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Saturday, February 13, 2010
The second show of The Magnetic Fields' two-night stand at Boston's Wilbur Theatre was full of memorable moments, and for anyone who's seen them before, you know I'm not just talking about the music. The back-and-forth between Stephin Merritt and bandmate/manager/longtime friend Claudia Gonson ranges anywhere from awkwardly amusing to flat-out funny, and we had a whole bunch of that between the 30-or-so songs they treated us to on Thursday night.  From Claudia's opinion on the Who playing the Superbowl ("It must have been a recession special. Aren't those guys like 70 or something?") to discussion of their intermission ritual (tea-warming and coke-snorting?), to the best place to avoid vampires (gay bars, because there are so many mirrors), the unplanned asides can bring as many laughs as the dry wit in Merritt's lyrics. But one diatribe in particular struck me, mostly because I'm an Okkervil River fan. Here's what Mr. Merritt had to say before the band kicked into "We Are Having A Hootenanny", off their just-released "Realism"... Stephin Merritt: So I was just buying this hat, in a clothing store - as you can tell, not a wrinkle on it - and they were playing an album by a band called Aqua-something River?Gotta wonder if Okkervil River's Will Sheff had a serious case of burning ear on Thursday night as he received that fairly impressive long-distance compliment.  Also pointedly amusing, after the band descended into a downward spiral of banter during the encore, was this quick one... CG: We're playing to 2300 people in a couple of days (ed: tonight at Brookyn's BAM), and we're going to get our act together. Be professional. We're going to dress up and shut up.OH SNAP!  |
 neil halstead live in cambridge, ma on november 14th, 2008 previously: joy formidable - boston 2011 recent posts on the 'nac...
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