Neutral Uke Hotel Hits Ann Arbor, Michigan!

If you live in Michigan, like Green Light Go does, you best get down to the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, tonight! Tuesday, August 17 a three-piece version of Neutral Uke Hotel will be performing and you won't want to miss it. Any of you who once and still adored Elephant 6 bands and Neutral Milk Hotel will be in pure heaven with NUH's all ukulele performance of NMH's iconic album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I (Shannon) am forcing myself to leave my uke at home in fear of jumping on stage and trying to play; it's just that much fun. I can't guarantee I won't get up there and clap my hands or shake something.

This is one of my favorite live videos of NUH because it really shows how much fun the band and the audience is having. So get down to the Blind Pig.

Neutral Uke Hotel
Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010:

The Blind Pig - 208 S. First St. Ann Arbor, MI - [map]
18+
Cover: $8.00
Door Time 9:00 PM
Show Time: 9:45 PM


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Staff Infection: Mapology Mixtape

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been on a proper adventure, so I felt especially lucky when I had the opportunity to see a handful of old friends while traveling through the East Coast over the past two weeks. I met my best friend in New York City, where we drove down to Philly for a day trip to see historical things (the Liberty Bell was especially cool) and eat something the locals call “water ice.” From there, we shot straight back up to New York to say a proper goodbye to the Big Apple. As a lover of pop culture (and closet watcher of MTV's Jersey Shore), I may or may not have fist-pumped my way over the New Jersey border. The next morning, we headed up to the open air mall of Burlington, Vermont and saw more Sugar Maple trees than we could count. We arrived in Lebanon, New Hampshire as the sun was setting and crashed with our old friends, The River City Rebels, before trekking down to Boston for the weekend, the birthplace of life, liberty, freedom, and The Cars. Once our friends clued us in that “The T” was not a beverage, Boston became a little easier to maneuver and we spent a few days roaming around Harvard Square. We took the long way home to hit our last stop on the trip, Providence, before making our way back to Detroit. To pass the thirteen hours we spent in the car, we alternated between listening to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on tape and these little traveling ditties:

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps” from Fever to Tell
The National, “Runaway” from High Violet
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Walking To Do” from Shake the Streets
Grand Archives, “Sleepdriving” from Grand Archives
Neutral Milk Hotel, “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Thrills, “Just Traveling Through” from So Much For The City

Each Monday a different Green Light Go staff member will let you in on what songs have infected their ears for the week, while giving you the opportunity to share in the experience yourself.

This week: Lauren Roberts, Green Light Go Talent Coordinator/Publicity Client Scout

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Neutral Uke Hotel Kicks Off Mid-West and West Coast August Tour

Neutral Uke Hotel, who have been taking the world by storm with their live performances of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, are about to embark on a 12-city tour beginning August 16th in Cleveland. Neutral Uke Hotel isn’t your average cover band; they play this beloved album entirely on ukulele, giving the original songs a fresh, new upbeat take. Road trip anyone?

The group, made up of Shawn Fogel (vocals, ukulele), Josh Cohen (melodica), Matt Girard (trumpet), and Michael J. Epstein (baritone ukulele), have been playing sold out shows to enthusiastic crowds who are encouraged to sing along. Epstein, who also fronts The Motion Sick, said, “People were encouraged to sing, clap, and stomp along...and they weren't shy!”



Never fear, avid Neutral Milk Hotel fans, Fogel, front man of Golden Bloom, and the rest of Neutral Uke are quite reverential for Jeff Mangum’s classic. Fogel says of this project, “It’s one of my favorite records ever, and the album doesn’t just have fans. The people who love that album are obsessed with it…. The goal of the project: [is] to strip these songs down and get people in a room to share their love for this album.’’

Neutral Uke Hotel Tour Dates
8/16 Grog Shop, Cleveland, OH
8/17 Blind Pig, Ann Arbor, MI
8/18 Southgate HouseCincinnati, OH
8/20 Gabe's, Iowa City, IA
8/21 Kitty Cat Klub, Minneapolis, MN
8/22 The Frequency, Madison, WI
8/23/ Cosmic Charlie's, Lexington, KY
8/24 Treehouse, Columbus, OH
8/25 Mid City Caffé, Washington, DC
8/29 Luckey's, Eugene, OR
8/30 Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR
8/31 The Sunset, Seattle, WA
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Favorite Friday with Neutral Uke Hotel: Seth Rogen Plays the Uke?

Neutral Uke Hotel are almost done with their spring tour.... but don't get your indie rock tear ducts ready... we are hoping for some more dates this summer. Made up of members of Golden Bloom and The Motion Sick, GLG had the ultimate (and sometimes way too much fun) experience of attending Toronto's NXNE where Shawn Fogel, Mike Epstein, Matt Girard, Josh Cohen, Andrew Laubacher played to a few crowds including Friday evening's fans who literally sang every word to every Neutral Milk Hotel song. There was no way to be at this show and not smile. As a side note, while this Favorite Friday might not make sense to everybody, if team GLG (and our host Kristin) ever needs to smile, we can all look back at this list. The order is of no importance. Everything is equally as amusing. All in all, this list just shows you how much fun these guys are having playing Neutral Milk Hotel songs for enthusiastic fans. It's all about the fun.


Favorite Inside Jokes from Neutral Uke Hotel's June Tour

1. "Seth Rogen - No one knew he played ukulele."

2. "Out of the way, Mark Messier! - Real Americans coming through."

3. "Let me licorice..." (In the Aeroplane Over the Sunn O))))

4. "Ohh Doh Dee Doh Dee Doh Der" - Andrew's awesome Canadian accent.

5. "We gon' sip Bacardi, like it's your birfday" - A combination of Bacardi and fluorescent colours.

6. "I love little baby ducks ... and onions."

7. Surfer Blood. That's it, just Surfer Blood.

8. 11/05/1955 - "The only problem with that t-shirt is it has the day, month, and year on it."

9. "Is this song on YouTube? Because I'm not going to buy it."

10. Pudding Ball - Just when you thought the World Cup couldn't get any better.

11. Naan-Sequitur- Indian breads and random comments made fresh daily.

12. Xxtra Kredit -Boston's premeire polite-core band featuring International hit-single "Do Your Homework Before You Watch TV") (editors note: "Do your homework!")

13. "As long as I don't see Shawn in his underwear..." (So much for that golden rule)

Want more of NUH from NXNE? Yeah, you do. Here is some 'behind the scenes' footage of La Blogotheque "Take Away Show" taping. (Sorry about the giggle) and a live video we shot of NUH's performing "Holland, 1945" at their Friday night gig at The Painted Lady.

Follow Neutral Uke Hotel on Twitter

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Each Friday, hence the name Favorite Friday - one GLG band/artist will send us a list and comments about their "favorites" of the week. It could be a list of albums they are listening to in the van, books they are reading, guilty pleasure TV, and so on. We hope these various "favorites" will give you unique glimpse into the lives of our bands. Click Here to Read More..

Thank You, Good Night: Part 1: Neutral Uke Hotel

"Thank You, Good Night" takes a birds eye view of what it's like for a band to play a show that can only described as a pinnacle experience for the band themselves. It only seemed appropriate Shawn Fogel of Golden Bloom and now his side project, Neutral Uke Hotel, would kick off the inaugural post. Some may call it blasphemous (hint: read tomorrow's post to find out who) to recreate Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in it's entirety. Even if it is in a live setting, in a space which only holds 60 people. Ourselves, we call it sheer poetry. This is what Fogel said of the experience: 

Neutral Uke Hotel at the Center for Arts at the Armory, Somerville, MA (Friday, May 7th, 2010)

"I've been playing music for almost 20 years (if you can count blowing into a recorder in third grade as music), and I've been playing my own songs in bands for about 10 years now. In that time I've played well over 200 shows, and I've never felt a stronger connection to both the music and the audience than I did during my first performance of "Neutral Uke Hotel" at The Armory in Somerville, MA.

The room only holds about 60 people. Every single person there had some kind of deep attachment with Neutral Milk Hotel's music, that album in particular. During Daniel Harris' opening set the audience was mesmerized and silent, so I made a point of inviting people to sing and clap along during our set. The whole point of this project for me is to get people who are in love with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea together in one room to share that love."



"After inviting the crowd to not hold back we dove into the album, and I consciously didn't say a word in between songs, to preserve the flow of the album. During that whole set I felt something I'd never felt before. I felt just as connected to the music as the audience did. Rather than the normal distinction between performer and fans, we were all fans that night. The experiment worked! That same spark I've felt every time I meet someone who shares my love of NMH was multiplied exponentially, the room was virtually glowing. I'm not embarrassed to say that I actually got choked up for a moment during the set. It was while we were playing the album's title track. As the words 'what a beautiful face I have found in this place' came out of my mouth, I realized that statement had never rang so true."



NXNE just confirmed both Golden Bloom and Neutral Uke Hotel showcases during the festival. Neutral Uke Hotel will perform Friday night, June 18th at the Painted Lady and Golden Bloom will perform Saturday night, June 19th at Czehoski.

Neutral Uke Hotel Facebook
Golden Bloom Facebook Click Here to Read More..

Neutral Milk Hotel Gets Uked

Always better than getting nuked, Neutral Milk Hotel will get uked when  Golden Bloom’s Shawn Fogel takes his show on the road with his latest project, Neutral Uke Hotel. It’s exactly what you think it is, Neutral Milk Hotel music played entirely on the ukulele. To be more precise, Fogel has arranged Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 iconic indie album In The Aeroplane Over the Sea into a collection of classic contemporary indie pop songs that he plays on ukulele.
This interesting idea came after Fogel worked with producer Roger Greenawalt's "Beatles Complete on Ukulele" project. Fogel explains, “After recording a version of the Beatles’ B-side ‘I'll Get You’ with Roger at his Shabby Road Studios, I performed with Golden Bloom, Guster's Ryan Miller, The Zambonis and Leah Siegel at the 2nd Annual Beatles Complete on Ukulele Festival held at Brooklyn Bowl this past December,” says Fogel. In March Fogel went to SXSW in Austin to play The Beatles Complete on Ukulele Festival alongside other artists including Ben Kweller.

“Inspired by Greenawalt's successful merging of one of the biggest bands in the world with one of the smallest instruments in the world, I decided to use the uke to tackle another major influence of indie musicians across the world: Neutral Milk Hotel.”

While additional shows are being confirmed for this summer, Boston fans can get a sneak peak when Fogel plays these nuggets on Friday, May 7 at the Arts at the Armory in Somerville. Click Here to Read More..