As we were in Bruxelles I wanted to pay a visit to the city's most legendary music venue the Ancienne Belgique to see just how good it was.
Well, the venue didn't let us down at all, the fact we didn't need the free tube tickets that came with the gig tickets is beside the point, it's a cool idea. The fact that the cloakroom is a locker room that charges only 1 euro for a locker big enough for both of our coats and jumpers is also very good indeed. Then there's the great selection of Belgian beers for the same money I often get served industrial slop for in London. Another cool and very persuasive reason for enjoying a night out in Bruxelles.
The main hall itself is a great high ceilinged room that holds about 2000+ with some seats upstairs and throughout this show it had near as dammit perfect sound. You could hear everything being played perfectly. I'd love to see a great performance here, but unfortunately this show wasn't one of those.
Apparently after 25 plus years of playing Bruxelles this is YO LA TENGO'S largest ever crowd in the city, what a pity they played what in a short review is best described as the most boring show I've been to in the last 25 years!!!
It's a good 20 years since I last saw them play and I now remember why I never went back to them, only being persuaded this time by Ira Kaplan's pretty impressive turn as part of the Big Star Third concert at the Barbican.
Rather than sensibly having a support act, the band are instead playing two sets, one quiet and one a little bit louder one. They opened with Ohm which sounded okay and the lyrics about sometimes good guys lose were pretty good; the only worry being the funereal pace it was being played at by the three of them.
When they all swapped to different instruments for Two Trains and yet played at exactly the same pace and sounded exactly the same I started to get worried: a well-founded worry as it turned out, because for the rest of the quiet acoustic set everything was at the same pace and very quickly became intensely boring.
Nothing raised the pace much above torpor and I was wondering how the posters for the show could even remotely claim they are one of America's greatest guitar bands. Not even close, I'm afraid.
After the break (during which we considered leaving to do something less boring instead, but eventually opted to move further away from the stage) they came back and went more electric but maintained the exact same slow as all hell pace with both Georgia and James managing to look bored out of their minds no matter if they played drums keyboards, bass or guitar with the same blank expressions.
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I think it was on Let's Save Tony Orlando's House that Ira finally showed a bit of life and played a good guitar solo against the bored as all hell backing of the other two. It was a bit of light relief but not much, the show just seemed to dawdle on for ever and then they managed to play Ohm again for a second time as if they didn't have enough songs to play. The electric arrangement was too similar to the acoustic take to justify it.
But then things were sliding down hill at a very slow pace as they closed the set with Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind. That went on for what seemed like days as Georgia and James played the same repeating very simple phrase ad infinitum while Ira let loose a monster of a solo that with a more interactive backing band would have been incredible. In this setting, however, it was baffling how it jarred against the studied ennui of the other two.
Somehow out of the kindness of the Belgian crowd's heart they got pulled back for an encore and after a few "thank you's" Ira announced it was the tour manager's birthday and they had a special song for him before doing a pretty much acapella bastardization of Michael Jackson's Ben, only changing it to Joe. This was pretty much the final straw for me. It was aural excrement - truly awful, couldn't they find a decent song with Joe in the title? I can think of several. If Dead Joe and Nosey Joe might not have been appropriate, they would at least have been preferable.
The rest of the encore was a ragged as all hell version of The Rascals' Come On Up which was the fastest song they played all night. Sadly, it didn't last as they slowed back down to finish with a cover of Anita Bryant's My Little Corner Of The World which was OK but coming at the end of an endurance test like this was too little and far too late.
I hope I never have to suffer seeing Yo La Tengo live again. I would however love to go back to see someone great playing in the Ancienne Belgique. What a cracking venue.
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