A friend of mine just started getting into the music of The Mountain Goats and I started an email to them, and the email kept getting longer, so I decided to blog it.

Erin McKeown did a great cover of one of the early songs on the "I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats" podcast, ep 104: "Jenny". Episode webpage, media file.

A live version of "Old College Try" I really enjoy. Recorded at the Bell House in Brooklyn!

A fanfic I wrote about 2 TMG songs.

A quote from Darnielle that speaks to me: "Indie 101, do stuff that defeats your own purpose. Reflexively, routinely." quoting from about 3:00 to 3:15 in the "Leaving Home" track in this 2007 concert recording.

An old interview with Darnielle that I liked.

His blog "Last Plane to Jakarta" has some stuff I have really enjoyed, like this post:

Well, I stumbled across it somehow, I'm not sure how, and I watched it, and I had one of those experiences you have sometimes with a band you've never heard playing a song you don't know. One of those transformative reaffirming experiences, which you then get religious about, even if religious isn't exactly the word you'd use but trust me it's the word you actually mean: you start thinking, everything should be like this all the time, anything that's not like this is a ridiculous waste of time, I want peak experiences and only peak experiences because life is all about peak experiences and people who consent to have less than constant peaking epiphanies all the time are missing out, etc., etc., all infantile nonsense of course but as feelings go a bracing & pleasant one. The permanent reoccurring 19th summer is a nonstarter as a governing aesthetic stance, but as a tool in the kit it's not without some merits. I have a lot to say about this, actually, but it's complicated, and hurtful to people whose 19th summer left such a profound impression on them that they think it's the meaning of life or something, so, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter much except when it does.

.....it becomes a radiant source of self-regenerating power and wonder and lights start to go off in corners of the room where a guy didn't know there were actually any lights, and the guy goes, wow, this is so cool, I didn't expect to run across anything this cool today and I'm so glad I did, I'd really love to run across more things like this during my daily walk down toward the grave.

And a few poems in his series of paeans to his favorite black metal band: 21, 19, 15.

At least one of the music videos for The Mountain Goats was directed by Rian Johnson.

Finally: "The Young Thousands" is one of the songs that really speaks to me.

Again: welcome.