#wfmu

Revenge of the Living Dead Media, page 1 and 2, published in a shorter version in LCD#28 last year

Yo La Tengo - Rhino Records, Westwood, California, August 30, 1990

Yo La Tengo murdered the classics one more time for WFMU this past weekend, nobly attempting listener requested songs that ranged from Neil Young to Yung Wu. Even if you missed this year, you should definitely go donate some $$$ to WFMU during their ongoing annual fundraising marathon. Where would we be without freeform radio? In a much worse place, if you can even believe it.

As is tradition, YLT's covers set is unarchived on the WFMU archive — if you didn't tune in, you were tuned out! But you can check out a casually brilliant covers-heavy afternoon set from 36 years ago, featuring such rarely played numbers as Volcano Suns' "Balancing Act" and Freddy Cannon's "Palisades Park." In the wake of Fakebook, Yo La was on a cross-country opening for the Sundays, but they snuck out on their own to the late/great Rhino Records in Westwood to play for the faithful — cool to hear guitarist Kevin Salem here, who was briefly in the fold. Since it’s the Fakebook era, things tend towards the mellow side, but the trio does crank things up for "Drug Test" and a closing roller coaster ride through "You're Gonna Miss Me" featuring a Rhino clerk on free jazz sax.

Here's a snippet from a review of the Sundays LA gig ...

Steve Hochman: The Hoboken, N.J., quartet (the name is Spanish for “I’ve got it”) pretty much kept to the neo-Post-Modern-folk-rocky approach of its recent Fakebook album, a pop-obscurities jukebox composed mostly of songs originally done by the likes of Cat Stevens and Peter Stampfel. But the Tengos winningly broke the mold for a rave-up set-closer of Roky Erickson’s Texas acid-rock classic “You’re Gonna Miss Me.”

4/3/26.

Bullseye's S/T debut LP on ever/never has been popping up on my follower's purchase feed a lot lately and for good reason. This is rock n' roll that asks us to, according to the Bandcamp notes, "imagine if Gene Clark never made it to L.A.  Instead, he held it together in the Midwest and made beer-sipping music for a bunch of ham-and-eggers who don’t know they’re about to hit the skids as the belt begins to rust. Bullseye conjures such a reality."

Bullseye is a New York band whose two prior Bandcamp offerings trend closer to Guided By Voices than Gene Clark/The Byrds. In fact, we get a clear idea of the band's evolution through listening to an early, under-a-minute version of "Dangers Of The Heart".