swarbles.

mornings-as-a-mouse:

“Also, there was some band before him, which was okay. They were kind of behind in time and probably don’t know what war we’re in or that there are black people in Connecticut. “

- some terrible magazine writer, about the music tapes.

this was actually written in an article in vice magazine. it amazes me how lazy and uneducated journalists are these days. 

i was trying to avoid posting this really long rant i wrote this weekend expanding on a different post my dear rabbit friend posted this weekend about how terrible people have been about the music tapes during this most recent string of jeff shows that they have opened for, but i can’t handle this anymore, so i am going to post it because i’m so absurdly defensive about and protective of the music tapes because i love them so much and people being mean about them breaks my heart.  and i think posting it will make me feel better?  i don’t know.

a summation, in case you find this entirely too long (it is entirely too long); i probably should not have the internet.  to quote daria morgendorffer, “i’m too smart and too sensitive to live in a world like ours.”  (except maybe minus the smart part, although i did really well in aquaculture and psychology before i dropped out of college.)

i don’t understand how it is possible that there are people who have seen the music tapes open for jeff who don’t even know who julian is in relation to neutral milk hotel.  i can kind of understand not knowing who the music tapes are, since there are a lot of neutral milk hotel fans who don’t bother to explore the catalog of the elephant six recording company, but to not know who julian is seems… odd.  during the first batch of dates, i remember reading that somebody who went to the show in woodstock, new york, and the music tapes weren’t opening (i don’t think.  maybe they were?  this was october.  i have no recollection of october past looking for cans of one pie pumpkin as though it was my job), but that julian joined jeff on engine during, posted something amongst the lines of “some guy came and played the saw with jeff.  i have no idea who he was, but he wasn’t as good as the guy who played on in the aeroplane over the sea.”

how are you lacking in the basic knowledge about this band that you supposedly “love” that you don’t even recognize one of the players when he’s playing right in front of you?

or people who think the music tapes are boring.  i can understand that some people do not enjoy their music, but they do not, by any stretch of the imagination, put on a boring show.

or how people can say that they flat out hate the music tapes.  i understand that their music is not for everyone, and that not everybody likes the same things, but to say you hate it?  it makes me sad when people don’t appreciate what they’re doing or see how other people can find their style of music appealing.  and are there really people out there who can’t find a single thing in their music that they like?  it makes no sense to me, given that a lot of the things julian brought to neutral milk hotel are also things he is doing with the music tapes.

the other night i read on someone’s blog who had gone to one of the brooklyn shows or the show in connecticut that they “didn’t care for julian’s influence on the music tapes” and referred to julian as “jeff’s borderline autistic hanger-on.”

to quote the interwebs: what is this, i don’t even.

julian doesn’t influence the music tapes, because he IS the music tapes.  without julian, there would be no music tapes.  it’s not as though the music tapes were someone else’s band that he took over.  and then to refer to him as jeff’s hanger-on is the most bizarre statement, since julian has been out in the public eye and doing things while jeff’s been missing in action.  sure, julian disappears from the public eye every once in a while too, but he’s still making and releasing music, whereas jeff’s answers at these shows about if he’s recording anything or planning on releasing anything new ever again have been pretty haphazard.  and it’s not as though julian is using his association with jeff to try to become more famous.  julian is not doing what he is doing to try to become some sort of super famous, ridiculously well known musician.  he is doing it because he loves it and if other people like it, that’s great.  and i’m not even going to touch the autistic statement because that’s just a jackass thing to say about anyone.  but whoever it was posted that they LOVED when julian performed with jeff, because this character is obviously a pretentious jerkface who didn’t deserve to see the two of them together*.

tumblr is super great at making me really dislike most neutral milk hotel fans and wishing that i could suddenly start to not care about neutral milk hotel anymore and making me really defensive about and protective of the music tapes (although i am always super defensive about and protective of the music tapes, so that is nothing new).

also, a related aside that i have been dwelling on forever.

everybody (but mostly teenage girls): stop calling julian a cute, adorable baby (or some variation on this theme [“sexi babi” {what sort of brain damage have you incurred that you think it’s okay to spell like that?}]).  he’s probably old enough to be most of your fathers.  how would you feel if someone started calling your dad a cute baby?  probably a little weirded out.  maybe that’s a bad example, but i mean.  he’s well past the realm of being any sort of baby.  he is a terribly handsome and attractive gentlefellow and one of the most beautiful and wonderful human beings to ever exist for certain, but oh my gosh, calling him an “adorbs widdle bb” (or something just as disgusting) makes me want to punch you in the face, and i typically don’t want to punch anything or anybody, let alone someone i don’t even know, and let alone in the face.  you can say he is adorable and cute and has done adorable and cute things (like giving scritches to and dangling snowflakes in front of a cat that lives with you at one in the morning, or when he winks at you after you make a terrible joke or when you’re watching little kids watch him play the saw while riding a chariot on a carousel in a top hat), but he’s not an adorable baby or a cute baby or any sort of baby.  and he’s especially not a “babby.”  that non-word makes you sound like you had a lobotomy.  stop using it.  same with “bb;” he is not a tiny pellet comprised of many metals that is shot out of an air rifle.

oh my gosh.

SO PROTECTIVE.

(*it is probable that my feelings about this are bitter’d due to the fact that of all the members of neutral milk hotel i would like to see jeff play with, julian is number one on the list.  julian is actually probably the entire list.)

(also i feel like tumblr didn’t used to be comprised mostly of teenage girls.  am i wrong about this?  for a while, it seemed like most of the users were in their early twenties, but now, not so much.  maybe it only seemed that way because i was in my mid twenties when i started using it?  who knows.)