how strange it is
I spoke With Jeff Mangum and Julian Koster tonight.
But more on that later. First, the show.
I didn’t think I was going to this until the very last minute. Tickets sold out in about 30 seconds (that’s not hyperbole). I scoured Craigslist for potential second hand tickets, but the prices were too high, and the theatre’s ID policy seemed strict. However, on Wednesday afternoon more tickets were released online. And I went.
The Music Tapes opened up, as they have been for most of the recent shows. The front man of the band is Julian Koster, the singing saw player for Neutral Milk Hotel. As much as I like their music, I think I like his stories even more, and luckily he told some at the show. One was about a Romanian circus group that could produce entire cities out of their mouths. And then another about aliens obtaining information about Earth’s culture via the television. In addition, there was a seven foot tall metronome that hovered over the stage for the entire show. Between songs and stories, Julian talked about how excited he was to be “on another adventure with Jeff,” and dedicated a song to Athens, GA. I think a lot of people may have been put off by the extremely eclectic nature of the performance, but I thought it was great.
After a brief break, Jeff took the stage. He changed up the song ordering from previous shows (at least that I saw), starting with “Two Headed Boy Pt. 2.” Here’s the entire setlist:
- Two Headed Boy Pt 2
- Holland, 1945
- Song Against Sex
- Engine
- Little Birds
- King of Carrot Flowers Pt 1
- King of Carrot Flowers Pts 2 & 3
- Ghost
- Naomi
- Oh Comely
- Two Headed Boy
- The Fool
- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Encore)
- Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone (Second Encore)
As usual, Jeff told people to sing along, saying something like “If you sing along at home, you should here too.” And then he told people they could yell at him, leading to the usual “I love you” and “Where have you been the last decade?” He ignored the former, and to the latter responded “Living my life.”
Julian came out to play the saw on “Engine” and “Aeroplane,” which was absolutely amazing and gave me eerie flashbacks to when I first heard the album, and when I first saw some of the 90s performances online, with the full band.
There were a good amount of tears flowing throughout the audience. A girl in front of me was out of control. I don’t cry very often, and when I do it’s usually not because of happiness, but more out of frustration. But when Jeff played “Little Birds,” the only post-Aeroplane release that he wrote for Matthew Shepard, I started to lose it. And then I slowly began to get it back. But then in the middle of “Oh Comely,” I lost it all over again. Don’t tell anyone.
After “Two Headed Boy,” the Music Tapes came on to play “The Fool” with Jeff. It’s not quite the same without Scott Spillane on trumpet, but it was still pretty awesome.
After the encore of “Aeroplane,” the house lights went up and the muzak began. But just like the Boston show, the crowd wouldn’t stop cheering, and forced Jeff back out on stage, as he shrugged his shoulders to say: “I guess I have to play another one.”
After the lights went up for good, there was a sense of accomplishment in the crowd. The catharsis of the past hour and a half was through, and there was nothing left to do but remember it fondly. As I wiped my face of the pure emotion that I made it go through, I made eye contact with a woman doing the exact same thing, and we shared a knowing smile and nod.
As I was leaving the theatre, I spotted Julian in the crowd, and went up to shake his hand. I told him that the show was beautiful, and I probably said some other things that I don’t even remember. He seems like a genuinely nice guy.
I was wandering the street after the show, gathering my composure, when I saw a group of people waiting in the back of the theatre. A slightly obsessive thing to do, perhaps, but I’m a slightly obsessive person, so I joined them. We quickly saw Julian driving away, and as he tried to turn the wrong way on a one-way street, I re-directed him.
Later, Jeff came out and chatted with us for a bit. He talked about the guy at the show who asked where he had been for the past decade, and he was worried that he was a dick to him, but that he really was just “living his life.” I told him that I too had been wondering where he’d been, but that he gave a good answer. He explained his no-photo policy (the ones below were taken by someone else) and offered a drawing instead, saying he didn’t want to just completely say no, but instead offer something else. I expressed the standard gratitude for his reemergence, and then he signed a piece of paper. The rest of the conversation was somewhat of an unreal blur. Maybe somebody else in that group will read this, though, and fill me in on what happened while I was too busy asking myself if all of this really happened.
But it definitely did:
quite a nice story.
(via dkthingsetc)
