Concert Review: Neutral Milk Hotel @ The Mann

UPDATE: Now I'm being told by my friend who was with me at the show that none of the following happened like I remember it. That there was no old man, and the concert was not interrupted at any point. Not sure what to make of that. I had been drinking, after all...

At this point, I’ve seen Jeff Mangum play a few times since he returned from his unexplained 15-year absence, so I didn’t expect many surprises when Neutral Milk Hotel performed at the Mann on Monday night. And it was, in so much as we should feel comfortable taking such things for granted, a mostly by-the-numbers brilliant rock show. They played all the songs that sound like hits to me: “Holland 1945” and “Song Against Sex” and “Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone” and so many more. Most of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was represented, as was a good chunk of On Avery Island and a couple recognizable rarities. Hard to tell if the opening number was a new one, or was simply a deep cut from some seven-inch I’d never come across on eBay. It was a pretty tangle of images, backed by a roughly strummed guitar, and sounded like it belonged with all the others. Great show.

But there was one incident toward the end of the show that was very out of place, a disturbance that started in the crowd and continued onto the stage and I’m finding it hard to believe other writers have chosen to omit it in their reviews. There’s no way they missed it entirely.

I first noticed this old man pacing the lawn area during Circulatory System’s opening set. He looked to be about eighty-something, with a long, wild, silver beard. He stood out for that fact alone, but it was also pretty hard to miss him muttering and cutting a wide figure eight in the grassy hillside. Occasionally he’d look up at the stage and wave his arm in an unreadable gesture. Frustrated? Dismissive? Somebody who worked for the venue, not a security guard, probably an usher, walked up and chatted with him briefly, presumably to see if he was alright. She left him a moment later and shrugged as she walked toward a small gathering similarly dressed young people at the top of the hill.

After watching the guy do his pacing thing for awhile, my friends and I took our seats down in the orchestra section and thought nothing more about the man.

That is, until he made his presence known again, this time during a quiet moment in Neutral Milk Hotel’s set. Jeff Mangum was strumming away, singing “King of Carrot Flowers” and down the hillside comes the old man’s voice, singing along, loud as all hell. Eventually we saw him kinda stutter-stepping down the middle of the grassy area, still belting out the words. Creepily hitting every note, too. He even nailed Mangum’s hiccupping vocal cracks, and flaring inflections. The old guy obviously knew Neutral Milk Hotel’s stuff intimately.

At this moment, there wasn’t an usher in sight and he marched forward, into the seated area, and everybody on either side turned to watch him pass, like the congregation at a wedding. When he got to my row, I noticed he was dressed in a busted up old version of the exact same military jacket Mangum was wearing — except instead of a little flag emblem on the shoulder, there was just some torn up stitching — and his wrinkled hands were clenched and shaking at his side, and I got this chilly feeling like this man had something planned.

I’m kinda freaked out about it now and it’s more than 24 hours later. Everybody says things like this after the fact, but I’m telling you the truth: I could tell something strange was about to go down.

At some point, and I didn’t quite notice it right away, Mangum stopped playing and shielded his face from the lights to look at the figure coming toward him. But the old guy, he didn’t stop singing till he was stepping wobbly-ankled onto the stage. The next minute I swear is etched into my brain permanently.

The old man stopped singing and sorta coughed and laughed at the same time, and raised a bony index finger toward Mangum, who kept his mouth close to the mic, said “can I help you, sir?”

Another cough-laugh and the old guy looked like he was going to make some big speech, but instead shuffled around and turned toward the crowd.

At that moment I was floored by how much the old man and Mangum looked alike. Spitting freaking image. The singer was a bit taller and way younger, but the two had the same hunching shoulders, similar unruly beards, and identical overhanging brows barely concealing two bright, weary pairs of eyes. The two men turned toward each other at pretty much the same time and started talking

I didn’t catch all of it, because things got noisy. A woman in the crowd shouted something, and a fight may have broken out on the other side of the building. Somebody yelled for somebody to “shut up, please!” but it didn’t do any good. A lot of the words exchanged between Jeff Mangum and the dude — his father or grandfather or uncle or I don’t know what — were drowned out. But one thing I heard the old guy say, during a hush was “I have the device. I have the device.” And later: “I wanted you to know it. I’m going to put things right and put Annie back where she belongs.” He might have also said he was sorry.

Mangum seemed to know what the guy was talking about because starts saying like “no, no, you can’t do that to us” but it was also hard to make out because he’d backed away from the mic and he sorta sounded exactly like the old guy, who didn’t stop talking.

Old guy again: “I’m using the device. It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” and “You must’ve known you’d run out of time” and insane stuff like that, but then three security guards arrived at pretty much the same time and picked him up by the armpits. The little old dude kicked a little, and wailed, but these were big guys and they carried him off to the side out of view.

So, Mangum followed them offstage for just a second before returning to the mic and finishing the show. He might’ve been little shaky at first, but eventually it was like the incident never happened and the rest of the evening continued interrupted (though the crowd seemed taken out of it for awhile).

After the show I asked a friend I know who works at the Mann about the old guy. He hadn’t seen the incident, but after I told him about it, he asked around. He said it was the funniest thing: The old guy was tossed into the drunk tank, which is basically just a spare dressing room with cinder block walls where they always lock up unruly guests while they wait for the cops to come take them away. Anyway, he says when they went to let him out, the old dude was nowhere to be found. He was just gone, even though the door was locked at the only window had this mesh covering on it you can’t remove. “Everybody’s minds are blown right now,” my friend said.

So weird.

But this is all true, a true story, as true as I can remember.

UPDATE: Now I'm being told by my friend who was with me at the show that none of this happened like I remember it. That there was no old man, and the concert was not interrupted at any point. Not sure what to make of that.