Music Tapes Want to Play in Your Front Yard

God bless Julian Koster. God bless him and his completely unaffected by anything, no frills, no nonsense approach to playing music. The Music Tapes have said to hell with guarantees and rock clubs, and tickets, and all that, and have announced their plan to do a tour beginning tonight in which they will be traveling from city to city “caroling” playing songs from their newly released collection of singing saw tunes.

Households that would like to invite Julian and his friends to come carol may do so up until the night before the carolers arrive in your town by sending an invitation to musictapescaroling@gmail.com or by mailing a written invitation to:

Music Tapes Caroling
c/o G. Stewart
175 Talmadge Street, Apt. 1
Athens, GA 30605

Written invitations will be given priority, should arrive a few days before the carolers arrive, and include an email address or telephone number for reply. Invitations where the inviters indicate that they would be willing to entertain outside guests on caroling night are preferred. Once the limit on houses on a given night has been reached, the address of each house that will welcome guests will be distributed via email to all who email musictapescaroling@gmail.com and ask to attend. The addresses of the houses will not be posted online.
The dates are below,

Caroling Dates:
Nov 11th Savannah, GA
Nov 12th Chapel Hill, NC
Nov 13th Charlotte, NC (afternoon) / Atlanta, Ga
Nov 14th Athens, GA
Nov 16th Nashville, TN
Nov 17th St. Louis, MO
Nov 18th Memphis, TN
Nov 19th Hammond / Baton Rouge LA
Nov 20th Houston, TX
Nov 21st Austin, TX
Nov 22nd Denton, TX
Nov 24th Lawrence KS
Nov 26th Minneapolis, MN
Nov 27th Madison, WI
Nov 28th Chicago IL
Nov 29th Grand Rapids/Lansing, MI
Nov 30th Ann Arbor area, MI
Dec 1st Toronto, Canada
Dec 3rd Buffalo, NY
Dec 4th Geneseo, NY
Dec 5th Oswego, NY
Dec 6th Bennington, VT
Dec 7th New London, NH
Dec 8th Boston / Cambridge, MA
Dec 12th Philadelphia, PA
Dec 13th NYC
Dec 14th NYC
Dec TBA Maine

If this is not the coolest thing ever, please explain what is.

[mp3] Music Tapes – Hark the Herald Angels Sing
[mp3] Music Tapes – Majesty

Do all these Mangum sightings possibly mean a NMH reunion?

In case you haven’t looked at an mp3 blog this week: Neutral Milk Hotel front-man Jeff Mangum has turned up on several stops of the Elephant 6 Surprise Holiday tour to sing along with his old buddies from various Elephant 6 bands, namely Julian Koster’s Music Tapes. Seeing Jeff Mangum twice in one week is sort of like the equivalent of running into anyone else 55 times in an hour, as we’ve only seen the reclusive, and seamingly slightly agoraphobic singer a handful of times since the late 1990’s.

So, all these sightings have people asking; “Is there a reunion planned?!” Well, of course that’s impossible for me to know dear reader, but I have a tieline in mind that I’d like to openly propose to anyone close to Merge, Neutral Milk Hotel, or Jeff Mangum who might be out there. By now, the quarterly royalty checks from In The Aeroplane Over the Sea have to be running a bit thin, so I’m sure Jeff has taken to some unfortunate day job – let me propose this as a means of correcting this:

1.) January 2009 – Jeff Mangum releases cryptic press release with shadowy, impossible to make out photograph of himself playing a piano, promising an upcoming album of some sorts.

2.) March 2009 – Merge announced upcoming release of Jeff Mangum solo album, featuring everyone who has ever lived in Athens, Georgia – world goes crazy.

3.) May 2009 – Merge releases Jeff Mangum solo album, with promises of a ten-city tour of the U.S.

4.) June 2009 – Days after the release of said solo album, Jeff gets cold feet and decides to sink back into hiding out in his basement, or whatever he’s been doing all these years.

5.) Late June 209 – Pitchfork gives album a 10.176, officially breaking the ten point barrier for the first time ever.

6.) October 2009 – Jeff Mangum peaks out from behind a curtain at some show in New York and the world goes crazy with rumors of that tour happening after all and another Jeff Mangum album coming out.

7.) October 2010 – Neutral Milk Hotel plays a show in Athens and a show in New York. Now thirty-something hipsters go crazy, spend their entire trust fund to fly there and pay 350 dollars for a ticket to the show on craigslist.

8.) Jeff sinks back into reclusiveness until the funds start to wear thin again. We live happily until then.

[mp3] Neutral Milk Hotel – Holland, 1945
[mp3] Neutral Milk Hotel – Naomi
[mp3] Neutral Milk Hotel – Engine (Live)

Music Tapes Announce Surprise Tour!

Head Music Tape Julian Koster has announced a quite rare, quite exciting, quite disappointing they’re not coming closer to me tour. The band for this tour is nothing short of stellar: featuring songs of the Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Circulatory System and, of course Music Tapes and including Will Cullen Hart of the Olivia Tremor Control, Scott Spillane of the Gerbils and NMH, Laura Carter of Elf Power, Eric Harris of OTC and Circulatory System and more.

Dates below. Get out your vintage Athens T-shirts.

Music Tapes 2008 Tour Dates!
10/09 Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506
10/11 NYC @ Knitting Factory
10/12 Boston, MA @ The Church
10/14 Portland, ME @ Space Gallery
10/15 Hamden, CT @ The Space
10/16 Purchase, NY @ SUNY Purchase
10/17 Rochester, NY @ The Bug Jar
10/18 Pittsburgh, PA @ Brillobox
10/19 Columbus, OH @ Wexner Center
10/20 Pontiac, MI @ Pike Room – Crofoot
10/21 Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
10/22 Bloomington, IN @ Cinemat
10/23 Lexington, KY @ University of Kentucky
10/25 NYC @ Mercury Lounge – Merge CMJ Showcase – The Music Tapes Only

[mp3] Music Tapes – Majesty
[mp3] Neutral Milk Hotel – Snow Song Part 1 (Live)

Buy the newly released For Clouds & Tornadoes here!

Stream Music Tapes New LP / See a show in the park

Julian Koster : resident of the Neutral Milk Hotel, founder of Music Tapes, and friend to singing saws everywhere didn’t just make that singing saw Christmas album I mentioned. His band Music Tapes also made a new record called For Clouds & Tornadoes to be released by Merge on Tuesday, and you can hear the whole thing at their website for free by clicking here.

Also, if you’re in New York, Julian announced on his hard to find website that he would be playing a show for 2 stuffed animals in the park and that you could come if you found an acorn with a music note on it. The rain apparently forced him to reschedule for tonight at “10:46 pm, not a moment sooner.” Read the handwritten details right here, and follow his link to the original instructions to find out how to get “tickets.” Wish I was in New York right about now.

EDIT: This show could very well have happened last year, and slipped under the radar. Some say yes, some say no. All I know is I got 2 different tips from people that it was tonight. Anyone know for sure?

[mp3] Neutral Milk Hotel – Communist Daughter
[mp3] Music Tapes – Majesty

Pre-order For Clouds & Tornadoes at Insound.