...we tend to do that

[1]

Once every so often, the constant hyperbole I spew ends up actually being vindicated by an event so phenomenal that my peers forget about the rather shoddy reliability of my opinion. Not that my taste is bad, in fact, quite the contrary. However, I tend to get excited about things so far onto the fringes of acceptable society, that when people finally take the plunge, there's sort of a vacuum of enthusiasm leaving the room, along with my wavering credibility (Dan Deacon, anyone?). Sunday, however, was one such day where the heavens smiled upon those daring enough to listen, and they heard the voice of God, projected through pennywhistles and ten dollar organs.

Man Man rocked everyone in a manner I didn't think could happen to me at this jaded point in my existence. I would say it was the greatest thing I've ever seen. Better than when Mudhoney played for 75 people in Green Bay, better than that time I was walking with Sarah and saw that guy fall out of a tree, better than when I saw "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" the day it came out in theatres at Andy Reiff's first grade birthday party. Furthermore, it was a uniter, not a divider. Modest Mouse (the headliner) brought a pretty diverse crowd (in the good, and bad ways), and to thoroughly astound that many people is a feat for the ages. Their supreme dominance is pretty much summed up by the following exchange with Ted, immediately following the set, right outside of the bathroom.

"Dude, that was the greatest fucking thing I've ever seen. I think you blew my mind."
"yeah... we tend to do that."

The craziest thing is, the entirety of their skillset seems to be the aforementioned mindblowing. Their MySpace is a series of pencil drawings and random clip art, their website is a mere list of tourdates, and their Wikipedia entry is rather useless. Aside of forced exposure from a quasi-hipster douchebag like myself, I can't even imagine a scenario where someone would run into this. In a way, it's almost better that way. There's an old Iggy Pop interview where he discusses how he's trying to make himself obsolete. Like, if people take his lead, and put enough emotion and expressiveness into their own art, then he could stop slicing himself open, and rubbing peanut butter on his naked ass, and become a fucking plumber. But they won't, so he can't. It's like, rather than preach to the converted, Man Man just go out and wreck house, trying to bash skulls towards epiphany, night after night. It's rather staggering.




[1] Apparently, there's this acid headed Korean showwith a paragraph long title, two words of which are "Man Man", and it's posted all over YouTube. It's sort of like "Figure It Out", but instead of waiting for Lori Beth Denberg to have a mixed ethnicity child with the cokehead from Nick Arcade, you see Korean celebrities make sexual innuendo laden comments back and forth under the pretense of ripping off Family Feud. I chose this particular clip, not only because it's about man boobs, but also because you can faintly hear "Little Green Bag" by George Baker in the background, and that song is fucking amazing.

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Below, an assortment for fans new and old. First up, a cover of the old folk song "Little Boxes", performed by Man Man, and aired this season on "Weeds" (which is bomb, obviously). Pretty much the entire lineup of performers from seasons two and three were amazing (Decemberists and Devendra Banhart fucking nailed it), but it's doubly pleasing to hear the old lyrics damning suburbia coming from a band that would probably scare the shit out of your parents. Donovan? Not so much. After that, is a cover of an old Etta James song that the Faces used to play all the time. Finally, a live rendition of their single from the last album. It's not exactly representative of what's happening at their shows right now (which is being used as an opportunity to show off new material), but it's still dope nonetheless.



Man Man - Little Boxes (Weeds Theme/Malvina Reynolds Cover)



Man Man - I Would Rather Go Blind (Etta James Cover)



Man Man - Van Helsing Jukebox (live)