Live at Jittery Joe's [ENHANCED] [LIVE]

Jeff Mangum

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 18, 2001)
• Original Release Date: June 19, 2001
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced, Live
• Label: Orange Twin
• ASIN: B00005M09D
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,540 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Live at Jitter Joe's is a long-rumored recording of the Neutral Milk Hotel lead singer performing at an Athens, Georgia, coffee shop in early 1997. His set includes selections from On Avery Island and In the Aeroplane over the Sea (the latter of which would not appear for another year), a generous portion of B-sides and unreleased tracks, and a heartfelt cover of Phil Spector's "I Love How You Love Me." It's enthralling to hear these songs in such a casual, unadorned setting: one envies the small crowd in attendance. Mangum's clearly having fun, joking with the audience and asking for requests. It's particularly revealing when he refers to "Two-Headed Boy, Part II" as a song that "will probably never come out or anything," and spontaneously decides to merge a short hymn to Jesus with "Up and Over We Go"--a medley that would later turn up on record as "King of Carrot Flowers, Part II and III." Also included: a QuickTime video of the entire set shot by video director Lance Bangs. It's just Mangum in almost complete darkness, with a few colored lights hanging behind him and a small child cavorting in the background. The visuals are sweet yet mysterious--the perfect accompaniment to these brilliant songs. --Mike Appelstein

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I would pay whatever it took to see Jeff Mangum perform., December 7, 2005

By	Wendell Chancellor (Utah) - See all my reviews

If you told me Jeff Mangum would be playing again for a few friends at a coffee house in Athens, Georgia: I would leave before you finished telling me. I would pay just about whatever price it took to get there. I would ride forty hours on a bus. I would drive through two nights. I would take rides from truckers who listen to nothing but Neil Diamond.

And I would do it just to hear Jeff perform again.

You see, by the time I first tuned in, the Jeff-Mangum-Neutral-Milk-Hotel-Elephant-Six train had left the station. By then, all chances of seeing Jeff and NMH perform live had long since dried up. This is why "Live at Jittery Joe's" is such a gift.

"Live at Jittery Joe's" offers a glimpse of an artist on the brink. Jeff is about to paint his masterpiece. He will record "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" within the next year or so of this performance. The fascination of "Live at Jittery Joe's" is hearing that all the elements are there--waiting for Jeff (and NMH and Robert Schneider) to bring them together.

There is a haunting beauty and an emotional ache about "Live at Jittery Joe's." At no moment is it deeper than when Jeff sings Phil Spector's "I Love How You Love Me." We ache because we know the end of the story; NMH records "Aeroplane," tours, tours some more, and then Jeff falls of the map. Perhaps for good.

For me, the most poignant moments come in watching the Quicktime video of the evening (included with the CD). In some measure, Jeff's music is about childhood, innocence and the loss of that innocence. During the video, Jeff fades into the darkness and the camera follows a two-year-old girl, playing in the background. Her image matches and intensifies the effect of the music.

Realistically, this shouldn't be your introduction to Jeff's music. Buy "Aeroplane" first. Digest it some. Buy "On Avery Island." Then you will be ready for "Live at Jittery Joe's."

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars vulnerability at its most beautiful, September 9, 2001

By	"twoheadedgirl" (Tempe, AZ) - See all my reviews

Jeff Mangum has a way with words that I have never encountered before. At first listen, his songs sound unassuming and happy, but slipped into their charming melodies are heartaching stories of unresolved love and pain (many loosely based on the Diary of Anne Frank). His voice is untrained and vulnerable and utterly captivating with its unusual turns. His lyrics are obscure and strange, becoming more accessible and beautiful with further listening.

Recorded in 1997, Jitter Joe's provides an intimate conglomeration of "On Avery Island" and early versions of songs from "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", plus a wistful cover of Phil Spector's "I Love How You Love Me". "Two Headed Boy Pt. Two" stands out in particular, with alternate lyrics from the album, along with "Naomi" and "Oh Comely". Where the previous versions of these songs are accompanied by trumpets and electronics, Jeff Mangum plays alone on this album, and offers a simple but poignant look at the man who is the genius behind Neutral Milk Hotel. There is much interaction with the audience between tracks, and interesting explanations for some of the songs are given. The entire show is included on the CD as a Quicktime video. An absolutely incredible album.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the song as poetry, and other reasons people are windbags, April 1, 2005

By	C. Hopf "parlorus" (austin, tx) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What's your idea of a song? Personally, I do want good musicianship; I don't want to hear a garage band who can't keep time try to play songs that were awful in the first place. But more importantly, I look for good lyrics. I think what makes good lyrics is whether they can stand on their own, basically as poetry. A song should be the extended form of poetry.

Having said that, I have read a few reviews, on Amazon and other places, where the writers criticize Mangum's lyrics because they don't get them, or because fan they have spoken to don't understand them, and thus, by logical reasoning, they must be completely nonsensical ravings of a "pretentious" artist. But does misunderstanding mean a song, or a poem, is not any good? I would guess that the majority of people do not understand The Wasteland, but still it is considered to be the 20th century's greatest English language poem. Who has labeled it in this manner? Scholars who have studied poetry a lot more than me.

If literature is not understood the first time it is read (heard), or even the second or third, and is thus labeled as garbage, we might not have The Wasteland, or Ulysses, or Gravity's Rainbow, or hundreds of other works that actually take time and brain power to understand. Although I understand that most popular music today is made for people who have developed incredibly short attention spans and have the incessant need for immediate payoff and understanding, it doesn't mean that all music has to be made this way, nor does it mean that if someone does not follow this formula it immediately forces the work into the category of uselessness or gibberish. So, if you hate Mangum's work because you don't understand it, I can understand that, as you've been accustomed to being treated as a nonthinking fool by so much music, but I still don't believe it to be valid reasoning.

And I've heard complaints of the recording quality. Well, this is a LIVE recording. It was not recorded in a studio. Live recordings are never as good as studio recordings (well...hardly ever). If you expect perfect sound quality from music and cannot stand anything less, don't get this cd. However, if you trade or dabble in live bootlegs, or even go to shows, it is an average, perhaps a little above average recording. Yes, you can hear the crowd, and yes there is a baby in the crowd. Big deal. That is what live means.