Yo La Tengo Hanukkah @ Maxwell's 12/22/2011 (via TheRealYLT)

The Lee Ranaldo Band and comedian Ted Alexandro opened the third night of Hanukkah for Yo La Tengo at Maxwell's. Lee, Steve Shelley, and Alan Licht, who is also in Lee's band, joined Yo La Tengo for a number of songs in the latter half of their set, including a cover of Sonic Youth's "Mote," which Lee sings lead on. In the encore, Yo La Tengo covered John Cale's "Andalucia" and Barry Manilow's "Mandy," the latter of which they were joined by John Cameron Mitchell on vocals. Check out the full setlist via Frank & Earthy below.

Who will open the fourth show tonight? Spent reunited for the second night. The setlist from that show is below too. We posted the first night's setlist HERE.

Speaking of Lee Ranaldo, he's working on his solo album called Between The Times & The Tides, which will be out March 20 via Matador. As mentioned, his live band includes Alan Licht, Irwin Menken, and SY bandmate Steve Shelley. All three members contribute to the album in addition to Sonic Youth collaborator Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline, John Medeski, Bob Bert (who drummed in SY before Steve Shelley joined, and was also in Pussy Galore who are rumored to be opening one of the YLT shows), Lee's wife and longtime collaborator Leah Singer, and Kathy Leisen. The album was produced by Lee Ranaldo and John Agnello, who produced Sonic Youth's most recent album, The Eternal. According to Sonic Youth's site, he is planning a 2012 tour. Lee spoke to Rolling Stone about the new album:

It's eight songs with a full band and two songs with pretty much acoustic guitar only. I've always been an acoustic guitar player and I've pretty much continued to play acoustic guitar throughout all of the Sonic Youth periods. My material for Sonic Youth often started on acoustic guitar. What was refreshing about this was just to see all these songs sprout and actually kind of follow each other down this road and actually get completed. I've got millions of tapes of half-completed songs and for some reason, at this point, I had the energy to take them all the way through to the end.

I'm feeling optimistic about the future no matter what happens at this point. I mean, every band runs its course. We've been together way longer than any of us ever imagined would happen and it's been for the most part an incredibly pleasurable ride. There's still a lot of stuff we're going to continue to do. There's tons and tons of archival projects and things like that that are still going on, so there are so many ways in which we are tied to each other for the future both musically and in other ways. I'm just happy right now to let the future take its course and I guess I'm kind of thankful that I've got this other project that kind of came about on its own. It wasn't kind of like, well, "Oh the band is ending for a while and I've got to figure out what to do." It kind of naturally happened in the course of things so that was a nice way for that to come about. I played my first show the day after Kim and Thurston announced [their separation.] That was completely weird.

Continue reading "Matador-signed Lee Ranaldo opened for Yo La Tengo on night 3 (Pussy Galore opening another?)"

This fall, [Hedwig and the Angry Inch is] returning to New York to make her Broadway debut.

John Cameron Mitchell, who wrote the musical with composer and lyricist Stephen Trask, will reprise the role he created so memorably 12 years ago at the gloriously rundown Jane Street Theatre in the West Village.

"Hedwig is ageless," says Mitchell. "But I'm almost 47, which means I'm at the gym every day, trying to get my old body back, my paunch down and my stamina up.

"I haven't acted since I did the movie," he adds. "The role is so hard and so challenging that it made me give up acting and concentrate on writing and directing. It's like Hamlet. Except that Hamlet doesn't have to sing 15 great songs. In a dress." [NY Post]

What makes an album great? And perhaps even more critical for this list, what makes a great album gay? To create our list of the 100 Greatest, Gayest Albums of All Time, we polled more than 100 actors, comedians, musicians, writers, critics, performance artists, label reps, and DJs, asking each to list the 10 most important albums of their lives. After receiving responses from Boy George, Rufus Wainwright, Cyndi Lauper, the Indigo Girls' Amy Ray, Perez Hilton, Nate Berkus, Jake Shears, Ed Droste, Nico Muhly, John Cameron Mitchell, Wilson Cruz, Junior Vasquez, Janis Ian, Lady Bunny and a slew of others, we tallied the results to determine our top-100 list. [Out]

Pitchfork also just released their list of the Best Albums of 2009.

by Andrew Frisicano

Thomas Bartlett aka Doveman

On November 1st, Doveman opened up at Mercury Lounge for The Ghost of a Sabre Toothed Tiger, a project that features Sean Lenon, his model girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl (who, as announced from the stage, had only learned to play bass a few months prior), Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda and mi-gu drummer Yuko Araki. A week prior, both bands performed at Doveman's loft CD release party for The Conformist with different lineups.

The headlining Ghost of a Sabre Toothed Tiger is a relatively new project (with no records out) that plays tightly composed psychedelic pop. They also dip into Sean Lennon's previous catalog, like for an extended Maggot Brain-esque jam on his 2006 song "Dead Meat." Drummer Araki in particular hit all the fills and accents as if the songs were familiar jazz charts. Doveman came back to guest on GOASTT's last song, "Richard Brown," a jokey tune from an unfinished musical. The whole band (minus Kemp Muhl) is touring Japan right now with Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band in support of her latest Between My Head and the Sky.

Doveman was also joined by a stellar band that included National drummer Bryan Devendorf and guest singer Martha Wainwright. Bartlett is currently on tour opening for Swell Season. He'll be playing at Joe's Pub on December 2nd as part of the Happy Ending music and reading series with Amanda Stern, Hedwig's John Cameron Mitchell and Jonathan Caouette. Tickets are on sale.

Doveman will also be returning to Mercury Lounge for an as-of-now unannounced bill on January 12th. Then he and frequent collaborator Nico Muhly will be doing two nights (of TBA) at The Kitchen on March 18th and 19th.

More pictures from Mercury Lounge and tour dates are below...

Continue reading "Doveman played a show w/ Sean Lennon & Co. (pics), playing some more (Mercury Lounge, Joe's Pub, The Kitchen)"