This story is a love song between me and the band The Music Tapes.
Their album For Clouds and Tornadoes first crossed my path while I was
working at the radio station WERS. It had been tagged as "the band with
the guy from Neutral Milk Hotel," a group that I had become obsessed with at that point. I was well familiar with the singer and main songwriter, Jeff Mangum, as he is often treated like a mythical creature due to that band's history, which I won't get into here. I had never really heard anyone talk about the music of the banjo player, Julian Koster, and it didn't get much attention at the radio station. Eventually, I would realize that it was way better that way.
I did the review of For Clouds and Tornadoes and I could not stop listening to that album all year. It was full of big fluffy white carols and childhood euphoria to freebase as a wintery adventure into the imagination of Julian Koster. And it was a great place to be.
I never could have imaged that the album would be a door for me into a vast universe loaded with adventure, wonder, a sense of community that I had never experienced before, and, of course, actual real deal magic.
Cue
the opening credits music::
TRACK
1. “The Minister of Longitude” by The Music Tapes
from
For Clouds and Tornadoes
“How in the
world can you say the world is a sad place?”
Julian’s
imagination came to life back in August of 2009 when he came to play a private
show at my apartment in Jamaica Plain, part of Greater Boston. A friend of mine
had initially given me the intel about the tour, because she hosted Julian at
her apartment the previous year for a night of Christmas carols played on a singing saw.
I was more than intrigued to discover that the
band had been doing these sorts of unconventional concerts for a while. Places
like living rooms and basements were the venues, spaces that the band had to be
invited to by fans. The show they put on for us was, however, a little
different. It was part of their
"Lullabies at Bedsides" tour. The idea was to go from house to house,
kind of like Santa, and play for people all across the city just as they were going to
sleep.
Initially,
I had invited Julian to play at the Whitehaus, because the Jamaica Plain art
collective would’ve suited The Music Tapes quite well. However, I received an
email back from the "Minister of Lullabies" that read:
"This
endeavor really is best suited as bedtime hour entertainment, and is not meant so
much to be a traditional ‘show.’ You seem to have a lovely place where people
go often to see shows. The only thing I wonder is, do you think something meant
sincerely as a precursor to dreams would work in that setting?"
It
was signed by “The Strangely Nonexistent Email Reading Polar Bear.”
It seemed
he wanted to play for small groups of pajama clad and sleepy spectators, even
“bed-bound audiences of one,” as he said, were acceptable.
What
ended up making the performance memorable was the people that it brought together.
It was part of the magic of The Music Tapes: there were serendipities and
coincidences everywhere, gathering around them in a lovely swirling mess, like clouds and tornadoes.
It was
what Stephanie and I would jokingly call a better version of one of those
quirky indie romantic comedies with a hip soundtrack that were frequently
targeted at our demographic at the time.
