I have no idea if I ever played Yo at the college radio station. Their album Once in a Blue Room was released in 1986, a couple years before I made it to our perch at the left end of the dial. The “Y” section of the station’s C-stacks, home of the more obscure material, were tricky to get to, basically requiring a junior contortion act from the DJ to fit into the roughly foot-wide space between the record shelves and the concrete bunker that the turntables sat upon. The problem was even more dramatic with the “M” section a shelve above, which sometimes dissuaded me from playing Mental As Anything. Daunting or not, I did need to head to the C-Stack Vs occasionally as that’s where Yaz and Yo La tengo lived. Certainly reaching for the latter band, I might have noticed the record that was filed directly in front of it.

Then again, it’s entirely possible we didn’t even have any music from Yo. The band was based in San Francisco, and they don’t seem to have made any impact at all outside of their home area. The station received a fair number of ultra-independent releases, but it was all dependent on the whim (and probably stamp budget) of the various bands shipping them out. As a relatively small student-run station in the middle of central Wisconsin, we were hardly a priority station for most dreaming planting their foot on that initial steeping stone known as CMJ chart glory.

The thing is: I should have played it. This is exactly the sort of track I routinely flipped over in college. Its got a clean, sturdy song structure with just a little bit of that heartland feel that I usually think of as purely Midwestern, but probably had its true epicenter in Athens, Georgia. There are keening vocals and plainspoken lyrics tinged with regret that stems from self-recrimination. It couldn’t have been better suited to the late teen me if some revolutionary form of musical genetic engineering had been involved. Sadly, I didn’t find it until years and years later, when it was posted on the invaluable blog Little Hits. I still remember my olden days well enough that the song still resonates in a sharply personal way, which may or may not be a good thing. I’ll definitely take it, though, during the two-and-a-half minutes the song is playing.

Listen or download –> Yo, “I Meant to Tell You”

(Disclaimer: I can barely find any mention of the band, album or song online, much less a means to purchase it in a way that will provide due compensation to the artist. Try asking your favorite local record store proprietor to procure it for you, and, no matter how skilled and astute that individual is, you’ll probably wind up with a Yo La Tengo album. If that’s the case, you’ve won anyway. Don’t ask any questions. Just buy it and walk away. What I’m trying to type is that I’m sharing this song with the understanding that doing so deprives no one of compensation, thwarts no fiscal transactions of currency for art. I’ll still take it down if asked to do so by a party that has due authority to make such a request.)