Archeologists will one day puzzle over the intense fandom Neutral Milk Hotel enjoyed from a certain kind of hipster after the combo’s breakup in 1999. For a while there NMH’s final album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea became a talisman for a band who had become gone out of business around the time that Napster hit, generating intense feelings of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) among those checking Pitchfork multiple times a day and perusing early mp3 blogs like Fluxblog and Said the Gramophone.

So NMH became inordinately adored for a stretch, but the band’s extensive tour dates in 2013 through 2015 restored its reputation back where it belongs, as a fine band that is not, perhaps, the second coming of Jefferson Airplane’s Lonely Hearts Club Band starring Jimi Hendrix.

The most FOMO-stricken of NMH’s fans would pretty much kill to have been able to attend the band’s gig at a Halloween party in 1997 in their base of Athens, Georgia. The show is noteworthy for being the first time Neutral Milk Hotel ever played “The King of Carrot Flowers Pt 1” and “Holland, 1945” as a full band.

Plus some members of REM were reportedly in attendance, appropriately decked out in Halloween costumes, which certainly ups the show’s cool factor.
 

Setlist:
Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2
The Fool
The King of Carrot Flowers Pt 1
Everything Is
The King of Carrot Flowers Pts 2 & 3
Naomi
Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone
Holland, 1945
Ruby Bulbs
(unknown)/All the Colors of the Rainbow
Snow Song, Pt. 1

 
via Stereogum
 
Photo: Matt Billings
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Here it is, your intentionally shitty ska version of Neutral Milk Hotel’s greatest album