To kick off the first full month of this blog I might as well start out with a bang. First, I would like to explain where I’m coming from with this. Around the time I was a freshman in high school around 1997, I didn’t really have any kind knowledge or interest in music. I would just listen to the radio, watch mtv, listen to friends about whatever was good at the time. Hear a song, like it, then instantly forget in a week, rinse and repeat. I really had no idea what music could do, how it could affect a person nor did i care. The years surrounding that time is when I starting to be exposed to some very important albums, singer-songwriters that would completely change the type of music that i listen to this very day.
Thanks to my few friends that had older syblings with superior musical taste, i was exposed to 3 singer-songwriters who i consider to be in my personal elite pantheon of lyrical geniuses. This group consists of the following: Jeff Buckley, Jeff Mangum & Mark Kozelek and their albums Grace, In Aeroplane Over the Sea and Songs for a Blue Guitar. These mean so much to me just for the sheer fact that they were the first albums I’d ever heard that showed how music could be inspirational, emotional and even spiritual. How lyrics and a voice could hit you emotionally to your core, where you could see a man’s soul from what they are fucking singing to you. That’s what i’m talking about here.
Back to the subject at hand, what does this have to do with the title of this entry? Here my friends is something special. Something i’ve looked long and hard for, that i’m so happy to bring to you. World of Wild Beards Incorporated was the name of the band billed to play a one-off gig in New Zealand in 2001. This band name was really FUCKING Neutral Milk Hotel. Jeff Mangum, who basically fell off the planet’s radar over the last 5 or 6 years it seems, who performed with Laura Carter who was a fellow and former member of NMH and the Elephant 6 collective but now in the band Elf Power. Anyone not familiar with the Elephant 6 should do themselves a favor and get a history lesson by clicking that link or here. Noone really speaks much of the collective now a days. I just assume indie fans have completely given up on them as a force in music. Still some bands like collective’s little cousins Of Montreal (I urge EVERYONE to listen to them) still keep the fire burning i suppose.
Anywho, download and enjoy possibly the Holy Grail of Neutral Milk Hotel bootlegs. Most songs are from what i consider to be one of the best albums of all time In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Enjoy it and live with the fact as as Neutral Milk Hotel fan that Jeff Mangum will probably never put out another album ever.
World of Wild Beards Incorporated (Neutral Milk Hotel)
February 4, 2001
King’s Arms
Auckland, New Zealand
1. – Two-Headed Boy
2. – I Love How You Love Me [Phil Spector cover]
3. – Song Against Sex
4. – King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1
5. – King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3
6. – Everything Is
7. – Gardenhead – Leave Me Alone
8. – Ghost
9. – Oh Comely
10. – Engine
11. – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
12. – World of Wild Beards Inc. explanation
13. – Mother [John Lennon cover]
More about this special show can be found here. Do enjoy it won’t you?
*edit* I think i failed to mention that this is the last known live performance of Neutral Milk Hotel….making it why it is so special to begin with.
Additional posts you may be interested in:
Entries (RSS)
I forgot to mention that the show is special because its basically the last known live performance of NMH.