Written by by: Highway 11 / Translated by: 羅文穗

You can be excused if you have never heard of Yo La Tengo. The American independent rock trio has never garnered the level of mainstream success that some of their contemporaries like R.E.M. and The Pixies have, not that they really care.

Their critical acclaim has merited them a place among the most definitive indie rock bands of the past quarter century, but that wouldn’t concern them either. They’d much rather step onto the stage and do what they do best. Play their music the best they can and hope that the audience comes away satisfied. Judging by their longevity and reputation, they have succeeded and then some. For those lucky enough to get tickets, Yo La Tengo brings their unique brand of rock to The Wall in Taipei on October 15th and 16th. Highway 11 Magazine had the privilege of speaking with guitarist and singer Ira Kaplan prior to their trip to Taiwan.

Highway 11: In 2005 Yo La Tengo celebrated 20 years as recording artists. What has kept you motivated and inspired over all that time?

Ira Kaplan: It’s a hard question to answer without sounding cornball but we just enjoy it. There are always new things we’ve never done before. For instance, this past weekend we played a big outdoor show for thousands of people in an emptied out swimming pool. One of the organizers was mooning the audience. That’s never happened at one of our shows before. There’s always something different.

H11: How has your songwriting process changed over time?

IK: It has changed over time. When we started, Georgia [Hubley] and I were writing songs as well as Stephan [Wichnewski] or whoever was playing with us at the time. Once James [McNew] got integrated into the group we just found ourselves getting together, playing and building songs out of jams. That’s really where the bulk of our songs have arisen for the last thirteen years or so, starting with [the album] Electr-O-Pura. The songs are, overwhelmingly, written by the band, together.

H11: What has been the biggest change in the industry for you over your career? For example, has the internet changed the way you approach music?

IK: We are pretty insulated from that stuff. I mean stuff obviously affects us and we aren’t immune to what is going on around us but to a great degree we ignore what’s going on around us and I don’t think it’s changed very much of what we do. The changes are almost immaterial.

H11: Which do you prefer, touring or recording?

IK: Neither. One really feeds off the other. They are such completely different experiences and they enhance each other. The chance to really delve into a dozen songs for a month and explore them, that’s really a fantastic experience and then to get on stage and blast things out, make them different, follow your instincts every night, that’s equally, but very differently, exciting.

One of the things we are looking forward to on this trip to Taiwan is that for the first time we are going to be doing our own show instead of being part of a festival. We’ll play longer. There’s a standard festival presentation when you play a 65 minute set. This time we are doing two shows. The shows will be very different from each other and we can illustrate this to the audience.

H11: What do you find different about touring Asia, Europe and North America? How do they differ?

IK: There’s always differences. But then there’s even differences within each of those territories. It’s hard to generalize. I would say that there’s an excitement that comes when people didn’t really think they were going to get a chance to see a band and you come to a place like that. There is a very different mood when you go to Los Angeles and when you go to Taipei. The number of bands like us that come [to Taipei] is far less and the opportunities to see bands are far fewer and as a result there tends to be a very special atmosphere. But then there are festivals as opposed to clubs. If it was any easier to answer that question, it would be less fun to go on tour because you never really know what you are going to encounter on any given night. That’s one of the appeals of touring.

H11: Do you ever find touring tedious?

IK: Sure. Rarely for long, but there are times. The tedium, at times is, in a way part of its appeal. Everybody in the band are sports fans and one of the things that I like about sports is that it’s an athlete’s job to get through the long season and they have to do their best even when they are tired and when things are not at their best. Sometimes you really are beat or just wish there wasn’t a show that night, but then you get onstage and you lose that feeling for two hours. I will say that I rarely feel that way while we are playing. We try to keep things interesting. We schedule days off and long hiatuses between tours. We do a lot of soundtrack work and we always try to listen to ourselves.

H11: You guys are noted for your cover songs. So much so that you compiled an entire album devoted to them, Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics. Do you consciously decide to cover specific songs or is it more spontaneous?

IK: If we are performing live, it can be pretty spontaneous. Somebody was just listening to something and then say “we should learn that.” In the last year we’ve been doing these shows called the Freewheelin’ Yo La Tengo where we play acoustic sets while sitting down. We do a lot of talking. We actually insist that the audience ask us questions. So we talk for a while and then eventually play a song. We were inspired by the nature of that. We were doing a lot of songs we’d never played before, getting the lyrics off the Internet, running through them during the sound check and playing them that night. A lot of times it will be something like “We’re going to L.A. Let’s play a couple of songs by the Byrds.” Or if we go to a town where a friend of ours is a big Rolling Stones fan and we know they’ll be at the show we’ll surprise them and play a couple of Rolling Stones songs. It’s as off the cuff as we care to be.

When it comes to recording a cover, we’re generally not foolish about it. Sometimes we think our version of a song is distinctive to us in a certain way and then we just see what happens with it. Sometimes they end up on an album, sometimes on a B-side some are still just sitting around, waiting for a home.

H11: The album you are currently touring is They Shoot, We Score, a compilation of your soundtrack work if I’m not mistaken.

IK: That’s not really true. We won’t be playing any of that stuff on the tour. Over the last few years we’ve written scores to about a half dozen movies. We took the first four from 2006 and 2007 and collected all the music we wrote for the movies, some of which didn’t end up getting used and putting it out on our own little imprint [Egon] but that’s just coincidental.

H11: Of all your songs is there one that means something particularly special to you?

IK: I hope not! I think they all do. They all mean something special. I was talking about the show in the swimming pool. Since we haven’t released an album of new material since 2006 (I Am Not Afraid and I Will Beat Your Ass) we didn’t really have anything new to play but we did want to play some of the old songs that we don’t play that often. We just think about making each show special and try to keep people from saying: “Oh, I’ve seen them before, I don’t need to go to this show.” You want to make people feel like every show is special.

I was thinking about some of our old songs. There’s one song in particular that we literally never play and probably never will. It’s called Straight Down to the Bitter End. It’s on Electr-O-Pura. We recorded it. We ultimately had mixed feelings about it, nearly left it off the record but a couple of people responded positively to it so we put it on the record. Then we thought: “You know, we don’t really like this song that much.” We’ve tried playing it a couple of times in practice. We just can’t get our brains wrapped around it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a special feeling. That song, just like others that I like more than it, has its place.

H11: If you could play with any performer, dead or alive, with whom would you choose to share a stage?

IK: Just yesterday we were listening to John Coltrane, Live and the Village Vanguard. I would certainly would have loved to have witnessed one of those later Japanese shows where he’s doing one piece for an hour, just to experience what that was like and if we were on the bill so much the better.

H11: What can Taipei expect from your shows at The Wall on October 15th and 16th?

IK: We’ll draw on not necessarily all twenty-four years as a band. We might. We do go back to the very beginning on occasion but generally we concentrate on merely the last fifteen years. We’re doing two shows. The shows are sure to be very different. We’ll kind of figure it out when we get there. We will approach the shows as if people will be at both shows. We know most people won’t be at both but if we do our job right, anyone who goes to both shows will not be sorry.

 Yo La Tengo performs live at The Wall in Taipei on October 15th and 16th. Ticket information is available at: http://www.the-wall.com.tw/