BY ANNA ZALOKOSTAS

In print | March 27, 2008

Though both low, hushed murmurs in McCabe and overtly loud, leaning-across-the-table-type mouth-stretching bellows in Sharples have been passing the name “Yo La Tengo” between chattering lips for a while, it was only this week that the Large-Scale Event Committee officially announced that the highly prolific, greatly respected, critically acclaimed and universally loved New Jersey based indie rock band would be headlining this year’s Worthstock.

Though Worthstock is, for this year only, going to feature a total of five musical acts in addition to the winner of Swarthmore’s Battle of the Bands, the only other group that has been confirmed thus far is Blue Method.

Since the announcement was made public, students who are familiar with Yo La Tengo’s work and reputation in the music sphere have responded with nothing short of effusive enthusiasm. “I am so excited about Yo La Tengo coming,” Dan Symonds ‘11 said. "They’re the greatest live performance I’ve ever seen. [When] I saw them play at Prospect Park, they played uninterrupted for three hours straight without making a single mistake."

“They’re truly incredible musicians,” Symonds added. “Their sound is so distinct - the melodies are good, the production is excellent, they have a very clever use of electronics and noise and the composition [of their songs] is great. I think [Yo La Tengo] is perfect for Worthstock because, like I said, they put on the best performance I’ve ever seen, and they play a lot of really good covers - they reinterpret songs and do something interesting with them to make them their own. I think that even people who don’t normally like Yo La Tengo will be surprised by how good they are live.”

According to LSE committee member Stephanie Sampedro ‘09, the committee chose to book Yo La Tengo was part of an effort to throw a more rock-oriented spring event in order to balance out last semester’s hip-hop centered event: “We had looked at a variety of different groups that play a variety of different types of music, but after having had a hip-hop act in the fall, we decided to balance things out by looking into a more indie rock group for our headliner. We had thrown around a number of ideas before finally bringing up Yo La Tengo, an oldie but a goodie, for our headliner.”

Blue Method was chosen to play at Worthstock, according to LSE committee chair Emily Sun ’09, because of how successful they have been at Swarthmore in the past.

“Students have really liked them when they’ve played here before, so we decided to bring them back again,” Sun said.

“Not everyone, I suppose, will be happy with [these choices],” Sampedro added, “but we did our best to satisfy the many musical tastes at Swat with both LSEs this year. Not all of the groups we have planned for Worthstock are similar to Yo La Tengo, so we’re confident that every Swattie will find something they enjoy.”

Though the remaining three groups have not yet been announced, the committee has already decided upon who they would like to bring to join Yo La Tengo and Blue Method. “We already know who we want,” Sun said, “We’re currently in negotiations [with the other three bands] trying to make the offers work out.” Sun added that students should expect the other three musical acts to be, relatively, much smaller, but that they were chosen with the goal of putting together a musically diverse lineup in mind.

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