The Real Mr. Tough
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007Yo La Tengo w/ The Rosebuds @ Starr Hill
Since the opening of Satellite Ballroom and the renaissance of Starr Hill, Charlottesville music lovers have been a little bit spoiled. Big acts come to town with alarming regularity now, and it seems like we all take it for granted. That big Peaches show? Oh, I’ll just get tickets the day or two before. Of Montreal? Again? It’s easy to forget that just a few years ago there was a huge drought of shows here, with poor students forced to drive two hours to DC to see any band big enough to not fit in the basement of Tokyo Rose. It’s easy to remind yourself, missing a show, that someone else will be here within a few weeks, and you’ll probably want to see them more anyway, and man, that bank account sure is suffering right now.
But Yo La Tengo is different. Yo La Tengo is special.
The seminal indie-rock band has been here before, but not in almost seven years. That means Clinton was still president, the dot-com market hadn’t yet crashed, and I was still a senior in high school: in other words, it was ages ago. Last Thursday night, they returned to a sold-out crowd, a packed upper room at Starr Hill, and plenty of resentment from those who weren’t able to get tickets.