WorldbyStorm, sorry you missed it, hope you have a good excuse.

Mark P, Cork? Never heard of it. Is that in the southside? I know there’s a Cork Road out by the Red Cow, is Pluggd out there somewhere?

I like Yo La Tengo: they have the quantity and variety to match the quality of their music and even with so much stuff are worth listening to over and over again. Their music provides a flavour of every kind of high end rock indie, soft electronica that you’d ever want to listen to without seeming to self-consciously adopt styles etc. Your description of the rather casual way they have with their own songs is definitely one of their better qualities. There’s no hype or pomp or daring to be cutting edge. Simple songs mean as much to them as carefully arranged and crafted clever pop-songs, and with so much recorded material they have plenty of both.

That said, the only album of theirs that I’ve listened to a lot is Summer Sun, which was a very pleasant piece of work. The two tracks from Popular Songs I’ve listened to are great though and now, of course, I’m going to have to go out and get the rest of them (don’t know why I’m telling you all this).

Last time I saw them though was when they were touring Summer Sun, it was a long, varied, jocular, romping good fun gig in the Olympia. The next day I was in Dublin Airport waiting for a flight out to Iceland, but the flight was delayed. I remember noticing the three members of the band coming in the waiting area, recognizing them from the night before. They acted together like a small gang of college kids romping around campus between lectures, excited and chatty in a kind of jumpy way. After all those years they seemed to still enjoy each others company. Weird.

Mind you, that might have been just how I saw them at the time. I’d already been waiting for a couple of hours. They breezed in, and breezed out almost as quickly I thought, as their flight was on time. I had to wait many many more hours, eventually getting on the plane 9 hours later at midnight, pretty drunk from drinks bought with the complimentary vouchers provided by the apologetic airline, desperate for a seat, fighting against other passengers as we ran down the gangway to what we imagined was a Ryanair sized plane, (having been told that seats weren’t allocated it seemed we were all eager to avoid being stuck near the toilets at back) only to find ourselves rushing through the door and, slightly embarrassed, falling into a jumbo jet.