Yo La Tengo is one of my favourite bands of all time. I love the way they combine psychedelic drones, squalls, pretty melodies and doo wop backing vocals. The latest record Summer Sun is uncompromisingly mellow – the tracks melting together into one long mood piece. Some think of it as musical wallpaper but if that’s the case then YLT is the most exotic wallpaper I’ve ever heard. In the last year they’ve also released a magnificent EP Nuclear War plus two more discs available on the band’s own Egon label – the marine biology instrumental cinemascape The Sounds of the Sounds of Science and the seasonal Merry Christmas From… single. The Hoboken, New Jersey trio consists of husband/ wife team guitarist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley and relationship gooseberry bassist James McNew. As a line-up it’s not a bad premise for a sit-com.

There are three members in the band and Ira and Georgia are partners. Do you ever feel like a spare cake at a wedding?
I have no idea what you just said but I think I know what you mean. What was that expression ‘a spare cake at a wedding?’ No, not really. We’re really good friends and known each other for a really long time now. It certainly makes organisation a lot easier. I also get my own room and that’s good.

What happens when there’s a band argument and you’re casting the deciding vote – do you feel the pressure?
It’s rare that that happens. Communication is very open and that’s important.

One of the inspired things you’ve released recently is the cover of Sun Ra’s ‘Nuclear War’ that includes the accompaniment of children singing in a Sesame Street style ‘it’s a motherfucker/don’t you know’. Can you tell us about how that session was conducted?
Ira came up with the idea and I didn’t know if anybody would go along with it. But once a few friends started committing their kids to the project I was ready to go. I can’t remember the exact date of recording but it was a holiday and so all these kids were off from school. It took a little bit of persuading and stating our case. It wasn’t so much our friends who were the focus of concern but it was more our friend’s parents and how they would respond with hearing their grandchildren doing something like this because the parents seemed pretty interested in it. The kids had a really good time and I’m sure not all of them really knew what was going on. But it was insane, incredible fun. It was fifteen kids crammed in the control room in a recording studio and us cueing them as to when to sing along with the track. I can’t say I’ve ever done anything like that before – it was incredible.

It’s a protest song that’s come out in very conservative times – what’s been the reaction to the song?
It’s been pretty great. We played it in Paris a couple of nights ago and it was very well received there which I took as a tremendous compliment. It’s nice that we can go to Paris, or Germany or anywhere really as Americans and have the French or Germans realise that not all Americans are in line with what America is doing these days. It’s heartening that people are very understanding of that.

What about at home in the United States?
I would say it’s also very good. The kind of people who come to see our band for the most part are people who didn’t vote for this administration in the first place and certainly don’t support it’s efforts now. It’s difficult – it’s a weird, uncomfortable time.

The reason I ask is because here we’re not getting too many news reports from America of people protesting or having a different view.
God, I haven’t been around in the last few months but before the war in Iraq began there was tremendous opposition to it. There were marches of millions of people in New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Chicago and all over the whole country. I just don’t know what to believe anymore. Every report on the marches gave a lower and lower amount of people who were actually at them. I don’t know where to get my information anymore. I’ll just stay with the Simpsons I guess – I’ll get all my news from that show.

So what about your stance about Israel and Palestine?
Oh, I don’t know. (Long pause) I’d be happy if people could just talk to each other. I’m in favour of that.

Are the lines, for you, a little more blurred in that particular conflict?
Yeah, you know, I’m not really sure how much accurate coverage we get of that either. There’s a lot of partisan delivery of different stories and that’s another really horrible situation. It just makes me really sad to think about it.

With releasing a record like ‘Nuclear War’ in the current conservative climate I’m sure you’re getting a lot of questions along these lines?
Yes, it’s odd. It’s odd for entertainers to field political questions.

Back in 1996 you did a Coca-Cola ad. The story goes they approached you for a particular song but you refused to license that and did a special one off piece.
That’s true. They wanted a song from the May I Sing With Me record that we made in 1992 and we weren’t willing to give that up so we volunteered to write something for them which they shockingly agreed to.

So they wanted ‘Mushroom Cloud of Hiss’ did they?
(Laughs) I wish. I think that song really sums up the refreshing quality of their product. And they really wanted all eleven minutes of it. It really would’ve been unprecedented. That would’ve been nice. I think I would’ve given them that. If they wanted to run the eleven minute ad in its entirety we could’ve been swayed.

So which track did they ask for?
‘Detouring America with Horns’ and we said no.

It’s interesting that you didn’t want to give up the song but you still did music for Coke anyway.
I don’t really believe in it. To me it just ruins songs but that’s just my personal opinion. I mean in one way TV ads are like the AM radio of now and anybody can have a hit song on a commercial now it seems like. You certainly can’t have a hit song on the radio but if a crazy guy at an advertising agency wants to license your song for a car commercial then all of a sudden 50 billion people will have the chance to listen to it. For example right now in the States 50 billion people can hear the first twenty seconds of ‘Heroin’ by the Velvet Underground in a Nissan commercial so go figure. To me that’s awful, there’s something really horrible about that. This amazing, completely, wilfully uncommercial record and this absolutely life changing band and moment of music is now selling some stupid car. To me that ruins the spirit of what it is and what it means. It makes you think it doesn’t mean as much to the people who did it as the people who love it and listen to it. But then again I think if Moe Tucker gets money from it I don’t feel too bad about that either. So I don’t know it’s complicated.

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©2003 Christopher Hollow