The Pitchfork Music Festival is starting to roll out the acts playing Chicago’s Union Park July 17-19, with the slate for Friday night—where bands will play setlists chosen by ticket buyers—being announced. The lineup is loaded with indie’s elders: Built to Spill, Yo La Tengo, Tortoise (wait, who knows names of Tortoise songs?) and the reunited Jesus Lizard. Built to Spill and Yo La Tengo are obvious big names for the Pitchfork set, and Tortoise can likely coast on Millions Now Living Will Never Die But what of the Jesus Lizard? I recognize that they’re hometown boys, but outside of the possibility of getting reacquainted with lead singer David Yow’s genitals, are they that big of a deal?

Sure, Michael Azerrad wrote about the band, they recorded for Touch and Go, and they put on an electrifying show (or at least they used to). But I’m not sure their catalog backs up the semi-legendary status that inclusion to that Friday night lineup implies; hearing how great the band was in nearly every “college rock” publication for awhile in the ’90s didn’t really help convince me. Is the Jesus Lizard one of those bands we’ve all just convinced ourselves we like?

Two videos from the band’s glory days:

“Nub”:

“Puss”:

Reunited Jesus Lizard to open Pitchfork festival with set list handpicked by fans [Turn It Up/Chicago Tribune]

While the contents of the Juno soundtrack have probably made little difference to most Idolator readers’ lives (unless you didn’t know about the Moldy Peaches and, honest to blog, cried when you finally heard “Anybody Else But You”), there are at least three people who might be upgrading their furniture if director Jason Reitman had stuck with his original plans for the flick’s musical motif. “We started to realize there was this rebirth of lo-fi music that had the same energy as punk music, but nowhere as angry. The first band we discovered was Yo La Tengo and so I started to think that was the sound of the film.” Then Diablo Cody stormed in the room and went “blah blah I used to be a stripper and this isn’t sticky edgy sweet enough blah blah listen to this song on my Oh My iPod (get it?) it’s the biggity bomb!” Or rather Ellen Page downloaded “Anybody Else But You” for Reitman when he asked her what Juno would listen to. But it’s fun to pretend.

It’s also fun to imagine how the movie would have been if Georgia and Ira were crooning throughout the film instead of Kimya and Adam, and this clip reel set to Jacob Ruefer’s cover of “You Can Have It All” gives you an idea of how it would have been. (Yo La Tengo’s version did earn a place on the Juno B-sides comp.) (Also, isn’t it weird how much Ruefer sounds like YLT bassist James McNew?)

So would Reitman’s original plan have earned Yo La Tengo a gold album and the chance to perform on Sesame Street? Or would songs like “Sugarcube” and “The Summer” have failed to hit the same nerve as Kimya’s ultra-twee sensitivity?

JUNO – You Can Have It All (Cover) [YouTube]
Jason Reitman [KCRW via The Playlist]

Three and a half hours until the Mets season opener featuring new hope-of-the-franchise Johan Santana! Download your “Meet The Mets” MP3s (the original and Yo La Tengo’s cover) now! [extrawack! / mets.com]

Famed Met Ed Kranepool sits down with Ira Kaplan to discuss the genesis of Yo La Tengo’s name in what I am very fervently hoping is the first of many baseball-centric “Kaplan’s Korner” segments to be streamed from yolatengo.com, especially since I’m more than a touch worried that I’m not going to have much else to cheer about, Mets-wise, this coming season. (Sigh.) (Also: In keeping with our Internet digging for old TV, I just spent the last half hour looking for Kiner’s Korner clips on YouTube and Google Video, only to come up empty-handed. Boooooo!) [yolatengo.com via Metsblog]