Yo La Tengo at the Wall (10/15-16)

heey there. i’m new to Taiwan, and i’ve never been to the Wall, but i just saw that Yo la Tengo will be playing there on 10/15 - 10/16. hopefully i can buy tix in time for the 10/16 show (i need someone to translate the website for me, everything’s in Chinese!), and if you’re interested in meeting up with a fellow yo la tengo fan and rockin’ jersey-style, let me know!

You best be right quick – The Wall’s a small venue and international acts sell out very quickly indeed, usually.

I’ve seen them twice in Taiwan (at Huashan a few years ago and at Formoz a couple of years ago) and they put on a really good show both times. I won’t be able to make this show because I’ll be away on holiday. Enjoy it!

Second and final show is tonight.
Anyone go last night?

Yo La Tengo were fantastic! Their show on the Oct 15th was quite tight even though they were missing their keyboards. They seemed exhausted and a bit grumpy for their Oct 16th show. (Nonetheless, their performance was incredible.) On the other hand, Texas Pandaa of Japan, the opening band, both nights, were clearly lacking cohesion at the Thursday show. They seemed to be fighting with each other, clearly unhappy with something. It seems to me that at the end of their set they purposely ramped-up the P/A and/or their amps as a kind of sonic attack on the audience. I was wondering, did “The Wall” or the promoter fuck over the bands or something? A lot of Ira Kaplan’s comments were subtle and sarcastic. YLT are old school performers and tour constantly, their onstage banter is rich in meaning, and it seemed to me that they were speaking past the crowd to some issue.

In any case, it was great to see them play~ they are excellent musicians and it would be difficult to see them up close and personal like that at a comparable venue in the Western world.

(Sombunall of the teenyboppers there were clueless and wouldn’t have known the difference between Ray Davies and Richard Carpenter.)