Last weekend, perhaps the most significant dream of my brief life became a reality. At approximately 8:07 PM on Saturday evening, Jeff Mangum took the stage at the New England Conservatory with the same crazed fire burning in his eyes I envisioned him having.
The Boston gig is one of a handful Magnum, who received marginal attention as Neutral Milk Hotel in 1990s, has planned this fall, marking the first live shows he has played in 10 years time. As the venerable great took the stage, there was a feeling reverence among the audience, a realization that they were about to experience something that very few would ever experience again.
Mangum played the opening chords of “Oh Comely,” the haunting seven minute epic from his magnum opus, In An Aeroplane Over The Sea. The crowd remained in the palm of Mangum’s hand for the rest of the night as he recreated classics from Aeroplane and Neutral Milk’s first album, On Avery Island.
Mangum followed his opener with “Two Headed Boy Pt. Two,” one of the more soft and sweet numbers from Aeroplane, with Mangum spinning the yarn of a failed romance between a young couple.
“Naomi” from Avery Island proved to be the strongest number coming from the latter part of the set, with Mangum screeching, “please don’t leave me,” as his audience stood, mouths agape.
Mangum returned to the stage for not one, but two encores, treating his audience to classics “Two Headed Boy Pt. 1” and “Engine,” as well as a surprise rendition of “Ferris Wheels on Fire.”
For many, the show was a relief after a decade of absence of Mangum from the world of independent music. As the audience filtered out onto Huntington Avenue among murmurs of “wows” and “huzzahs” I realized I had experienced the most satisfying hour and 45 minutes of my life.
As a dear and devoted reader, it is my duty as your loyal bard to inform you of a betrayal of your trust on my part. I have misled you, duped you and led you astray, into the proverbial den of Lucifer himself.
I didn’t see Jeff Mangum play at the New England Conservatory. I didn’t even see him play the night before at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge.
It’s not that I didn’t try. I woke up at 9:55 the morning tickets went on sale in April and refreshed the “purchase tickets” page until I realized that I had been completely shut out of the online-only sale. I looked at pairs of tickets on StubHub for $700. I contemplated spending every cent I earned plugging in DVI cables for professors this summer for less than two hours of music.
Instead I got drunk and listened to both of Mangum’s albums last weekend and tried to forget I was in my living room instead of a theatre watching an intimate set from arguably the most interesting figure in music in the last twenty years.
So it goes.
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