Menomena Saturday, Nov. 24

[November 21st, 2007]

[EXPERIMENTAL POP] Menomena’s Danny Seim isn’t just a great drummer—he’s a funny dude who knows how to write. Seim has kept journals for WW’s music site, LocalCut.com, through multiple Menomena tours since last March, and his posts are the most popular feature in the history of the site. In honor of the band’s homecoming show with the Shaky Hands (another LC tour diary favorite), we’ve compiled some of our all-time favorite Menomena tour diary moments.

Phoenix (March 2007)
Meeting [Menomena multi-instrumentalist] Justin [Harris]’s family is like meeting humanized snippets of his own unique personality traits. It’s a fascinating thing. According to Harris folklore, Uncle Richard is legendary for pounding the cushions of the family couch with this fists, deeply inhaling and exclaiming, “I’m getting high on the farts of all the people who have ever sat here!”

San Francisco (June 2007)
Amoeba [Music] has always been one of those record stores where I casually (sweating nervously) stroll past the “M” section and pretend to be deeply engrossed in Menudo, the Mendoza Line and Men at Work while desperately hoping I’ll find a Menomena CD or two. I’ve never had any luck. I always leave feeling worthless, like I’ve forever failed the Gods of Musical Critique and am therefore forever banished to an exclusive agreement with CDBaby.com (no offense, CD Baby. I love you, but come on. You’d cheerfully carry William Hung’s jazz fusion side project if he paid your $40 introductory fee).

London-bound airplane (July 2007)
I was not a man. I was a hyperventilating, fidgeting, restless, 6-foot-9 trembling mess of a person…. So I did what I always do in that specific situation. I prayed without ceasing, just like my mother used to tell me to do. I prayed so fast and so furiously that my desperately whispered cries for divine intervention began to unconsciously mash up with Snow’s 1992 crossover dancehall hit, “Informer”: “You-know-say-daddy-me-snow-me-i-going-blame…please-god-don’t-let-this-plane-crash-now!…detective-man-say-say-daddy-me-snow-me-stabbed-someone-down-the-lane…don’t let-this-plane-crash-now!” I didn’t even stop to think about how offended I would be if I were in God’s position at that moment. I didn’t have time to. I was too busy preparing to die.