Let me recount for you how the early part of my Friday went last week.
I woke up inexplicably around 9 a.m. (inexplicable because I have no classes on Friday and thus no reason to get out of bed so early). I watched a movie and went back to sleep for a little while. When I woke up again a little before noon, I went onto my computer, where I saw that Tinymixtapes.com had announced they would be putting together a summer music festival in Minneapolis, an event that they promised would be headlined by a one-time reunion show of Neutral Milk Hotel.
Amidst my euphoria in the wake of this news, I quickly told anyone I thought would care as much as I did (and a few ungrateful others). Then I went to the gym for a little while.
When I got back, I checked the site again, where I saw that the site had admitted it was all a hoax and merely an April Fool’s joke (albeit two days early). The same site that had made my day that very morning managed to totally ruin it only a few hours later.
(As an aside, I listened to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea first to celebrate the great news and then later to wallow in my sorrow. It’s things like this that make it my favorite album ever.)
Anyway, when I first heard this news, I was cautiously optimistic. The band hasn’t made an album in nearly a decade and the last time “they” performed, it was Jeff Mangum by himself, in
In the midst of the myriad other band reunions in the past few months, this didn’t seem wholly unrealistic. I had read only a few days earlier (*sigh* on an internet message board) that Mangum was in upstate New York writing new material, and based on what I know about the guy, he’s probably writing something, somewhere, not to mention his recent appearances at live performances and on albums of other Elephant 6 bands.
Though I wasn’t totally sure this was true, I immediately began contemplating the logistics of an August road trip to
Needless to say, I still feel a little bit miffed. When I was about 10 or 11, I thought it would be funny to run into my house in a panic and tell my mom that my little brother had been hit by a car. Yeah, I tricked her; I got her good. So good, in fact, that a few seconds later when I told her the truth, I got myself sent to my room for a little while.
I don’t think anyone will be sending Tinymixtapes.com to its room.
Yeah, they got me. I fell for it. Again, while I wasn’t totally sure, it’s the type of thing that’s such a big deal that questioning its validity is not the first reaction. In the case of my elementary age antics, my brother’s wellbeing was so important to my mom that, even if I was kidding, it made more sense to prepare for the worst. In the case of a Neutral Milk Hotel reunion, the course of action was to prepare for the best.
You may have noticed by now that this blog entry doesn’t really have a “point” or a “direction” or any sort of “focus.” Honestly, I don’t really have one. I’m just kind of pissed—at Tinymixtapes.com for duping me, but not at Jeff Mangum, who seems to be selfishly withholding his art. I’ve made my thoughts on this subject no secret, and even though I’ll probably spend the rest of my life waiting to hear more of his music, if he never records another note, he’ll at least have recorded one of the best albums I’ve ever heard. I reckon that’s good enough.
