[area.personality]: Hahahahaha Dawg posted this placeholder ages ago, and I finally opened it to edit it and add my 2 cents, and it's totally blank. Awesome.
[iwishuwould]:Yes, and then many eons ago you wrote your part, and I totally. fucking. slept on it. Which is really quite a shame because I did oceanloads of research leading up to the show, trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of NMH. You gotta think, it was like a fucking lifetime ago that they were recording songs and played on heavy rotation on our stereos. So whats a couple more months on the review of their show? Behold: the Official RawkTalk Review of Neutral Milk Hotel at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, Georgia Last October (thats right, this show was 7 months ago, but still worth bloggin about!!)
Its really also astounding that this post was so late in the making as we were both soooo fucking stoked for it! The show was originally only a one night deal at the Tabernacle, and it was instantly sold out.
But by some magic they added another date? more tickets were released? and I got us some: SCORE!
So we went to the Sunday night show, but arrived slightly later because I had to fucking werk that day. The oddest thing about this show: everyone was totally our demographic- I mean like totally our age- no youngers, no olders. I felt like because NMH was such a brief period of time, and so intense, like no one else got the memo? Or hell maybe people our age are the ones with the little remaining energy, yet also the bread to fork over for tickets like that. who can say, but that was def worth commenting on.
In other words, it's not any more. IJS
Srsly the Tabernacle, the lunar module balcony is unsafe. When people up there start stomping, I go straight to ready.gov because something apocalyptic is about to happen. Otherwise we had a great view once our ears popped from the pressure change. Shout-out to Katie and her man Steve for randomly joining up with us post-ascension!
[iwishuwould]: I had a great time immediately following the show perusing instagram for photos tagged #nmh and #neutralmilkhotel. Here are some (very sadly, uncredited (sorry i was just grabbing them at the time and its been like a 100 months ago now and theres no way back)) photos of the tabernacle that night. Gazing up at the lunar module balcony:
As well as gazing down from the lunar module balcony:
Man I always think the Tabernacle is not such a great place for a show, but I think I'm wrong. The lights are always killer and the sound is actually quite good. Its unfortunate that the damn thing collapsed not too long after the show. I would totally still go see a show there.
[iwishuwould]: I had a great time immediately following the show perusing instagram for photos tagged #nmh and #neutralmilkhotel. Here are some (very sadly, uncredited (sorry i was just grabbing them at the time and its been like a 100 months ago now and theres no way back)) photos of the tabernacle that night. Gazing up at the lunar module balcony:
As well as gazing down from the lunar module balcony:
Man I always think the Tabernacle is not such a great place for a show, but I think I'm wrong. The lights are always killer and the sound is actually quite good. Its unfortunate that the damn thing collapsed not too long after the show. I would totally still go see a show there.
[area.personality]: So Elf Power had no affect on me. They neither made me want to spew fire nor download their tunes. Not sure why they were there.
[iwishuwould]: I also wasnt really feelin Elf Power, no offense yall- its just not really my scene. Although you would think they would be-being that its all that Elephant Six Collective-ness from Athens. I have to wonder if I would have been more into them had I actually listened to them during the time (turn of the millennium?) that i was so into NMH. We shall never know. We did also get to see Rob Schneider play a quick lil set, which was cool because he was also the Apples in Stereo, who I did actually use to love, way back when. But he didnt play anything I recognized, and it honestly didnt bring the house down. heres a quick vid of apples in stereo tho! they are fun jangly psychedelic poppiness:
[area.personality]: Neutral Milk Hotel ruled, as I'd hoped they would. They looked like some awesome troupe of freaks, which I never really knew about them. This was my first time seeing them live, and I'd been waiting like a decade for this night! Unfortunately, the whole night was really colored for me because sadly, my sweet doggie Chibi went to heaven the previous day. I mean how could it not? So I tried to combat the melancholy in the traditional manner and wound up in Ho Chi Minh City really fast and without really meaning to, or knowing what that meant, but I knew when Dawg started yelling it out that I was there. It was very confusing. Anyway, long story short, what I previously thought was a theremin in their tunes is a dude playing a saw. A fucking saw. Was I the last to know? Maybe. There was also this chick trumpetess that I kept thinking about what kind of chick plays trumpet in high school and then aspires to play in a rock band? Then there was this portly kid who played all manner of brass and what-not, I dunno. They didn't allow photos and Dawg asked me to recreate the scene in ms paint, but I could barely focus my eyes by that point, so I don't think I can do it.
[iwishuwould]: I also wasnt really feelin Elf Power, no offense yall- its just not really my scene. Although you would think they would be-being that its all that Elephant Six Collective-ness from Athens. I have to wonder if I would have been more into them had I actually listened to them during the time (turn of the millennium?) that i was so into NMH. We shall never know. We did also get to see Rob Schneider play a quick lil set, which was cool because he was also the Apples in Stereo, who I did actually use to love, way back when. But he didnt play anything I recognized, and it honestly didnt bring the house down. heres a quick vid of apples in stereo tho! they are fun jangly psychedelic poppiness:
[area.personality]: Neutral Milk Hotel ruled, as I'd hoped they would. They looked like some awesome troupe of freaks, which I never really knew about them. This was my first time seeing them live, and I'd been waiting like a decade for this night! Unfortunately, the whole night was really colored for me because sadly, my sweet doggie Chibi went to heaven the previous day. I mean how could it not? So I tried to combat the melancholy in the traditional manner and wound up in Ho Chi Minh City really fast and without really meaning to, or knowing what that meant, but I knew when Dawg started yelling it out that I was there. It was very confusing. Anyway, long story short, what I previously thought was a theremin in their tunes is a dude playing a saw. A fucking saw. Was I the last to know? Maybe. There was also this chick trumpetess that I kept thinking about what kind of chick plays trumpet in high school and then aspires to play in a rock band? Then there was this portly kid who played all manner of brass and what-not, I dunno. They didn't allow photos and Dawg asked me to recreate the scene in ms paint, but I could barely focus my eyes by that point, so I don't think I can do it.
[iwishuwould]: No worries, dawg. I drew us a stickfigured rendition. It is alarmingly accurate, but you all will never know because of the no photos/recordings policy. Which actually and truly was quite nice. There is always gonna be someone taking better photos than me at these things. Hence our hallmark of kind of posting shitty photos. Also its nice to put the damn phone down and focus sometimes. [Don't ever tell yourself to "focus" unless you are ready to hear the riff from Hocus Pocus by Focus on your internal radio for the remainder of the day.] Its also SUPER nice to look at the stage and not into a sea of glowing rectangles.
Behold: my stickfigure rendering of NMH at the Tabernacle, all the way the fuck back in October of 2013. Note the array of fucking SAWS down in front.
(a side note: i thought the drummers New Mexico shirt was rad, so i googled him {side side note- i mean i googled them all, all hard} and found out on his wiki that he is a post man- JUST LIKE REINE from (now defunct?) Dungen! incrediballs!!)
In between acts, however, we did braid our hair together and photograph that, behold:
which totally reminded me of gregg allman and cher's hair together:
Some days I still cant believe they were ever a couple. Although Cher was actually quite hot back then, it just seemed like a square peg/round hole situation. (Not unlike the Allman Brothers as the HourGlass).
[iwishuwould]: Before:
After:
[iwishuwould]: I, personally, am a big fan of the troll beard (although I may refer to it as a wizard beard, a mountain man beard, ZZ Top beard, or a Taliban beard, depending on the man, and the beard.) Anyhow, on to the actual fucking review:
[area.personality]: They sounded amazing though. Very true to the studio recordings except richer, fuller, more epic. They did my two favorite songs of theirs in the encore, too! Namely, track 10 (untitled) from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which I always thought was bagpipes for some reason, but it was a crazy mishmash of instruments that I couldn't comprehend fully at the time. Magic! And also Two-Headed Boy Part 2. I thought I would want to belt the whole concert out as I belt out the whole album when I listen to it, but listening was actually better. Drowned my sorrows in sound and it was so excellent. Well worth dragging my sad ass out the house.
[iwishuwould]: Oh man, it was just fucking fantastic wasnt it? I mean, I would say they played all the hits, but really they arent like a hits kind of band, are they? Like all their songs just work. So they played them! and it was incredible. I srsly havent been that mesmerized by a show in a long time. All those fucking songs are just so powerful. I mean they wrote a whole album about death. And its beautiful. Its what people describe as "achingly beautiful" I would say. And they played every fucking note spot on- it didnt sound like they havent played together in like ten years. And Im with you, dawg- I never, in my wildest dreams, would have imagined that they were playing a fucking SAW. I still cannot grasp the modality of that, despite scoping the wikipedia page and scoping them playing it live. (although we were in the nosebleeds, to be fair). I, too, thought I would be singing along to every last word, at the top of my goddamned lungs, but it was too beautiful to do that. But so many people were! And you would think that would be annoying, but it was like everyone in that audience had played those albums the fuck out, in their cars, driving alone, at top volume, or in their rooms, crying, blackout drunk on jaeger and 420 on their birthdays. everyone sang right along, and it was actually fucking beautiful. The song I would have been most likely to belt out along with would have been Oh Comely, but it was too intense, maaaaan.
Im glad NMH were there to play for us, and I'm glad they soothed your spirit following the departure of dear, Chibi.
RIP Chibi-chee <3
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