Mixtapes for Hookers

#5. Yo La Tengo, Little Eyes

I was unfamiliar with Hoboken trio Yo La Tengo until the year 2000, when I got their lovely album And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.  I was a freshman at a college in dreadfully snowy upstate New York and I was working at an indie-snob radio station.  I ironed my jeans and had Rivers Cuomo glasses.

A few months later, once things started to that, Yo La Tengo played an outdoor show at the Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica.  It was raining that night and there were Slip N Slides.  They played on anyway, veering happily between songs from their last record and covers of Somebody’s Baby and You Sexy Thing.  And that’s when I became a lifelong fan.

(more…)