Yo La Tengo

 

I've really only heard Yo La Tengo once. It was about 30 years ago, in a small grocery store that hired musicians and artists as cashiers. I was moving slowly up and down the aisles, picking out dried fruit, apples and some cheese when I heard this pulsing music. It sounded like someone pulling on a massive steel string and letting it go, the reverberations ringing in the air. This sound was accompanied by somebody banging steadily on tom toms. Then the massive pulled and released steel string was joined by multiple other strings that were hit and plucked. There was a bass behind all this, articulating three and four-note figures that served as both counterpoint and anchor. The whole thing slowly built, increasing in intensity. The musicians were taking their time, like it didn't matter to them if the song was eight minutes or twelve or twenty. The rising sounds reminded me of those plastic tubes we had as kids that you would raise above your head and then move your arm in a circle to produce whistling wind. Listening in the grocery store, I pictured red, yellow, and royal blue forms surging up and twisting around in the air above the vast field where it seemed the strings were being plucked and hit. I got to the cashier and I asked him what it was. He told me, Yo La Tengo. He didn't say it pretentiously or warmly. He just stated it as a fact. Later, I heard the cashier play bass. He was very nimble, very intelligent and dialed in. I figured he would go onto renown, playing in national touring bands. Back then I didn't understand that many, many other things beyond talent had to fall into place, internally and externally, for one to make a living playing music or making paintings or acting, etc. But that didn't really matter. His sharing Yo La Tengo music in the grocery store and telling me the name of the band declaratively and his playing a cheap electric bass limned in red paint in such a way that I can still hear the space between his notes are worth the world to me.

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