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Jeff Mangum showed up @ Knitting Factory last night - pic

Jeff Mangum @ Knitting Factory, NYC – Oct 11, 2008 (jbeauchamp)
Jeff Mangum

As everyone hoped/expected, Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum made another one of his mysterious appearances at the NYC stop on the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour. It happened at Knitting Factory Saturday night. Anonymous said he was on stage for “for about 5 minutes total out of a 2.5 hour show”. Cait wrote in with this description…

Jeff Mangum walked onstage 3 times last night at the amazing Elephant 6 collective show — first just for the chorus of a song, about halfway through, then again for just a chorus, and finally at the last song (“The Opera House” by Olivia Tremor Control, before the encores) when he went NUTS and sang for the whole song. He was jumping around and sort of tackled Scott Spillane halfway through and put him in a headlock. He had the most intense look in his eyes the whole time he was on stage. Everyone chanted “Jeff Jeff Jeff”, and someone was yelling for songs from Aeroplane (“anything from that album!!! you have to!!”) but all we got from that album was Julian Koster and Scott Spillane doing a stripped-down, unpracticed version of The Fool, “dedicated to a friend”, which Julian said they hadn’t practiced in years. I’m sure you’ll get more emails about it — it was incredible.

We’ll have more pictures from the whole show later. In the meantime, here’s a video…

Elephant 6 Collective at Knitting Factory NYC 10-11-08

all in all it was a fun night… I love Jeff but he was really on stage for about 5 minutes total out of a 2.5 hour show… Olivia Tremor Control did about 5 songs in different forms throughout the evening which was a highlight and I guess a Neutral Milk Hotel song was played but it was an instrumental.. “The Fool” from Aeroplane , done by Scott and Julian from NMH with one or two other people. It wasn’t the most spot on version but a nice surprise nonetheless ..they did dedicate it to a “friend” wink.. good times! [Anonymous]