Concert Review: The Magnetic Fields at Town Hall
After 3 months of anticipatorily gazing at the tickets on my refrigerator, the Magnetic Fields show finally happened last night! I have seen precious few shows since I moved to Seattle, and it was a really, really, really good one to see. It was at Town Hall, which was an old Church of Christ downtown, still complete with pews (but no kneelers). After my umpteenth joke asking Matt and Chris if I was in the right place for the town hall meeting to save Jupiter Hollow, the opening act came out...
They were called the Interstellar Radio Company, and I guess the best way to explain them is as a science fiction comedy performance troupe? It was strange, but interesting and good. They basically put on a live old-timey radio serial show, and the particular story they performed was about these two business partners who are in the business of decontaminating planets. And the planet they go to decontaminate contains a specific gaseous material that stimulates your imagination, and they found themselves being hunted down by the monsters they had dreamed up as kids. As far as the performers, one guy played the accordion, one guy did the voices of the 6 or so characters, and one guy did all the sound effects. I learned:
Then the Magnetic Fields came out, including Merritt on the lute, a cellist, an acoustic guitarist, a pianist/chatterbox, and a girlie singer. It was really good. Magic good. It was just so civilized and wonderful. You could hear everything so well, the attendees were polite and well-behaved and it allowed you to really really listen and appreciate it. (No stupid drunk girls to push out of your way, no stupid alpha male assholes trying to start a pit for no reason, etc.) I consider myself a Magnetic Fields fan, and I have a couple of their albums. They played around 20-25 songs....and I only knew ONE. That's how prolific they are, it's ridiculous. And even though all the songs were new to me, the show was still amazing. His lyrics could stand on their own apart from the music, they're always so funny and sad and true and clever. I think my favorite song was the first one they played which was called "I Hate California Girls", although I really liked "Nun's Litany".
Their onstage banter was amusing, too. I think the best story was when Merritt talked about the first concert he ever went to, which was a Jefferson Airplane show his parents took him to when he was a kid. He remembered Grace Slick screaming out: "They're killing kids over there!!!!" In retrospect, he knows she was alluding to the children in Vietnam. But at that concert, he thought she "meant stage right" and that his death was imminent.
And interesting/confusing sidenote: Stephin Merritt hates applause. "He typically covers an ear when the audience claps. This is attributed to a hearing problem that Merritt suffers from called hyperacusis, where any sound louder than normal begins to "feed back" in his head at increasingly louder volumes." At the end of every song he would quickly stick his finger in his ear and wince a bit. So what to do? You want to show your appreciation so you want to clap...yet you know that is annoying to him, so you don't want to clap!
Then that makes you start to think how ridiculous clapping is, and who on earth came up with that idea to whack your hands together to be noisy and that somehow signifies approval? Humans are weird.
They were called the Interstellar Radio Company, and I guess the best way to explain them is as a science fiction comedy performance troupe? It was strange, but interesting and good. They basically put on a live old-timey radio serial show, and the particular story they performed was about these two business partners who are in the business of decontaminating planets. And the planet they go to decontaminate contains a specific gaseous material that stimulates your imagination, and they found themselves being hunted down by the monsters they had dreamed up as kids. As far as the performers, one guy played the accordion, one guy did the voices of the 6 or so characters, and one guy did all the sound effects. I learned:
- Twisting celery sounds like breaking bones
- Little toilet plungers plunged on a table sound like a space monster approaching from far away
- Big toilet plungers plunged on a table sound like a space monster approaching from very close!
Then the Magnetic Fields came out, including Merritt on the lute, a cellist, an acoustic guitarist, a pianist/chatterbox, and a girlie singer. It was really good. Magic good. It was just so civilized and wonderful. You could hear everything so well, the attendees were polite and well-behaved and it allowed you to really really listen and appreciate it. (No stupid drunk girls to push out of your way, no stupid alpha male assholes trying to start a pit for no reason, etc.) I consider myself a Magnetic Fields fan, and I have a couple of their albums. They played around 20-25 songs....and I only knew ONE. That's how prolific they are, it's ridiculous. And even though all the songs were new to me, the show was still amazing. His lyrics could stand on their own apart from the music, they're always so funny and sad and true and clever. I think my favorite song was the first one they played which was called "I Hate California Girls", although I really liked "Nun's Litany".
Their onstage banter was amusing, too. I think the best story was when Merritt talked about the first concert he ever went to, which was a Jefferson Airplane show his parents took him to when he was a kid. He remembered Grace Slick screaming out: "They're killing kids over there!!!!" In retrospect, he knows she was alluding to the children in Vietnam. But at that concert, he thought she "meant stage right" and that his death was imminent.
And interesting/confusing sidenote: Stephin Merritt hates applause. "He typically covers an ear when the audience claps. This is attributed to a hearing problem that Merritt suffers from called hyperacusis, where any sound louder than normal begins to "feed back" in his head at increasingly louder volumes." At the end of every song he would quickly stick his finger in his ear and wince a bit. So what to do? You want to show your appreciation so you want to clap...yet you know that is annoying to him, so you don't want to clap!
Then that makes you start to think how ridiculous clapping is, and who on earth came up with that idea to whack your hands together to be noisy and that somehow signifies approval? Humans are weird.
I'm jealous. I love MF.