A few words on my night with "the bitterly angry Magnetic Fields":

For starters, this was FANCY!!!!  I'd never heard of the Merriam Theater before, probably because it's too high class for scuzzy kids like me.  It was seated; there were even ushers and an intermission - like a REAL show. What a treat!

Anyway, the performance was incredible.  Like the pathetic creature that I am, I ended up sobbing more than once.  It was just beautiful, beautiful, clear, shiny, and simple, a dagger to the heart.  Needless to say, I laughed a lot too.  There was great interaction between the band...Claudia would make some wry remarks and Stephen would use them as springboards for his own humor:

"The sound of a flock of piraña devouring an octopus is coming form stage left." - Merritt

"Interaction is a mistake." -Merritt

"I go to people's houses and hide all the toilet paper...and no one knows where it went." - Merritt

"It's written to encourage people to stop fussing around with the monitor and start having sex with dead people." - Merritt on 'Zombie Boy'

"There's an angel...up there in the balcony...lit up in a blue light. Oh, he's checking his fucking e-mail during my show." - Merritt

They played a lot of songs that I wanted to hear, including 'I Don't Believe You' (the first Magnetic Fields song I heard), 'The Book of Love', 'Take Ecstasy With Me', 'Too Drunk to Dream', and 'No One Will Ever Love You.' 'Grand Canyon' was perfect, perfect as the last song of the encore.

I was skipping around on the street in joy afterwards.