"Legendary New London, Conn., trio the Condo Fucks returned to the stage last March after a long absence ..."

To those of us who have covered Connecticut's local rock scene for decades and never heard of the Condo Fucks, those words were already suspect, but the release went on to say that the Condo Fucks had "released four titles on the Matador label" and even mentioned song titles like "Let's Get Rid of New Haven." Then there was an out-of-place reference to Matador labelmates Yo La Tengo, a Hoboken band whose sound and attitude seem worlds away from the stripped-down fuzzy punk ferocity of the Condo Fucks.

Google revealed that the bands were one and the same. Local rock archivists can stop lamenting that perhaps they spent too much time following the Gravel Pit and the Swansons in '91 and somehow missed a band that got signed to such an important indie label.

Phew! So fuck Condo Fucks for fucking with Connecticut local band history. But what's this? They're doing interviews? Yeah, OK. Why not?

I've done straight-faced interviews with Barney the Dinosaur and Dame Edna. When Kid Condo, aka Yo La Tengo guitarist Ira Kaplan, gets on the phone, I'm prepared to go either way: winking acquiescence to the scam or no-nonsense chat. "How cagey are you being about this?" I begin.

"Not at all," he responds. "Our photos are on the album cover. We talk about it on our Web site." Matador's publicists seem to be the only ones having fun with the fake-band concept.

But Condo Fucks have a history. They're one of several bands promoted in a phony Matador catalogue included in copies of Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. And Yo La Tengo has played live under that name.

A Brooklyn club, Magnetic Field, was closing in March 2008. Ira Kaplan was playing a sayonara show there as a member of the A-Bones and they needed an opening act. So he and his better-known band's bandmates Georgia Hubley and James McNew huddled and assumed the mythical Condo Fucks monicker and quickly learned a bunch of covers. They thought enough of it to make a recording: Fuckbook (to be released March 24), a play on Yo La Tengo's revered 1990 album Fakebook, which covers Daniel Johnston, NRBQ and the Flamin' Groovies, among others.

By contrast, Condo Fucks stick to walloping punk-friendly rock tunes like "What'cha Gonna Do About It," "Shut Down" (both parts!) and the Troggs' "With a Girl Like You." I start expounding on the appropriateness of including Slade's "Gudbuy to Jane."

"Am I reading too much into that?" I ask.

"Probably," Kaplan says. They chose the tune because they could play it and because the "goodbye" theme fit the occasion of the club's closing.

A lot of bands do Condo Fucks–like projects to "get back to their roots" but Yo La Tengo never had those roots. Kaplan admits that he never played in a punk band.

At the time when Condo Fucks allegedly ruled New London, Yo La Tengo was visiting New Haven (where Georgia Hubley's mother, famed animator Faith Hubley, taught at Yale) regularly doing both abrasive art-rock and soulful acoustic stints at the Moon Café.

These days Yo La Tengo is loud and limber but still cerebral and focused. With Yo La Tengo in such fine form, Kaplan's right to downplay the importance of its one-off three-chord side project: "We did one live show, a year ago, and the album was recorded before that." That's where the Condo Fucks legend lies for now, though Kaplan says the band nearly reunited for Yo La Tengo's annual Hanukkah shows at Maxwell's in Hoboken, and could conceivably be called into service for a benefit or special event.

Yo La Tengo is in a Nashville studio recording an album which could be released later this year. Enjoy their youthful indiscretion while you can; the lease on the Condos will soon be up.

E-mail editor@hartfordadvocate.com