Yo La Tengo @ MOCA, La Jolla, 11/5/07

Oh how I love driving all the way to San Diego on a whim. I did it recently to purchase a white maple necked Eric Clapton Strat, and I did it Sunday night to go see Yo La Tengo do an acoustic set at the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Arts) in La Jolla. This show was sold out so I posted an ad on Craigslist and luckily enough I found a seller who sold me two tickets for face value of $25 each. What a fucking deal.

I drove all the way to La Jolla from Los Angeles and arrived at a very nice area in La Jolla with upscale shopping centers and plenty of coffee shops and restaurants. I had learned earlier in the week that Yo La Tengo were touring and playing special intimate acoustic sets which included audience Q&A's in between songs! I wasn't sure how well their feedback heavy sound would transfer to acoustic performances, but they sounded fucking fantastic!

They performed mellower versions of songs throughout their career (for an audience of almost 500), such as Autumn Sweater, Stockholm Syndrome, Griselda, and Mr. Tough. While many of the songs were sung so mellowly you'd swear you were having a flashback to a Simon and Garfunkel concert, some of them really picked it up with Ira Kaplan breaking out into Proco Rat distorted acoustic guitar solos. Very similar to the guitar in Tom Waits' Hoist That Rag! And his head-bowed-down-on-and-rocking-back-and-forth stage stance is very similar to Mr. Waits as well. Badass! This guy can really switch between soft guitar to fucking heavy fast shit--very similar to Thurston Moore's guitar playing.

The highlight of the night was definitely when I yelled out to Ira: "The song The Room Got Heavy relies so heavily on bongo drums and organ--is it even humanly possible to transfer such a song to a live acoustic set?" Mr. Kaplan smirked, and said "I don't know if that's ever even been done...is this a dare?" and they played a fucking awesome acoustic version that found simple amplified acoustic riffs opening the song, which eventually turned into some heavily distorted power chord shifts to finish off the climactic organ solo from the original version on I am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass.

This was one of the best shows I have been to all year. I won't soon forget the Ira Kaplan's between song commentary and soft spoken words of benevolence. He really seems like a nice guy, and handled the transition from "song--to audience question--to song (related to the audience question) very smoothly!