Ice Cream Man

Mountain Goats and Annuals at The Natural History Museum’s Final First Fridays

Words by Vanessa Herzog
Photos by Bodie Seefeldt, Jeremiah Garcia

Stuffed water buffalo make an odd backdrop for rock music, but somehow it works at the Natural History Museum’s First Fridays concert series. For those of you who haven’t heard of First Fridays or haven’t been to a First Fridays show, you are truly missing out. Here’s the deal — once a month, actually the first Friday of every month (hence the name) the Natural History Museum opens up it doors into the late night hours for live music, DJs and cocktails. The series runs from January to June and sadly doesn’t continue into the summer.

First Fridays has been around for about the past four years, but this year it seems to have really hit its stride. The program now boasts usually sold out crowds, a loungey area in the African Mammal Hall complete with swanky couches and a DJ booth, gourmet chow, a full bar in the grand rotunda and an early evening lecture in case you’d like to educate yourself before rocking out.

The last and final (boo) First Fridays of this season featured Annuals and The Mountain Goats. Annuals (named after flowers that die after a year?) are a band of what looks to be hipster unbridled youth playing energetic dancey indie rock. Annuals seem to have the same jingley-jangley vibe of new bands such as Born Ruffians and Vampire Weekend and sound like a somewhat like a cacophony, but in a good way. Following a similar trend of other bands lately too, Annuals also boasts two drummers and one token female member (ala ScarJo). Annuals delivered what the packed-in crowd wanted and seemed to even win over some diehard Mountain Goats fans who had queued up at the front of the stage in anticipation.

During the Annuals set Jeremiah met Bodie Seefeldt, and eight year old boy who was enjoying the show with his mom. We noticed he was holding a digital SLR, so with a bit of help, Bodie was able to shoot some pictures of Annuals and Mountain Goats. This was the first concert he had been to, what a way to start your show-going career…in the photo pit! Bodie’s been taking pictures since he was 3 years old and that shows in the gallery of his photos we’ve including. We were glad to have met both him and his mom!

The Mountain Goats took the stage next in a stripped down form – with only leader, John Darnielle, and current backing member, Peter Hughes playing on stage. The Mountain Goats fall into that nerdy, literary, indie rock genre. Similar to Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, not only for playing literary rock in that it tells a story, Darnielle also has a trademark nasally voice that some love, but may make others cringe. The band has a strong following, which you could see based on one young man pressed up against the barrier and singing along at the top of his lungs and gesturing dramatically during every song. The two guys look like they relish every moment on stage and connect well with their audience.

Another great thing about the First Fridays series is not only the music, but the access to the museum. While there, Jeremiah and I got to check out Thomas the T.Rex lab, which is an exhibit focusing on preparing a T-rex skeleton for display in the museum. The paleontologists were working late that night and the exhibit allows you to watch them work on Thomas. Almost all the other halls in the museum were open too. Not too bad for 8 bucks. First Fridays, you’ll be missed until next January…