Yo La

In February I got to see one of my all time favorite bands play live. It was my first Yo La Tengo show, and it was amazing! I've been a fan since the 1990's and on a few occasions over the years missed their shows in Chapel Hill or D.C. just because of scheduling conflicts. I almost missed this show in Atlanta too. I found out about it via a facebook add two days prior to the show; it was a Friday night show and I had parenting commitments. But Thursday night my plans were switched up and Friday morning I invited a friend to take the two hour drive up I-85 and go to a show for a band she'd never heard of. We bought tickets and left work a few minutes early, just to make sure we'd get there in time with the CST to EST time change.
What a great decision, after all these years Yo La did not let me down...in fact the live show far exceeded my expectation. First of all to my great surprise, Georgia can really slap the skins (and cymbals, etc.). Their fist set was an interesting rendition of "The Sounds of Science" which is the sound track to a documentary film that they usually play live to an airing of the movie. No movie, unfortunately, but the music still demonstrated the band's ability (perhaps unmatched in modern rock) to develop complex soundscapes without being all prog-rocky. The second set was a great collection of tunes spanning their career, highlights for me were "Flying Lesson," "Pass the Hatchet, I think I'm good kind," and "We're an American Band" in the encore. As they announce the title of "American Band" I leaned over to my friend and said "don't worry, they're not about to play Grand Funk Rail Road." yet after they finished their own EPIC song, they launched right into GFRR. AWESOMENESS!