A similar thing I’ve been reading about is Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Company, where apparently most of the album, including Farewell Transmission, was recorded in a single take and without any sort of practice or rehearsal beforehand.
Also that must have been mind-blowing for Wendy Carlos in particular, given her experiences making Switched-On Bach, Moogs have infamously cheap crystals in their oscillators*, which meant that Carlos had to keep her NYC apartment at a constant 90 degrees to record her versions of Bach, and even then apparently she could only get something around 8 good seconds of music before they de-tuned.
* - As opposed to say, E-mu synths, which used higher-grade materials.
still feel very strange about how Mangum became this like sainted reclusive figure in indie music and the album also kinda took on a meme dimension with 4chan later on. but maybe he’s happier now. he always seems to have had good politics and he’s married to Astra Taylor who is very active in the lefty world.
yeah, the meme status is pretty funny and it’s hard not to think about when i’m legit enjoying the album. i learned about it pretty late but i think i’ll always have it in rotation. the lyricism is so great and i love it to pieces. i’ve never heard the song you posted before but i like it! good to know that jeff is like, not a shithead too.
Agree very much with this. I remember trying to watch Neutral Milk Hotel back when they were getting the ol’ band back together again in 2014-ish(?). It felt weird to be among a bunch of (what looked to me) older teenagers in reverential awe or whatever. I ended up leaving early, but now I kind of wish I wasn’t so weirded out by everything and stayed.
I was playing this a little too loudly in my car and grooving along to it, but I noticed the car next to mine at a stoplight also had its window rolled down. So- I turned it down and sort of apologetically looked over at the very much older driver, but he just gave me a big smile and said, “Turn that back up!”.
i’ll always remember the anecdote about how people were trying to get Thom Yorke and Radiohead to show up and play during Occupy Wall Street when it was happening… which of course they refused. but Jeff Mangum did show up unannounced and played for people. i know OWS had its problems but that always felt like a nice symbolic action to me, and a nice little glimpse of utopia.
I saw them on this tour with my wife. between the opener and NMH, a really clearly drunk guy tried to tackle hug both of us and yell in our ears about how excited he was. both Sarah and i were very not cool with this, and so i asked him to stop, and which point he got all shitty, called us among other things “autistic” and walked away. Sarah was shaken up by this, so I made sure she was OK, but then saw where the guy was sitting, walked over, and chewed him out. I don’t remember what I said totally, but i remember calling him an “ableist fuck” before I walked away. Pretty sure drunk dude was terrified. Two things happened from this:
A friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in like a year texted me to say like “hey, so did you almost just fuck a dude up at the NMH show?” He apparently was sitting like all the way on the other side of the venue (whiich held about 3000 people and was sold out) and saw me. I explained the situation and he was basically kinda offering assistance, but I told him it wasn’t necessary.
One of the security guys at the venue pulled me over and asked me what was up, and I explained it to him, and he asked if I wanted him to boot the guy. I told him no, and that I would just avoid him for the rest of the night. Security guy said if he gave me any more shit, just to let him know. Drunk guy did nothing else, but yeah.
What sucks about this is that the show itself was really good, but of course this is the clearest memory i have of that night. Awesome.
