Yo La Tengo's Hanukkah Playlist

1. Hanukkah 2001: NRBQ – Dig

I think I first heard this played by NRBQ, but the second time I heard it would have been in Female Trouble, John Waters’ movie – he used Nervous Norvus’ version on the soundtrack. Anyway, it was a real thrill to have Terry Adams sitting in after so many years of being devoted to his band. That was the first night of the first series of Hannukah shows, and he played the whole set with us. He probably wasn’t familiar with our band… well, we’d covered his song Magnet for a tribute album, so he knew us that way, but I’m sure he did not know of our music.

2. Hanukkah 2002: Karen Kilgariff – Chelsea Guitars

Chelsea Guitars is this store in New York. When Karen was here for Hannukah, she did stand-up one night, and another night she did this show with Mary Lynn Rajskub as The Girls Guitar Club Of Greater Los Angeles. And then the two of them joined us – they sang Walk Like An Egyptian. But we saw her at another show in New York, and she did this song about going to buy a guitar, and how uncomfortable an experience that was: just dealing with the attitude of that guitar shop.

3. Hanukkah 2004: Chris Stamey – The Summer Sun

[K Records founder] Calvin Johnson came and did an opening set, then it was his idea to sing The Summer Sun with us, and we were all for it – I love that song. Alex Chilton produced it, and in some ways, you could argue that’s his greatest record after Big Star. It was made as he was running away from that way of playing music – he’s not running very fast on that record.

4. Hanukkah 2005: The Move – Don't Make My Baby Blue

That was pretty amazing. We knew Terry Adams a little bit, and Calvin, but we do ask lots of strangers who we musically admire. David Johansen was one of them. The first song I wrote down was After The Fox, from the movie where Peter Sellars and The Hollies perform the theme song. He was really amenable to all of our suggestions with the exception of Don’t Make My Baby Blue by The Move. It was cool; he said there was something about the song that he didn’t respond to.

5. Hanukkah 2007: The Clean – Back in the Day

The Clean are one of my favourite bands. We met them in 1989, and played with them at the last show of tour in this pub in London. We’ve stayed in contact ever since. We’ve all played with them at one time or another – Georgia [Hubley, YLT drummer] played guitar on their most recent album – so it was a big deal when they were able to play one of our shows. They were wearing wigs, and one of the features of Maxwell’s is the very low stage, so if it’s crowded the sightlines are far from perfect. Between the tricky sightlines and the wigs, you weren’t quite sure who was up there.

6. Hanukkah 2008: Willie Alexander – Walk Away Renee

Willie is a friend of a friend, and we love him. I don’t think he performs extensively, but we asked him about doing Walk Away Renee, which he did on a compilation record. He was really uncomfortable doing it, but he said he’d give it a try. So he came to Hoboken, and we tried it in soundcheck. We also did Maybe More Than You by his 60s band The Lost. It was great! We didn’t do any post-Lou Velvets songs though – you know, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard them.

7. Hanukkah 2010: J. Geils Band – Pack Fair and Square

A conscious curveball. A friend of ours in Boston had an inkling that if we approached Peter Wolf, he might say yes. That was probably more meaningful to me than it was to the other members of the band – in the early days of the J Geils Band I was a pretty big fan. Peter definitely wanted us to perform in crack showbiz style, following him as he signalled for cymbal smashes and James Brown moves… but it was fun! We followed him by bringing my mom on stage.  I think our notion of pacing the show was slightly at odds with his.

8. Hanukkah 2011: The Glands – Lovetown

The Glands only made two records – their second is just a masterpiece. I’ve never met anyone who’s heard it and didn’t fall in love with it. We saw them when we were in Nashville recording and we loved their set. In 2011 we heard that they were back together and coming to New York to play, and they wanted to know if we could do something. So we struck a deal that our alter-ego Condo Fucks would play some shows with them – we drove a hard bargain. But I can’t recommend that record enough.

9. Hanukkah 2012: Man Forever with So Percussion – The Clear Realization

Oneida had done a show with us a few years earlier, and then Kid Millions started his Man Forever group. James [McNew, YLT bassist] ended up doing a lot of the shows with them, so Kid was in the forefront of our minds. We invited him to come play drums with us one night, so we set up two drum sets on stage, and he played probably the whole set. And then when Fade came out we went on the Jimmy Fallon show with Kid and Fred Armisen, so we had three drummers. But Man Forever is amazing! It sounds very organic; just a lot of rhythms bouncing off each other. It’s beautiful.

10. The Qualities – It's Christmas Time

Heh, I promised I’d pick a Christmas song. One year we did a three-song Christmas EP that we pressed up and gave out to people who came to the show. This is from the Sun Ra singles collection. The Sun Ra Arkestra in its current, magnificent form has played this… maybe three times…? We’ve yet to hear them do it. But the songs we did on the EP were more novelty with the exception of that one.