I had my iPod on a shuffle of my Modest Mouse collection the last few days. I became a Modest Mouse fan with the release of Good New For People Who Love Bad News, explored Moon and Antartica shortly after, and bought The Lonesome Crowded West shortly before We Were Dead.. came out in early 2007. I bought four more of their indie releases after. When We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank came out, it seemed "old" Modest Mouse fans were lamenting the "change" in their music and that the "new" fans weren't really the true fans. As I wasn't a fan from their "indie" days, I guess I was one of those "new" fans. As I had been listening to Rush a little before I started on my latest Modest Mouse kick over the last few days, I kind of realized there was a similarity with how "old" Rush fans wanted me to think in the early 80's. I first heard Rush with their seventh album, Permanent Waves, on my older brother's 8-track copy. This was 1980 and I became a much bigger fan with the release of their next album, Moving Pictures, the next year. I thought (and still think) that those two albums are their best. Older Rush fans treated me as a "new" fan then and I always thought of myself as a "new" (or not "true") fan even after exploring their earlier material over the next 4-5 years. I think I only fully realized that those "old" fans were full of it sometime in the early nineties. Modest Mouse has a lot of good music but their more recent releases on Epic (Sony BMG) are my favorite and I am looking forward to their next release whenever it is.

• Video views (5) |
• Permalink
• | Write Comment

Some friends and I went to see The Magnetic Fields on Saturday night. Somehow in all the time that I have lived in the New York metropolitan area, I never managed to see a show at Town Hall before. Town Hall is right in the middle of the theater district and is simply a neat, small, non-extravagant two tiered space that looks more similar to the theaters where I see small plays than to larger or small venues for concerts. It provided a great venue (except for the squeaky door behind us) for the intimate Magnetic Fields show.

My friends and I arrived a little late for the opening act as dinner took just a little longer. We walked in and took our seats. The act (never caught the name) was a guy reciting a monologue with somebody sitting at a piano next to him and another guy doing sound effects. The sound effects were pretty funny and took some time to realize that they were performing a slightly humorous take on The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.

That finished pretty quickly and the Magnetic Fields came in shortly after. They simply walked on stage and waited for audience members to take their seats. When it seamed to them that most people were now quiet, they started their first song. Now, there are some concerts where you mosh, some where you groove, some where you dance romantically, some where you sing along to you favorite anthem and some that you scream in appreciation of the wall of musical sound that is hitting you and you feel with every cell in your body. Then there are those unlike any of those that the audience sits completely silent listening intensely to every word or every note - kind of like a classical or jazz recital. The Magnetic Fields were striking as being of this last kind with the audience completely silent out of intense interest with very polite applause after each song. The music and lyrics talked for themselves, no embellishment was really needed.

The setting was ideal for their music as the music consisted of Stephin Merritt on a ukulele-like instrument, Sam Davol on cello, John Woo on acoustic guitar and Claudia Gonson on piano with Merritt, Gonson and Shirley Simms sharing the role of lead vocals. They started with the song California Girls from their current album, Distortion, and ironically this as well as all songs that were played from the new album were played without distortion. They proceeded through two sets consisting of many songs from Distortion, one (I don't believe you) from their last album 'i', and some songs from soundtracks and some songs by the Gothic Archies and the Sixths. All the songs were interposed with musings by Gonson and Merritt. Merritt's lyrics are always great to listen to and not a single word was missed. The music was well put together and arranged well to fit the instruments they were playing. No attempt was made to match whatever instrument was used on the album. Stephin Merritt even sung the Nun's Litany that is sung by Simms on the album. The change of that song to Stephin's deep voice proved quite hilarious. When the band finished they thanked the audience for being so quiet (I think they were serious but I am not actually sure), everybody gave them a cordial round of applause and politely left in a very orderly manner.

• Permalink
• | Write Comment