Yo La Tengo at Toad's

The opening night of Yo La Tengo's fall tour Monday at Toad's Place in New Haven featured a 90-minute regular set, a good chunk of which came from the excellent new album "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass." The fun stuff, though, came in the encore, when singer Ira Kaplan wished everyone a happy new year (Rosh Hashanah was last weekend) and said that in honor of the high holidays, he was dedicating a song to "the next senator from Connecticut, Ned Lamont." The tune: "Burnin' For You" by Blue Oyster Cult. Ah, the ironic cover, such a staple of indie rock.

Kaplan also dedicated a new song, "The Weakest Part," to NRBQ, which was clearly a stylistic inspiration for the tune. The dedication drew cheers from two and puzzled looks from many of the younger hipsters in the audience.

It was a good crowd for a Monday night, though two girls in front of me -- "the ADD twins," as friend Beth dubbed them -- spent much of the show taking pictures with the digital cameras built into their matching cell phones. Even more unsettling was that one of them looked sort of like David Fricke.

Comments

[ChrisB.]

You had sex and still managed to catch the encore? That would seem to me to be a perfect night.

[Derek Warren]

Funny, yet tragic story in relation to Kaplan and co.

The only time I ever saw YLT was in 1997, when they really started re-inventing themselves musically. It was in Tallahassee, FL (I was dating a girl who went to FSU) and I basically missed the entire set except for the encore. We were "having relations" in her dorm and got there too late. It was the only time I have ever regretted having sex. I did manage to score a wicked yellow YLT shirt with a picture of Vince Lombardi on it. A souvenir for a night that should have been so much better.