Seven days. A week ago I hadn't heard of Stephin Merritt or any of his bands. The first Magnetic Fields performance I saw was near the culmination of one of the three most perfect weeks of my life. I dragged my oldest friend, Jeremy, along to see them on a sunny Saturday afternoon in a tent at the WOMAD festival, purely on the strength that the most interesting music at the moment seems to be coming out of the American independent sector. First we were amused, then captivated, then speechless. Only after it was all over could we admit to each other that we'd been crying. I bought 69 Love Songs the next day at the festival, and played it to our other friends on the boat we had hired for our holiday on the River Thames. They were gutted that they'd missed the gig. Well, we thought we'd witnessed the early days of a new band surely destined for a meteoric rise, and were all shocked to find that that this was the fifth album of a band who'd been around for almost a decade. To be honest, I was a bit put out and bemused that I'd managed to miss out on hearing of Merritt for so long. Back in the office on Tuesday I did a web search, and was beautifully surprised to find out how many resources are out there from wonderful people like the Treehouse. I also found that the Magnetic Fields were playing two more gigs in the UK. I mailed Jeremy to tell him of the gig that night in London (where he lives). Sadly, he told me it was sold out. But I managed to get tickets for the show in Birmingham last night. I talked my second oldest friend Tim into coming along, and we drove down. Arriving early, we got a table right in front of the stage. This time it was just Stephin and Claudia (Sam also played at WOMAD), and they also played songs from the forthcoming 6ths' album. A very intimate experience. I have ordered further albums by the 6ths, and Future Bible Heroes, as well as the Wayward Bus, and I anticipate their arrival keenly. Many more people will be hearing about Stephin's work from me very soon.
I was prattling on, evidently, but I was still a bit giddy. I honestly don't think I'd have created this site if it hadn't been for 69 Love Songs. I wouldn't have bought over 350 albums in the next two and a half years had it not been for this demonstration, this reaffirmation, that you can do incredible things with popular song. I just got more interested in life and art from that point in, and this energy spilled over into an increased appetite for novels and going to art galleries with D (though I never managed to convert her).
The WOMAD was one of those that sustains you for years afterwards. To fill in the background, Iwas at the end of the most turbulent 15 months of my life. My work life still felt in crisis as I left for a week's holiday on a boat on the Thames with Jeremy plus Zoe and Katie (neither of whom I'd met previously). In the midst of a terrible summer weatherwise, we had the one perfect week. We only got as far as Cookham before we had to turn back to moor next to the festival site at Reading (credit to Jeremy for this plan, which is definitely the most civilised way to experience a festival, with your own kitchen, shower and loo). We were very well Relaxed by Saturday afternoon when I suggested to J that we check out this band called The Magnetic Fields, partly for the reason given in my account above, but partly because my ears needed a break from those global polyrhythms. To hedge our bets, we sat just outside the tent where the band were playing, so we could top up our suntans if the music was doing it for us. Stephin had already started A Pretty Girl... when we got there. J asked the guy next to him how the 'cookies' he was eating were, and he very generously offered one, which J split in two and shared with me. So far, so ordinary. It was just after Come Back from San Francisco that I turned to J and asked, "Is it just me, or was that rather beautiful?" (here's the full setlist). But it was Book of Love that really got me, because we were starting to get used to the heavily mordant attitude towards love, and "the book of love is long and boring" seemed like more in the same (rich vein). To then have the mood turn on a sixpence, with "but I love it when you read to me, and you can read me anything", just sent me into a spin. And things were never quite the same after that, either on that sunny afternoon, or since. By Abigail, Belle of Kilronan my jaw was starting to shake, so hard was I sobbing.
You always have to pinch yourself in those situations and accept the fact that maybe it was just a coincidence of everthing that had been building up inside me for months together with the perfect week and the sun and the music, and now it was just letting itself out. But J felt exactly the same, saying immediately afterwards that he thought it was the best gig he'd ever seen — so it wasn't just me. We wondered if it might be the cookies (we called them the 'crying cookies'), but when I took the CD back to the boat the next evening and flicked through the tracks, we knew it wasn't that either — and Zoe and Katie fell in love with the songs too.
It's a risky thing to play your Favourite Album Ever. What if you find you don't like it so much any more? I mostly ration myself to about one listen a year (all the way through, beginning to end, no dipping, because the scale matters). I've yet to be disappointed. In fact I fall in love all over again. Because, among the 69, there's always a handful that I've forgotten that jump out and catch me unawares, making me swoon (this time: The Sun Goes Down and the World Goes Dancing, The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure).
I felt a similar sense of anxiety about impossibly high expectations when we went to see the full 69 Love Songs show at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2001. And a similar sense of vicarious vindication when the performances were such a triumph. We (J, me, Zoe, Lucie and maybe Katie) were in the second row. Mark, James and friends were in the front row — a deserved perk for putting up LD and Shirley from the band, I think — but I didn't know them then.) Jess and Radi a couple of rows further back.
There had been a big spat on the mailing list the previous month when the band had played a cover version of John Cage's 4'33" in Boston (cheating the audience or elegant solution to the conundrum of adding an arbitrary 1 to the 69? — obviously the latter). So we didn't know whether to expect any encore this time round. At the end of the Friday show this old guy walks on stage in a bright red shirt and waistcoat, looking like the roadie foreman, followed by Stephin with his ukulele. I caught a whisper behind me, "Peter Gabriel", and then I recognised him. I made a face at Jeremy but he plainly didn't know what I was on about. Then they started The Book of Love, and the voice immediately gave the game away.
At least I assumed it had, but Radi didnt even know who it was after the show had ended. When I told him, he was dead excited and said he wanted to shake Peter Gabriel's hand. I told him PG was still loitering up by the Circle Bar, and Radi had the nerve to walk right up to him and say hello. Later on I stepped across the rope barrier to join the after-party. Well, LD had invited me to "come and say Hello after the show," so that's what I did. And LD himself was charming, even when Mark pointed out the microphone for my mini-disc player that was still showing… Inevitably I was too intimidated by Stephin's reputation even to approach him; and it seemed many others were too. I didn't even make it as far as telling Daniel Handler how much I'd loved The Basic Eight. Elsewhere, J told how he had had a brief exchange with Shirley, and had decided that she was the one for him.
 MusicBrainz entry for this albumWikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album 69 Love Songs wiki |
Noting the reference to a minidisc recorder, I don't suppose you happen to have a recording of Peter Gabriel performing 'The Book of Love' with Magnetic Fields? If so I'd very much like to have such an unusual and rare recording...
Posted by: Colin B | 07 January 2008 at 02:29 PM
"a deserved perk for putting up LD and Shirley from the band, I think"
It wasn't actually. I had no comps for those shows, they were all Paid For.
Posted by: mym | 23 July 2008 at 02:29 PM
Ah, sorry about that. I hope you got perks of other kinds (and not just those exclusive performances by Shirley and LD round at yours)!
Posted by: David | 23 July 2008 at 02:42 PM