Never have I been so upset about not getting tickets to a concert than when Jeff Mangum's Friday show at the Lincoln Theatre sold out in all of two minutes. Then, by some miracle, the venue added a second show on Saturday and I was able to get a ticket in the orchestra level. Mangum hasn't played shows for 10 years, and as I was a little late to the Neutral Milk Hotel party, I never got a chance to hear him live back in his heyday.
It was my first time at the Lincoln. I skipped the recent Civil Wars show there, having seen them a few months earlier at Jammin' Java. The venue is gorgeous and was a seemingly perfect venue for a one-man acoustic show.
I arrived in time to check out the opener, Music Tapes. Very experimental stuff. They were, and I would not say this lightly (after all, I've seen a band called Satan's Youth Ministers play a concert in a pizza place with a 50-ish year old burlesque artist as the opening act), probably the weirdest opening act that I have ever seen. The band was three guys -- one on organ, one who played a banjo with a violin bow, and one who played a variety of horns. They also used a 7-foot tall metronome as an instrument, which produced an abrasive clicking sound. Another song featured static from a TV on stage as the focal point (after a long monologue about believing that there were aliens inside his TV as a child). All that pails in comparison to the lengthy monologue on historical (and inspirational!) Romanian gypsy circus acts. Really. After a while the guy next to me and I couldn't keep it together anymore. Everyone else it seemed was applauding enthusiastically. I don't buy it for a second. I can imagine no scenario in which 1,000 people with good music taste (hello, they love Jeff Mangum!) could actually like such a bad band. My hypothesis: folks realize it's experimental, but don't get it. Since they don't get it, they think it must be profound. Thus they clap enthusiastically as if they get it. It's a hypothesis that explains a lot in the indie rock world. At the end of the set, the guy to my right turned to me and said, "I think we needed to be pretty high to enjoy that." Probably so, my new friend.
Now that that was over, the real fun could start. I started to get a bit worried when the giant metronome was not removed from the stage in between sets. I was even more worried when Julian Koster from Music Tapes joined Jeff on stage for a few songs. Luckily he only played the singing saw -- which I'm fairly ambivalent towards. Other than that it was just Jeff Mangum, an acoustic guitar, and lots of Neutral Milk Hotel goodness. Before his second song ("Holland, 1945"), Mangum invited the audience to sing along during the concert. From there on out it was a collective music experience, the highlight of which was a blistering version of "Two Headed Boy." Mangum was jovial and bantered with the crowd. He said he wasn't sure if he would record another album, but he clearly enjoyed playing all the old songs again. He played my favorite ("King of Carrot Flowers, Part I") pretty early in the set and covered most of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, saving the famous title track for his first encore. The crowd went so crazy that he came back for a second encore of "Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone," even though the theatre had already turned on the lights. I'm not sure I've ever seen a crowd that hypnotized by a show before. People were crying. Clearly the NMH songs resonate with folks at a very personal level. I'm blessed that I got to experience it.
Recent Comments