Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto, members of the well-known but rarely-performing experimental music duo The Books, are billed to perform at Miller Theater Thursday at 8 p.m. Surprised? You aren’t alone.
Promotion of the campus concert simply does not exist. “I had no way of knowing they were playing at Columbia,” The Books fan Gabi Zecchetto, BC ’12, said. “I found out about the concert on a random music blog that I was casually browsing—I don’t even remember which site it was.”
Miller Theater appears to be to blame for the lack of advertisement, but officials fault Wordless Music, the company that independently booked the venue and is responsible for advertising the event. According to Lauren Bailey, director of marketing at Miller Theater, “Wordless Music only promotes through e-mail and web communications,” which would explain the ostensibly confidential The Books appearance. The only flier promoting the concert appeared outside Miller on Monday, a mere three days before the concert.
The Miller appearance is part of the band’s small tour of college campuses and museums across the east coast.
But the under-the-radar concert is characteristic of the band. The duo has remained largely absent from the music world over the past three years, only touring in 2006 for the promotion of their last album, Music for a French Elevator. This year marks their re-emergence into the public sphere, collaborating with former tourmate Jose Gonzalez on a cover of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” for the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night.
However, their hiatus has not been spent in vain. During their absence, the band has been traveling, collecting samples of music from around the United States, and working on a new album, which is due out next year. De Jong and Zammuto, who play cello and guitar respectively, have manage to use classical instruments blended with these samples to create a completely unique sound.
The band has “loads and loads, around 4,000, of mostly VHS tapes and audio tapes from Goodwills and Salvation Armys all over the country,” Zammuto said. By digitizing and listening to the samples, The Books looked for themes and created music to accompany the samples.
Their past albums, which according to Zammuto were based on Christian-themed samples “that contained a sort of thread with a male dominating tone,” differ from their newest album, which is described as more spiritual.
Zammuto credited this spiritual side to his new role as a father. “If you listened to the new album, you wouldn’t directly connect the change to having kids, but it has reorganized my brain in a new way,” he said. “The world that he [my son] sees in is just completely different than mine. I get a taste of what that kind of innocence is like and produce in a childlike state.”
Those lucky enough to have secured a ticket to the now sold-out show should come prepared to be put in a trance—literally. “We’ve been formulating our own sort of hypnotherapy album,” Zammuto said.
For those who weren’t part of the fortunate minority who discovered earlier that the band was playing, there is still a chance to secure a ticket. There will be a standby line starting at 6 p.m. outside Miller Theater, and tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
If this concert is any example, you never know when a world-famous band is playing around the corner from your dorm.
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