Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Big Day Coming and the Rise of by Jesse Jarnow Yo La Tengo and the Birth of Indie Rock: ‘Big Day Coming’ Reviewed. Obscure bands signing to small record labels changed the landscape of music in the ‘90s. A new book, Big Day Coming , tells the story of one of these pioneering bands, Yo La Tengo, and how its scrappy do-it-yourself dedication anticipated today’s music scene. By Alyssa Noel. Plus, YLT and seven other bands that helped found indie rock. Alyssa Noel. © ED SIRRS / RETNAUK. One night in the late 1980s, not long after Yo La Tengo’s and got married in a quaint, low-key city hall ceremony, the couple returned to their Hoboken home to discover strange houseguests lounging on their pull-out couch. The two were invited by roommates, but Hubley was annoyed that they had let her cats outside. “Who are you?” she demanded to know. “We’re Mudhoney,” they replied. The groggy pair would go on to become defining members of Seattle’s grunge scene. Rock ‘n’ roll history is filled with tales far more debauched than the peeved-over-a-cat meeting of two famous alt-rock bands. But the understated nature is exactly the appeal of Jesse Jarnow’s Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock —it mirrors the music it writes about. The book is crammed with these hushed anecdotes, which Jarnow relays with the breathless urgency of a nerdy record store clerk. The term independent rock was initially used to describe alternative bands signed to small, almost amateurish record labels. But even when those imprints were purchased by major labels, the title stuck, and it eventually morphed into a genre tag to describe under-the-radar acts that might once have been deemed “record collector” bands for their relative obscurity. Yo La Tengo was one of those bands, eventually signing to tastemaker . (Which was later purchased by Atlantic.) The book focuses on the band’s long and rather unglamorous career, which foreshadowed an endless stream of scrappy, hardworking rock bands that were among the first to grapple with transitioning to a post-album world. Kaplan grew up in suburban as an obsessive music fan, falling in love with the Beatles and and plotting trips to the city to see live music. He bought a Fender Stratocaster guitar when he was young, but it remained untouched in his room for years. He entered the business not as a musician, but as a journalist, first with his school paper at and later at the (now defunct) New York Rocker . But it was on assignment for the SoHo Weekly News covering rising New York bands who were playing in London that he met the 20- year-old Hubley, who had flown there to attend the show. The concert tanked, but the two became inseparable from that moment on, eventually moving into the Hoboken house where, years later, they would startle the sleepy grunge pioneers. Hubley’s Upper West Side family was fascinating. Her father began his career working under an emerging Walt Disney, and together with her mother ran an animation studio, earning eight Oscar nominations for their work. Hubley and her sister occasionally provided inspiration and voices for their films, and she went on to study visual arts in college, where she also learned to play drums. Kaplan and Hubley talked about making music together. But it wasn’t until a friend at the Rocker coaxed the painfully shy couple to jam at the photo editor’s birthday party that they finally played a loose, boozy, laid back set in front of a crowd, ending the night with a cover of California punk band Flipper’s “Sex Bomb.” (The lyrics: “She’s a sex bomb my baby, yeah,” repeated endlessly.) Someone snapped a photo of the group and scrawled the caption: “Photo editor Laura Levine celebrated her 24 th by inviting her weirdo friends to speel beer on the NYR office and play some dubious ‘music.’” The two loved it. They would get their next chance to perform as “Georgia & those guys” at Maxwell’s, a low-key Hoboken restaurant and concert venue to which the band still has ties. (Its semi-annual Eight Nights of Hanukkah series, featuring surprise musical guests and comedians, has taken place there for a decade.) The establishment’s history figures prominently in the book, a tribute to it being a constant hub for the small city’s music scene. The Jersey City radio station WFMU is similarly celebrated, its plight and successes woven in alongside the band’s. (Jarnow hosts a show at the station.) In 1984, they came up with the name Yo La Tengo, a phrase New York Mets centerfielder Richie “Whitey” Ashburn would shout to his Spanish- speaking shortstop, Elio Chacon, in an attempt to avoid collisions. The band’s noisy, self concious first shows under their constantly misspelled name were not well received. Gerard Cosloy, who would sign the band to his Matador Records years later, criticized their early shows. “I was hardly the sort of person to be nitpicky, but the level of musicianship was not exceptional at that point in time,” he told Jarnow. But Kaplan and Hubley honed their craft playing a range of punk, surf, and rock covers, culling influence from each genre and developing their own distinct, arty sound, eventually marked by lush vocals and a measured blend of melody and noise. They slowly mixed in originals and vowed never to offer the same set twice. They had a rotating cast of bass players—14 in total—until James McNew permanently joined in 1991, well into the band’s career. Their story is not especially remarkable. The group faced the same challenges as any ambitious touring band. Jarnow plows through in earnest, chronicling each album and the resulting step forward. A miserable tour through a freak Texas snowstorm was followed by a cantankerous soundman in Albuquerque who became furious at Kaplan for setting a microphone below the stage on the floor, but these lows led up to the news that their album President Yo La Tengo had cracked the college music charts for the first time. That’s as big a breakthrough moment as you’ll get in Big Day Coming : just modestly successful record sales (peaking at 300,000 for I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One , immediately before piracy began to wreak havoc on the industry), a loyal following, and a career spanning 25 years. But that is the point. Kaplan and Hubley are obsessive foodies who enjoy puzzles and shouting the answers to Jeopardy! This is hardly the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll we are used to. The subculture they inspired is not goth but blogs. (Or, in the beginning, do-it-yourself magazines.) Yo La Tengo’s persistent dedication and small-label affiliation might have earned it the title of indie rock pioneers, but it’s its distinct sound—guitar-driven and fondness for jangly fuzz—that keeps them relevant in the genre today. The band was born in an era before Pitchfork’s Best New Music stamp of approval (on literally hundreds of bands), before every band name sounds the same and a different one is considered “in” on any given week, before teen soaps functioned as radio or the concept of selling out became passé, as Jarnow points out in his whirlwind conclusion. Kaplan and Hubley have managed to thrive amidst two and a half decades of change. That doesn’t necessarily make all the details of their story interesting, but considering the current easily-forgotten state of the music industry, it makes them unique. Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock by Jesse Jarnow. Frank & Earthy blog. BIG DAY COMING Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock. available 5 June 2012. BIG DAY COMING is the first book about the odd and singular Yo La Tengo, the freethinking trio from Hoboken that created their own rock and roll myth. It is the story of a quiet world removed from pop’s mainstream, born from a wide-ranging musical curiosity, patience, and unbending independence. It is the story of a husband-wife team that have fought to maintain a creative relationship without sacrificing their privacy or their fandom, and it is the story of amazing barbecue, wild guitars, and whispered harmonies. Digging in with one of the most creative acts in any genre, BIG DAY COMING is also a sweepingly researched history of American indie rock, using Yo La Tengo, its members, and their three-decade career as a springboard into the legendary clubs, bands, zines, labels, record stores, college radio stations, fans, and pivotal figures that built the infrastructure of the contemporary music industry. BIG DAY COMING is, you know, coming. Watch Twitter, Facebook, and the skies. Big Day Coming : Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock. The first biography of Yo La Tengo, the massively influential band who all but defined indie music. Yo La Tengo has lit up the indie scene for three decades, part of an underground revolution that defied corporate music conglomerates, eschewed pop radio, and found a third way. Going behind the scenes of one of the most remarkable eras in American music history, Big Day Coming traces the patient rise of husband-and-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, who—over three decades—helped forge a spandex-and-hairspray- free path to the global stage, selling millions of records along the way and influencing countless bands. Using the continuously vital Yo La Tengo as a springboard, Big Day Coming uncovers the history of the legendary clubs, bands, zines, labels, record stores, college radio stations, fans, and pivotal figures that built the infrastructure of the now-prevalent indie rock world. Journalist and freeform radio DJ Jesse Jarnow draws on all-access interviews and archives for mesmerizing trip through contemporary music history told through one of its most creative and singular acts. Library Record. BIG DAY COMING is the first book about the odd and singular Yo La Tengo, the freethinking trio from Hoboken that created their own rock and roll myth. It is the story of a quiet world removed from pop’s mainstream, born from a wide-ranging musical curiosity, patience, and unbending independence. It is the story of a husband-wife team that have fought to maintain a creative relationship without sacrificing their privacy or their fandom, and it is the story of amazing barbecue, wild guitars, and whispered harmonies. Digging in with one of the most creative acts in any genre, BIG DAY COMING is also a sweepingly researched history of American indie rock, using Yo La Tengo, its members, and their three-decade career as a springboard into the legendary clubs, bands, zines, labels, record stores, college radio stations, fans, and pivotal figures that built the infrastructure of the contemporary music industry. BIG DAY COMING is, you know, coming. Watch Twitter, Facebook, and the skies. Jesse Jarnow is a freelance writer and a DJ on WFMU. He has written for The London Times, the Village Voice, Indy Week, Salon.com, Rolling Stone, Relix, Paste, the All Music Guide, Signal To Noise, and elsewhere. He is based in Brooklyn and tweets @bourgwick. ======Text as found 12-10-2012: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-book-excerpt-big-day-coming-yo-la-tengo-and- the-rise-of-indie-rock-20120606. Exclusive Book Excerpt: 'Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock' Read about the early days of the quintessential indie band and the 1990s rock scene in this preview of the new book. June 6, 2012 1:00 PM ET. 'Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock' by Jesse Jarnow. Formed by husband-and-wife duo Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1984, Yo La Tengo has succeeded as one of rock's most consistent and innovatively independent bands. In his new book, available now, journalist Jesse Jarnow explores not only the band's journey and identity, but the evolving indie rock scene in which they built their singular career. The excerpts below describe the band's early recording challenges, and the changes in the business of rock around the birth of grunge. Ira is an uptight fag read the graffiti over the studio door. It was at the end of a long, disgusting hallway. This is art read another proclamation scrawled elsewhere on the wall. Axl Rose – gay, another. Down the hall was Sleepyhead, a slew of metal bands, and a single shared bathroom "that definitely was the bane of Georgia's existence," in one recollection. Sonic Youth practiced next door. While Yo La Tengo was on the road, Lyle Hysen – whose Ace Tone organ the band had borrowed from the corner and not returned – had fixed up the room as a functional budget recording studio. "The point wasn't quality recording," said Fred Brockman, the onetime Dioxin Field center fielder who joined Hysen in the endeavor. "There was no way you could do that under those circumstances. It was sitting in a room holding a microphone up, basically." Working five afternoons a week while the space's other leaseholders took on recording projects in the evenings, it became Yo La Tengo's second home as they eagerly began to assemble new songs in a far more collaborative manner than ever before. Increasingly, James's bass lines pulled surprising melodies from Ira's noise-heavy progressions and gave them powerful new shapes, his natural ear an ever-useful asset in their day-to- day work. Brockman often stuck around to help them demo new songs and offer occasional input. Georgia brought in a new ballad, "Nowhere Near," she'd worked out at home. "From a Motel 6" was sourced from Ira and Georgia's two-guitar lineup. There was a quiet version but also a rushing, electric one, Georgia now comfortable enough to sing inside a noisier squall. They hadn't put "Big Day Coming" on May I Sing with Me, and played it for Fred. He was mystified that they played such an accessible number so slowly. They were mystified at his suggestion of turning it into a rock song. They humored Fred and tried it a few times unsuccessfully and put the loud version aside. Which is not to say that everything was hunky-dory. The new album would eventually take the name Painful and, as every member of Yo La Tengo long continued to point out, the process was exactly that. "The very painful sessions," Georgia groaned almost 20 years after the fact. "We had never had a band that rehearsed all the time," Ira said. "We rehearsed every day, and we were working really hard. There were lots of arguments within the group, knowing something was possible but not knowing how to get it." Gradually, they did. Things had been afoot for some time. While in school, Karen Glauber had gotten a college radio promotions job at A&M and, after graduation, moved to Hoboken. She dated [Ira's younger brother] Adam Kaplan briefly, and her twin sister, Diane, married Craig Marks, Yo La Tengo's first roadie and later an editor at CMJ. But Glauber's work with college radio stations soon evolved into an A&R gig at Warner Bros. She helped put together a deal to land Seattle's Soundgarden, a longhaired and often shirtless quartet on Sub Pop who'd released a single and an EP. To make it look like they weren't selling out, at least straightaway, Glauber engineered a stopgap LP on the then flailing SST. Founder Greg Ginn had overextended himself like Homestead and other indie labels of the time. Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. (forced to add the diminutive after a legal notice from the Dinosaurs) had both left Gerard Cosloy and Homestead for SST a few years earlier; both bolted from SST as soon as they could. "I like Greg Ginn and stuff, but they wouldn't pay you," Dinosaur's J Mascis noted. Released appropriately on Halloween 1988, a major-label record dressed as an indie, Soundgarden's Ultramega OK only further illustrated the distance between the bands that were about to break out of college radio and the underground they were leaving behind. Somewhere, the term "alternative" had been coined to describe the music not generally played by commercial radio, and it caught on. "It was a fake indie deal," Glauber admitted of Soundgarden's debut LP. "It was the most rock thing I'd ever dealt with. I was used to Suzanne Vega – more palatable stuff. Soundgarden changed the game in a lot of ways: to have a swagger and be so rocking, and be such a college radio band. It was a pretty sexless format before that." Indeed, Soundgarden's punk fell just short of heavy metal, an unhidden influence on one of their Sub Pop labelmates, Nirvana. In April 1991, David Geffen's DGC – run by the '70s record mogul and owned by MCA, in turn part of Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial – concluded its bidding for Nirvana and snatched the Olympia- based trio off Sub Pop for $287,000, with an agreement to feature the smaller label's logo on the back cover of the next Nirvana album. Based on the 118,000 units Sonic Youth's Goo had moved the previous year, DGC pressed 50,000 copies of Nirvana's Nevermind, which they released on September 24th. The album entered the Billboard chart two weeks after its release at Number 144, and the trio got affixed with its very own buzzword: "grunge." The rush was on. Excerpted from the book Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock Copyright © 2012 by Jesse Jarnow. Excerpted with permission by Gotham Books of Penguin Group USA. Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock by Jesse Jarnow. Frank & Earthy blog. Hi! I’m Jesse. I’m a writer and a DJ on WFMU. The Frow Show airs live late-night every Monday from 9pm to midnight on WFMU–91.1 in NYC, etc.–and wherever in time-space you are through my playlist page. I’ve got a highlights reel of favorite articles and miscellaneous writing. I co-host the official Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast. You can follow along with whatever I’m currently doing by way of Twitter. I occasionally publish a more personal newsletter, dispatched judiciously, with book news, recent articles, Frow Show updates, links, and other ephemera. For the past few years on Twitter, I’ve been posting the results of a tape-by-tape Grateful Dead listening project, compiled starting here. My newest book, Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul came out on Election Day 2018 via Da Capo Press. Recent liner note projects include Grateful Dead’s June 1976 box set, the 2019 Woodstock box sets, and Woods’ Strange To Explain . Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America was published by Da Capo in 2016, and–as of September 2018–is available in the universe as a paperback. Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock came out in 2012 via Gotham Books. You can acquire it via Powell’s or other fine book purveyors . A Spanish translation by music journalist Ignacio Julià is available through Sones. I’ve posted lots of other YLT related material on this site, including Hanukkah notes and a reader’s guide to the book. All episodes of the Frow Show are archived. I hosted a season of the Alternate Routes podcast, spotlighting independent music not available on Spotify and major streaming services. With Osiris, I wrote and hosted the 5-part After Midnight podcast about Phish’s 1999-2000 New Year’s festival in Florida. The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast has done seasons devoted to Workingman’s Dead (starting here) and American Beauty (starting here), going through each album song by song. I’ve written liner notes for the Grateful Dead, Numero Group, Rhino Records, RVNG, Phish, Jäh Division, Garcia Peoples, and others, and talk about that and related/unrelated topics in an interview I did with dead.net. A few years ago, I helped assemble and wrote lots of notes for a DVD of my father’s animation, called Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow , produced by the truly excellent humans at Numero Group, collecting the films he made for Sesame Street and elsewhere. Some pieces I’ve done have been featured in collections. I’ve also done a bit of educational writing. There’s lots of material scattered around this site, mostly under the category headers on the right-hand column. I play in a band. We have an album called Useless Smile . You can follow our adventures on Twitter, which is also where I’m at most of the time.