propertyofzack:

Neutral Milk Hotel have reunited after 15 years since playing with each other. The band has announced a string of dates with more coming soon. Check out the routing and a message from the band below!

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I was lucky enough to meet Jeff Mangum when he showed up unexpectedly to play at Zucotti Park during Occupy Wall Street. I wrote about it on here some time ago — I’ll try to dredge up the story.

Listen as three of the four members of The Medicine reunite to cover, mash-up and shamelessly ruin songs made famous by Neutral Milk Hotel, The Beatles, The Kingsmen, The Spinto Band, and Reggie Watts (the Louie tv show theme arrangement): http://soundcloud.com/brtnlewis/the-king-of-louie-louie-twist

immersed-in-a-song:

Sometimes I think I can draw, and then this happens…

My visualization of some of my favorite songs.

This is awesome. I’ve always felt thematically that Neutral Milk Hotel and Jukebox the Ghost covered a lot of similar ground, with lines like “How strange it is to be anything at all” and “What if we were created to gaze at the stars and the sun” and stuff like that creation/purpose/lack of purpose/finding something valuable in physical form.

Julian Koster of the Music Tapes left me a message on Christmas Day. 

Listen as I explain the circumstances, leading up to a recording of his actual message. 

duderonymusbosch:

Neutral Milk Hotel - My Dream Girl Don’t Exist

My dream girl don’t exist. 

(Source: youtube.com)

Neutral Milk Hotel - My Dream Girl Don’t Exist

My dream girl don’t exist. 

(Source: youtube.com)

A playlist for those times when you’re my friend and you need music recommendations from me.

Because I’m me, it’s thematically-sensitive and each song sort of goes with those surrounding it based on its content, the genre, who’s playing, or some such thing. 

From Titus Andronicus, through several National Anthems (Radiohead, Lana Del Rey, Assassins) to Neutral Milk Hotel’s lesser-known album, skipping through some Debussy and some jazz to end appropriately on the piano with Ben Folds, Jukebox the Ghost, and to end it, Rilo Kiley. 

(Source: Spotify)

Reminiscing about this. About a year ago now. 

duderonymusbosch:

Last October as I was easing into my second year at NYU the Occupy Wall Street movement was getting started. I had a few very politically active friends in the NYU community who became very involved with OWS and went down there almost every weekend to orchestrate marches and the like, but beyond…

duderonymusbosch:

Ever notice that Jeff Mangum’s sister looks strangely like Anne Frank? That’s because she is Anne Frank. Jeff clearly traveled back in time to save her, since, as we all know, his opus In The Aeroplane Over The Sea as Neutral Milk Hotel was based on her life and writings that he so admired.

…

Ever notice that Jeff Mangum’s sister looks strangely like Anne Frank? That’s because she is Anne Frank. Jeff clearly traveled back in time to save her, since, as we all know, his opus In The Aeroplane Over The Sea as Neutral Milk Hotel was based on her life and writings that he so admired. 

Check out Jeff’s sister Coraline side-by-side with Anne Frank:

But wait, it gets better. Anne was given the fake identity of “Coraline Mangum,” changed again to Astra Taylor as she matured, eventually marrying Jeff. Astra is a well-regarded documentarian who states that she did not attend school until after age 13 owing to the beliefs of her progressive bohemian parents. Actually, she was simply brought forward through time by Jeff Mangum around that age. 

And undoubtedly, the resemblance is uncanny: 

So yeah. That’s all for now until my next post, when I single-handedly prove that Julian Koster founded the United States of America. 

Insert to Jeff Mangum + Will Cullen Hart’s unreleased “Cranberry Lifecycle” demo tape. 

(via imwithpleb)

This artist reduces album covers to 5x5 blocks of their essential colors. The effect becomes strangely familiar and relatable once you view a few of them. 

5x5covers:

Neutral Milk Hotel | In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

(via westayedinthewater)

Great enthusiastic cover of the Neutral Milk Hotel classic “Two-Headed Boy” by The Mountain Goats.  I’m slightly vindicated that I can at least add John Darnielle to the list of people that formerly included only me to call Jeff Mangum Jeff “Magnum.” In any case Darnielle’s voice really carries song…. wish that harmonica would shut up though. 

Last October as I was easing into my second year at NYU the Occupy Wall Street movement was getting started. I had a few very politically active friends in the NYU community who became very involved with OWS and went down there almost every weekend to orchestrate marches and the like, but beyond that I was relatively unattached emotionally, politically, and physically from the goings-on down in Zucotti Park. I had never been down there and whatever curiosity I had about what was going on was outweighed by my myopic New Yorker’s view of how far away it was and general if unrealistic concerns for safety.

I was really late getting into Neutral Milk Hotel. I was vaguely aware of them since early in my high school days and probably unwittingly heard a few of the songs off In The Aeroplane Over The Sea from a hip kid in my photo class who used to wear a Rilo Kiley shirt and some kind of Holden Caulfield-like hunting cap, but I never got any of the albums.

Back to last October, I was wasting time on my computer one day after getting back from a late choir rehearsal, and, not wanting to actually resort to doing real work or research, logged into Facebook. I saw a friend of mine (and great musician) Nick Pitman post something about Jeff Mangum playing downtown in the park for the Occupy protestors. I laced up my running shoes, put on my Sennheisser around-ear jogging earphones and I was out the door. 

Before I knew it I had made the mile from my apartment on 23rd street to Houston probably faster than I ever had before, and I kept chugging. I didn’t entirely know where I was headed, so I fumbled with my phone trying to text Nick and extract crucial Mangum whereabout information as I dangerously ran across the eight or so lanes of traffic at Mercer & Houston, nearly getting grazed by an agressive taxicab. 

“Oh Mandy” gave way to “Heresy” (you know, the Nine Inch Nails GOD IS DEAD AND NO ONE CARES tune) on my running playlist as I sprinted south on Broadway. “What’s the rush?” some guy on the street asks me — “Jeff Magnum playing Zucotti!” I yelled back, or something like it. And yes, I did say Magnum, not Mangum. I was so uneducated in the ways of the Elephant 6 at this point that I indeed twisted his name in my out-of-breath exclamation into some kind of gun-slinging character Clint Eastwood might have played. 

I saw a tall modernist metal monstrosity looming in the distance, the sort of which passes for metropolitan art these days, and as I approached the twisted mass glistening in artificial floodlighting against the dark of the half-illuminated sky that passes for night in Manhattan, it revealed itself to be a landmark at the corner of Zucotti park. It was much smaller than I thought it would be, but still the medium-sized city block was canvased edge to edge with tents, sleeping bags, and scuzzy-looking people amid whom I began to search blindly for “Magnum.” 

I slowly came to the realization that I had absolutely no idea what Jeff Mangum looked like.

This is more hilarious in retrospect, but I was panicked at the time. I had run over four miles downtown to a strange neighborhood in search of a musician I knew was legendary (though he and others might object to the term) but to whom I had never listened, and about whom I knew nothing! I looked for somebody with a guitar, anybody who seemed to be garnering the attention of others — there were several who fit the bill. I listened to one guy who seemed to be popular within the context of the park for a minute or two but I slowly realized that he was [poorly] covering Radiohead’s “Karma Police” which is something I told myself, little though I knew at the time, Jeff Mangum would probably not be doing. I checked my phone and saw a text from Nick. Mangum had stopped playing, autographed a few things for people (including a flyer or some piece of paper for Nick) and left the site. 

Oh well. At least this was a fun adventure for a Wednesday night. I’d probably go back home and order late night chinese food and watch YouTube or something until I felt like going to sleep. I did run into a prominent Occupy figure who was interviewed on Fox News and spoke semi-intelligently, so I at least sort of met a quasi-celebrity, although in person this guy was clearly just a semi-homeless fellah who was lucky enough to get on camera one day. I asked this guy about “Magnum,” he had no idea. 

I began walking back north and had made it ten blocks or so when I got a text from one of my friends that she and her friend from Baltimore who was a huge Neutral Milk Hotel fan and just saw Mangum perform the other day were on their way to Zucotti to try and meet him. I texted back that they were out of luck, and turned back to meet them at the park so we could head home together. 

About halfway back to the park/encampment/warzone I saw a pretty young woman in her late 20s or so carrying a violin case come out of a coffee joint, followed by a man sporting  a nice cap covering very straight black hair in a unique style that covered the sides of his face and a Christmasy knit sweater carrying a guitar case. He sort of looked like Jack White to me.

The pair came in my direction and we were about to cross paths at a street corner when I thought, wait, this could be Mangum. So I awkwardly acted as if I were not going to pass them and instead waited at the corner to cross Broadway with them. I acted cool and casual and didn’t say anything, much as it probably wouldn’t have hurt. Although perhaps cool and casual is not the best description of my behavior, as I began frantically searching Google Images on my phone for pictures of “Jeff Magnum” while standing right next the guy. I can only imagine how strange I looked — glancing at my phone, stealing a glance at him, back and forth coming up with no cohesive case one way or the other. 

The light changed. We started crossing. I walked ahead and was about to escape before I very obviously turned back to look at his face one more time and I caught his attention.

-Um, are you Jeff Magnum?

I must have mumbled or stuttered enough that he didn’t notice my error. We chatted for a minute about the protestors, his guitar, and New York. I complimented his awesome sweater, which really made him light up. Then I said I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bother him or whatever, good night.

-Good night, Barton.

He got into a car on a narrow cross street (who drives cars in NY? I guess Jeff Mangum does) and drove away. That was it.  I was grinning madly all the way to meet my friends and all the way home. I told them I saw him and we ran back to where the car was parked but of course he was gone. 

When I got home I downloaded In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and listened to it all the way through. Much better than Hulu for late night entertainment. I just met this guy. Holy shit. HOLY SHIT,just as one equally mesmerized fellow (Scott Spillane?) can be heard saying in the left channel at the end of “Oh, Comely.”

I certainly would dream of meeting this guy as many likely would when hearing the album, and listening to it over and over again, committing its meandering lyrics to memory, but I’ll always have retroactively accomplished this dream. Or is it more aptly that I proactively met him? Either way it was a strange, fantastic, highly New York experience. 

Here’s what I missed:
 

* * * 

I would see Mangum again in January, though of course not talk to him, in the much more traditional (perhaps overly so) concert setting of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And, opening the show with The Music Tapes, the brainchild of saw-warbler and storyteller Julian Koster whom I actually came to idolize the summer before, and accompanying Mangum on bass during some songs, was Thomas Hughes, grinning just as madly as I was that night in October. I met this Hughes character a year and a half before and once sang on a stage with him, but that’s another strange, uncanny story for another nighttime blogging recollection. 

Good night. 

Saw these guys play at the Troubadour in LA a little while ago along with west coast iteration of ROAR, an awesome band whose east coast lineup has included Thomas & Sam Hughes of The Spinto Band. 

post-synaptic:

2 Headed Boy - Andrew Jackson Jihad (Neutral Milk Hotel cover)

(Source: lord-snot, via yessarahsmiles)