A little late in the game, but I'm posting amateur video here anyhow of Jaff Mangum's acoustic set for the OWS protesters on October 4th in Manhattan. The footage is a bit shaky, but the sound quality is spot on, and Mangum sounds intense and amazing as ever, playing well-known cuts from his back catalog as well as covers like "Themselves" by the Minutemen. This footage gives me a slight chill; like taking part in a modern re-enactment of a veritable wellspring of modern American history, as if watching Woody Guthrie talk sense to power half a century ago. Mangum has some upcoming tour dates, mostly East Coast, though we'd like to see him out West at some point soon. Of course everyone has had well over a decade to digest the painfully human, neo-folk brilliance of Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (one of my top 10 records of the 90's, to be sure), but if for some reason you've been residing on some foreign planet and haven't yet had a chance to give it a listen, well...can't really help you there, but I'm interested to hear what was that engrossing so as to keep this off your radar. Though I don't listen to it much anymore over the past 7 or 8 years, it still has the ability to raise hackles and deliver insights into this here mortal coil that is sorely missing from so much contemporary drivel calling itself folk, or pop, or freak-folk, or indie-pop, or whatever the hell the kids are listening to these days. Think I'll dig it back out right now.
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