Posts tagged Music

Like thousands of people all over the world, I have a very intense and personal connection with Neutral Milk Hotel, particularly with the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. My own story with it is certainly not one of the most remarkable or memorable of the countless personal stories surrounding that album: Aeroplane came into my life a good six years after it was first released, and its perfect mix of urgency, loss and celebration of being alive happened to fit particularly well into what was happening in my life at that moment. To make what could be a long story short, the album became one of those things that I love fiercely and protectively; one of those things that simply become a central part of who I am.

And also like thousands of others, I never really thought I’d ever have the chance to hear those songs live. The solo Jeff Mangum shows were first announced in early June 2011 – specifically, they were announced the day after the last show of the Age of Adz European tour, when M and I were still off in Lisbon in a Suf-induced haze. We only went online late that night, and heard the news just in time to buy what must have been one of the very last pairs of non second-hand tickets available (prior to the rescheduling, at least). Buying those tickets was a bit of a leap of faith – the shows were originally scheduled for December, and back in June I knew very little about what my life would be like six months later. Then the shows were postponed, and I held on to my ticket even though by then it would take nothing short of a miracle for me to be able to make it, and even though people were offering ridiculous amounts of money for spares. Money has been more than a little tight these past few months, but it never even occurred to me to take advantage of that – call me an idealist, but I’d feel like I was betraying something special if I did. The plan was always to wait until the last minute and then to ask M to sell mine for face value at the door if necessary.

My miracle came, and seeing Jeff Mangum live and everything I hoped and more. The crowd was intense, but also pretty reverential, like they were too much in shock and awe to react much. He opened with Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two followed by Holland, 1945, which was pretty much the emotional equivalent of dropping an anvil on my head. He then went on to play all of Aeroplane but Communist Daughter, and pretty much all my other favourite NMH songs. I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that this even happened – if I think of my top five favourite albums ever, of which this is definitely one, there is no way I’d get to go to a show where they would be played almost in their entirety without a time machine being involved. I guess there’s always the possibility of something like “Radiohead plays OK Computer” happening, but if so face value tickets would probably be priced something like €250 and there would be no way I could afford to go, judging by the latest trends in ticket pricing :S

I spent much of the show in tears, in a way that hadn’t happened to me since the first time I saw Joanna Newsom back in early 2005. I didn’t glance around me much, but I strongly suspect I wasn’t the only one. Surprisingly, the most moving moment of the night for me was just before “Ghost”, when Jeff told the crowd, “Please sing along if you know the words. It sounds so beautiful to me.”

This is a guy who disappeared from the public eye after Aeroplane became successful; a guy I have always thought of as the J.D. Salinger of the indie music world. I was sitting at the front at his show and I couldn’t help crying during at least half the set. The place wasn’t even dark, and he could see my red eyes (and others) perfectly well. Up until that moment, at the back of my mind there was an always the awareness that we, the collective people who were so touched by his music, who loved it so fiercely, who had hoped for something like this for so long, were a bit of a burden to him. I don’t know what the emotional process behind disappearing for so long and playing live again now was like for him, and I don’t want to make any assumptions, but my default stance at the show was to express all those feelings as quietly and discreetly as possible. I think this is what was behind the crowd’s contained, reverential attitude – it’s almost like we were scared we would scare him away again if we were too intense.

But then he said that, and it was like he was saying that despite everything, the fact that his music touched so many people so deeply really meant something to him. We might have been a burden, but we were also a lifeline. So much of what draws me to art amounts to simple human connection. This happens in ways that are far more complicated, abstract and indirect than just artist to audience to artist, but concerts are still one of the contexts in which this very personal aspect of creating art, putting it out there, and having it become a part of other people is the most obvious. The moment when Jeff said that drove that point home like nothing else that night. I’ll always be incredibly grateful that an album like Aeroplane even exists – and grateful to him personally for having given us something like that – and I’m so, so glad that we could give him something in return.