Letters To Cleo set reunion shows for December

Letters to Cleo, circa 1993 

This past Saturday night, you could've caught Lou Barlow and J. Mascis reuniting for a set of Dinosaur Jr. songs at the Orpheum . . . or you could've caught half of Letters to Cleo backing Miley Cyrus at the MGM Grand. Call it fate. But given that Stacy Jones and Kay Hanley have found themselves in the world's most successful touring band -- and that said band is really, when you think about it, not a hell of a far cry from what they were doing in Letters to Cleo -- we'd say the time is about right for a LTC reunion. Consider this when tickets go on-sale for the Cleos reunion shows, because you're now competing for seats with Hannah Montana superfans. A New York date is in the works, but the band has already confirmed a November 8 show at the Roxy in LA, to be followed by shows December 8 and 9 at the Paradise in Boston. 

VIDEO: Behind the scenes of the Hannah Montana tour with Stacy Jones 

"The funniest thing about running our Myspace page is that the majority of our 'friends' were in preschool for the band's heyday," said Hanley's hubby, LTC guitarist Michael Eisenstein, in the press release announcing the band's reunion. "We played maybe 10 shows or so between the release of 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU and the breakup of the band, but that film has been a DVD/cable sleeper. There are tons of kids out there who think 'I Want You To Want Me' is our song!  Most of them have no idea that we broke up nearly ten years ago."

They also think the Cleos verison of the Cars' "Dangerous Type" might be about Hermione, which is pretty fucking awesome:

Yikes. But also totally wow. Thank Hanley for keeping the LTC fanbase young: during the Cleos downtime she's been gunning for your children, as the lead voice in the Babyface-produced Josie and the Pussycats and in the super-underrated punk-pop cartoon Generation O (who will always occupy a warm place in our heart for the Green Day-ish kiddie romp about bedwetting, "Damp Sheets"), not to mention a succession of young-adult songwriting gigs. (If your kids watch Disney Channel, you can hear her singing the bubblegum-reggae theme song to the latest incarnation of Tigger & Pooh.) She also, ahem, did a bit of writing for us -- profiling Adriana Huffington, interviewing Gary Cherone, and recounting her relationship with the fictional literary cipher JT Leroy.

• Not your mom, she's an effing A-bomb: Kay Hanley, solo, at T.T.'s [2006] 
• No More Letters: The Cleos close out a Boston era [2000] 
• Best Music Poll: Local Act, Female Vocalist, Local Album, Local Song [1998] 
• Go-ing places: Letters to Cleo's new attractions. [1997]