Drug Test

Yep, should be "leftover steak" & "Wake of the Flood". The latter is a bit out-of-character for Ira Kaplan, a fanatical record collector whose tastes run much more toward the obscure than the Dead -- check out Yo La Tengo's choice of covers on their Fakebook album to get an idea of their eclecticism. (OTOH he name-checks the band America and several of their song titles--in "Lewis" from New Wave Hot Dogs--but this seems to be more about the title "character's" musical tastes than Ira's.)

I think the chorus goes, "I wish I was high/Frightened of nothing/Smarter than nobody"... (Minor difference.)

One of the best things about this song is the ambiguous title. I'll say no more, as I feel that to over-interpret it would be to ruin it...

I spoke with Georgia once (the drummer, a shy but increasingly confident singer, and Ira's wife). She was selling T-shirts before Yo La Tengo hit the stage...i.e. while the opening act was playing. They seem like wonderfully unpretentious, very intelligent people.

Unfortunately, I didn't ask Georgia about her family's animation, because I wasn't yet hip to it. Her sister Emily and her mother Faith are among the best fine-art animators in America. Georgia contributes quite a bit, usually painting backgrounds (the cover of Fakebook could easily have been one). YLT have done soundtracks for at least one of the films.

Check out the DVDs The Hubley Collection Vols. 1 and 2, if you're interested. Georgia (as a little girl) is a character in a couple of them, most notably the Oscar-nominated "Windy Day". Their parents must have allowed the girls to ad-lib, as the dialogue is much too truly childlike (without being precious) for it to have been written down.

Are Ira and Georgia married, or have they just been together a long time? I don't know...

Song is clearly about a guy who has to take a drug test, probably for work, and isn't happy about it. He might be worried that he's not going to pass it ("I'm not ready to face that..."). Regardless, there's nothing more that he wants to do than smoke a bowl and listen to a Dead album on his headphones, but he can't today.

It's not out of character for Ira to reference the Grateful Dead. They've covered the Dead before, and Ira namechecks them often at live shows. A few years ago at a show I was at he talked at length about how excited he was that he scored Greyfolded (a weird out of print Dead album) at the local record store. McNew recently did a concert with Bill Frisell consisting of only Dead songs. Clearly they're fans of the Dead, although the reference in this song is perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek (as many of Ira's early lyrics were).

aaaah... luv this song! beautiful lyrics and smooth guitar-noise

Don't forget that rumbling bass!

Wow, this makes me wish I was high too. :(. Awesome song though. I like how it feels so honest and down to Earth. I can relate. Yo La Tengo rules!

Beautiful song

Just a couple notes:

I think the first line is "Ate a leftover steak for breakfast."

And it's "Wave of the Flood" (it's a song by the Grateful Dead.)

I think "Wake of the Flood" is correct -- it's both an album and a song by the Dead.

yeah, this song's a downer. but then again life's a downer altogether.

a downer? i don't see it that way. on the surface, it would seem to be a bummer, this accurate evocation of the feeling we've all had: "everything sucks today...might as well get myself fucked up." but all this is redeemed by its hilarity (especially the title)