Nights to Remember
The Magnetic Fields at Town Hall in New York City
Town Hall in New York City will always be special to me because of the time I saw Norm MacDonald perform there and how I remember it.
I think we were late? And I feel like people were smoking in their seats? But even if that isn’t true, we were in a movie watching another movie. The silence between his words hung just shy of, or maybe beyond, trolling, but the pause was really out of respect for the moment, the pace, the timing…and our time together. The jokes hitting in these moments not with nervous laughter, but with reverence for the resonance of the second, third and further thoughts that it allowed. And for that special night, Town Hall will always mean so much to me.
And now it means even more as I was lucky enough to be in attendance as The Magnetic Fields performed their album 69 Love Songs over the course of two nights at Town Hall, another collection of moments turned into a movie that I’ll never quite remember correctly, but will always remember fondly and with wonder.
That said, Town Hall’s got issues. It’s old as hell, there’s not enough bathrooms and intermission is HELL. Here’s what you’re gonna wanna do. Are you going to get two drinks anyway? Order a double. It’s way too expensive. But you’re going to get it anyway and you’re not going to have time to get a refill at intermission because…there’s not enough bathrooms. There are two. A men’s room and A women’s room. Hold tight. You CAN get through it. It will look like you’ll never get back to your seats in time, but you will. As long as you don’t ALSO have to wait for the bar.
The Magnetic Fields are one of the best bands to listen to on a rainy night. And if you listen to them at any other time, all the best things about a rainy night will come back to you.
And 69 Love Songs may be their best example of that. As the album title says, 69 love songs: real, imagined, romantic, impressionistic, indulgent, ironic, humorous and… Well, you know the rest of the good adjectives, don’t you?
I came to the Magnetic Fields very late and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t come up with a good enough story of how I came to them, but they have been one of my favorite pillows to lay my head on whenever I want to imagine at least 69 affairs I have not and will never have.
And hearing 69 Love Songs performed live while sitting next to my love - to whom I am working on attributing a narrative of introducing me to the band in the first place - was truly a gift.
If you have not heard the Magnetic Fields before, don’t be afraid to hear them for the first time live. Both you and I will be jealous of that moment, whenever we remember it…however we remember it.
Maybe it was during our affair.
I hope you enjoy the following gallery of photos I took during some of my favorite performances from the two nights.
This didn’t fit into the overall conceit of the piece, but I think my favorite moments from these Magnetic Fields shows involved watching the performers who were not performing on a particular song simply enjoying the song, swaying perhaps or just smiling and having a private moment in front of everyone in the theater.