Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel plays for Occupy Wall Street protesters last night.

​The Occupy Wall Street protest at Zuccotti Park continues to be a magnet for celebrity musicians offering their support and serenading the occupiers with unamplified sets.

Last night, the performances bracketing the twice-daily General Assembly meeting came from dramatically different corners: the strident protest jams of Michael Franti, and the oblique introversion of Jeff Mangum.

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Benjamin Lozovsky

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All Tomorrow's Parties: I'll Be Your Mirror
Asbury Park, NJ
September 30-October 2

Better than: Your favorite worn-out band tee.

Timelessness isn't a foresight. Most experiences can't predict their own longevity, and as much as any creator strives to avoid miring his or her work in a dated exterior, the stamp of the clock can be embossed and brutal. Music, perhaps more than any other arts, always seems to be indelibly linked to the era it was produced in, channeling that moment's trends and social forces to place it in a chronological context. English promoter and record label All Tomorrow's Parties have different thoughts on experiencing both musical history and its present incarnations, though. With this year's I'll Be Your Mirror Festival in Asbury Park—curated by Portishead and featuring special guest Jeff Mangum—ATP once again provided America with a glimpse of its own vision of a Utopian cultural exchange.

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We interrupt the creation of the forthcoming Sound of the City hurricane playlist to inform you that on November 22, a Neutral Milk Hotel box set will be released. The set includes the band's two full-lengths, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and On Avery Island, on 12-inch vinyl and a remastered version of their 1994 EP, Everything Is, fitted with four unreleased bonus tracks. Then—here comes the stuff you don't already have—you get the Ferris Wheel on Fire EP with seven unreleased acoustic tracks and an eighth that I assume is already on the hard drives of some super-fans, and 7-inch singles for "Holland, 1945," "You've Passed," and "Little Birds," with a pair of posters thrown in for good measure.

For a sample of what you're getting, they've also begun streaming "Oh Sister" and "Ferris Wheel on Fire" at the same place where you can find info on tour dates and NMH leader Jeff Mangum's half-hour radio show. So take a hammer to your piggy bank marked "Funds for '90s Indie Rock Reunions/Box Sets" and hope there are still 88 dollars remaining. If not (that piggy bank has definitely been taking a beating recently) the unreleased songs will also be posted on Bandcamp as pay-what-you-wish downloads, also on November 22.

[SOTC homepage | Facebook | Twitter | Letters]

​The Daily Swarm got wind of an eBay auction for a pair of tickets to Elephant 6 cult hero Jeff Mangum's September 9 show at the Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, which predates his appearance at the Portishead-curated ATP in Asbury Park by about three weeks. The asking price for the chance to be one of "hundreds" watching the gig: $5,600. Plus shipping. (Aw, c'mon!) Now, granted, the listing has been up since March and nobody's bitten yet, so perhaps the Tampa-based concern "bestavailabletickets" might wind up making a bit less of a profit. But still!

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Via Goldenfiddle

Don't look now, Andy, but you just landed On Bad Boyfriend Island.

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Prime-time shout-outs to one of the most cult-beloved indie bands of the past 20 years shouldn't surprise too much. [Insert lengthy rant about the culture industry, and people creating culture pitched toward the masses while consuming culture that they think is "better," here.] Particularly in the context of the sterling NBC sitcom Parks & Recreation, whose Aziz Ansari has been a fixture on Stereogum since the Internet Dark Ages of 2005. But the running plotline on last night's episode about one half of the recently married couple April & Andy's love for Neutral Milk Hotel was still really funny!

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@atpfestival

Last year's All Tomorrow's Parties inexplicably only drew 2,300 people out of a 3000 capacity--mindboggling to us that anyone who actually likes music would miss such a beautifully orchestrated thing--but this year's Portishead/Jeff Mangum double-billed festival, from September 30 to October 2, 2011, is looking like it will sell-out overall. As of now, the Neutral Milk Hotel ascetic is only playing two shows that weekend: one on Friday, September 30 that requires a three-day pass for entry, and another completely separate show on Monday night, October 3. The latter option sold out almost immediately; the $269 former, which also includes the entire weekend's undoubtedly stellar programming, is almost gone.

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via

​We feel bad for Jeff Mangum, who probably has some trouble leaving the house in this city without people acting a little strange. So we respect and applaud his decision to return to the stage in secrecy, as he did on Saturday night, when he played ten Neutral Milk Hotel songs to a delighted audience of 75 people at The Schoolhouse. Among them was a bootlegger, of course, who captured the second half of the below setlist, according to Pitchfork:

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Mark Ibold, still happier about the Pavement reunion than you are

​So Chavez is reuniting, or whatever you want to call it. A Pavement reunion just dominated most of last week in New York City. Before that, it was a never-dissolved-but-certainly-largely-inactive Superchunk. In the past few years, we've seen tours and new albums from a resurgent Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine, the Pixies, Faith No More, and Mission of Burma. Even bands you wouldn't imagine ever reuniting--Hoover, Universal Order of Armageddon, Swing Kids, Cap'n Jazz, Swans, Floor, Jawbox, Rorschach--have done one-offs or full-blown tours. As SOTC pal Jessica Hopper challenged Sasha Frere-Jones on Twitter last night: "Can you name one band from 1993-99 that is not presently reuniting?" Well, yes. Below, a list of the ten '90s bands we'd most like to see reunite, plus a whole lot of honorable mentions. Most of these probably won't happen. But we can always dream, right?

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​I've followed the Onion A.V. Club's "Undercover" series -- they picked 25 songs, and have invited 25 bands to cover them one at a time, so the first band has 25 songs to choose from, and the last has no choice at all -- just to see which tune will suffer the indignity of being the last one remaining. Your contestants are R.E.M.'s "Driver 8," Superchunk's "Detroit Has a Skyline," and Billy Squier's "Everybody Wants You," now that the Swell Season has tackled Neutral Milk Hotel as per below; would've picked this one to go way higher. Can't blame the guy for needing a lyric sheet:

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The six-hour benefit for underground New Zealand songwriter Chris Knox at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday was indie-fundraising done right: all-star jams that made sense, meaty set lengths, a thoroughly worthwhile lineup, decidedly fan-oriented ticketing, and a stunning marquee name to sell out the room at $75 a ticket (and thin it out pleasantly midway through, after he performed).

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