married).
Yeah, I think that’s true.
Do you think that’s ever hurt you?
I think a lot of these things hurt us in
terms of commercially, but they’re helpful
in terms of our longevity. A lot of it is not
tremendously in our control, I think if we
were a different kind of band, we just
wouldn’t be as good. I think there’s people
who can do that stuff better, who can sing
better, play better, just kind of are better at
the craft. For better or worse, we just don’t
have much else to offer.
You’re being very humble.
I didn’t think there could be a cooler
single than “Brooklyn Zoo,” but 01’ Dirty
Bastard outdid himself with “Shimmy
Shimmy Ya.”
Raekwon brought us the first totally
solid Wu album since their debut with his
All 4 Cuban Linx, and The Genius stabbed
us where it counts with his “Liquid Swords”
and then poured on a remix of “Cold
World” which featured D’Angelo. Per
haps these guys should be singing “The
World Is Mine.”
8) Various Artists— DefJam Music Group
Ten Year Anniversary —The first big (offi
cial) hip-hop compilation to be released,
Def Jam’s Anniversary contains more clas
sic songs than you imagined existed.
Besides, any album which features Pub
lic Enemy and LL Cool Jat their peaks, the
Beasties at their most infantile, Nice and
Smooth before they became aggravating,
the only Redman song I genuinely like and
Slick Rick has got to be pretty good.
9) Smif-N-Wessun — Dah Shinin’
Smif-N-Wessun satiated our desire for a
new Black Moon album (for now), but
they set themselves apart by incorporating
a small sub-genre of reggae into their mu
sic.
Their spaced-out, echoing ambient
sounds complement A Tribe Called Quest’s
Midnight Marauders more than Black
Moon’s Enta Da Stage, but either way, Dah
Shinin ’ is a hell of a listen.
10) Mobb Deep The Infamous ...
“Survival Of The Fittest" and “Shook
Ones” introduced us to Mobb Deep’s sul
len stories of street life, but no one would
have guessed they could carry their tales of
woe through an entire album.
Far superior to their debut, The Infa
mous explains, as only that stark East Coast
style can, that uiban life ain’t easy.
But Mobb Deep doesn't let us get bogged
down in diatribes. They unite the aesthetic
of the music and the intellect of the rap
pers' minds in a most fascinating way.
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Hoboken, N.J. s Yo La Tengo (front-to-back: Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley and James McNew) find there’s no formula for a
good song, as evidenced by their affection for ballads, longer songs and the occasional Fleetwood Mac cover.
Well, only slightly. We played like two
hours last night, that wasn’t very humble.
Talking about longevity, you've been releas
ing albumsfor more than 10 years, and yet you
still take requests You're not one of those bands
that just plays what you want to?
We don’t take them (requests) all night.
But I think, especially in a show that’s gone
well, we treat the encore quite differently
... When we end the set, we’re willing to
stop playing. At that point, things change,
Shannon Ravenal’s Annual Pick of Best
Southern Fiction Focuses on Deep South
■ “New Stories From the
South” has a flavorful
portion of the “melting pot.”
Algonquin Books’ “New Stories From
the South, The Year’s Best, 1995” is in
bookstores now.
This 10th annual collection of short
stories by 17 authors contains little bits of
all of the things that have made Southern
literature distinctive with our renound fla
vor.
You’ve got
your powerful,
twisted reli
gious fervor.
You’ve got
your gnarled fa
milial relation
ships.
david pattersonl
Book Review
‘New Stories From
the South, The
Year's Best, 1995"
You’ve got your sexual frustration.
You’ve got your violence.
Barry Hannah, this collection’s grace
fully aging heavyweight, once wrote, “The
Deep South might be wretched, but it can
howl.”
Most of the howling in this collection
does occur in the Deep South.
In fact, most of this year’s stories, howl
ing and otherwise, come from that region
south of the South that includes Alabama,
Mississippi, New Orleans and the rest of
the Louisiana coast.
Apparently the South is shrinking.
Over a hundred years after the end of
the Civil War the South may finally be
retreating.
As anyone who read even one or two of
the installments of “Pete and Shirley, the
Great Tar Heel Novel” in The News &
Observer can attest, Research Triangle Park
is about as Southern as Cocoa Pebbles are
prehistoric.
This New South —now not even called
the South but rather the “Sunbelt” is in
many ways a comfier and more urbane
and if the audience wants us to play, we’ll
play as long as that happens. It seems like
an interesting idea. There’s frequently
enough requests that we can pick and
choose. And sometimes we’ll take a long
time deciding what song to play because
we’re not really into what other people are
yelling. Last night, there were songs that
we hadn’t thought of doing, so it’s a chal
lenge.
So, you're not going to watch the Super
New Stories
fef South
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place to live than the older South. Unfortu
nately, gains for the Chamber of Com
merce can often translate to losses for lit
erature.
When this collection stays in the Deep
est South the results are as varied as R.
Sebastian Bennett’s “Riding with the Doc
tor,” Robert Olen Butler’s “Boy Bom with
Tattoo ofElvis" and Hannah’s “Drummer
Down.”
Bennett gives us a Donald Barthelme
like wild ride with a pompous Doctor of
Folklore Studies.
The Doctor is let loose to pontificate at
an out-of-hand Mardi Gras celebration.
Bennett easily wins the most rib-tickling
opening line award with, “I am an expert
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Bowl?
I’m hoping not to, but sometimes those
things have tentacles and are hard to es
cape. I’d rather go to the movies instead.
OK, what are your Oscar picks?
“Safe,” it was really eerie and unusual.
“Living in Oblivion” just keeps getting
funnier. “Crumb” has a chance, maybe as
a documentary, that was great. Although,
the documentary category is such a disas
ter. Wow, I came up with that pretty fast.
on folklore, and I know all about the masks
with noses shaped like penises."
Butler takes what could be a contrived
premise and turns it inti) a powerful story:
What would it be like to be a baby made
famous in the tabloids? How would a piece
of young poor white trash cope with a
birthmark of Elvis’s face in “the very cen
ter” of his chest?
He packs his nine-page story with
enough lust and confusion to make your
head spin.
“Drummer Down,” is a tender, angry
and aching elegy to his friend Drum, dead
of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a trailer
outside of Tuscaloosa.
James Lee Burke and Ken Craven also
offer stories that are beyond southern and
into brilliant.
Fans of third-wave southern writers like
Lee Smith will enjoy Hillary Hebert’s “La
dies of the Marble Hearth.”
Set in Greenville, N.C., this more se
date story deals with the dying culture of
ladies’ book clubs and studied gentility.
(Incidentally it also fits into the thesis
that North Carolina does not make for as
luridly sensational fictional material as
Louisiana.)
Deep South or Upper, this year’s collec
tion is another eclectic bunch of stories,
working in a common region but pushing
the envelope on what we may consider
“Southern fiction.”
M.dv.d NF.W YORK POST
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