Last night the Agitatrix and I went to see The Eels at, of all places, the Sixth and I Synagogue in Washington, D.C. It was a pretty cool experience. I’ve never really gotten into the band–which over the years has really come to be just Mark “E” Everett with a varying lineup of supporting musicians. I’m not sure why. It’s great stuff. Angsty, tormented, and soulful–sparely written and produced. Prime brood music.

We were also treated to a pre-show documentary on quantum physics, courtesy of Everett’s fascinating biography. Mark Everett’s father is the late Hugh Everett, the physicist who in the mid-1950s first came up with the theory of parallel universes. Unfortunately, few people noticed, and those who did were pretty dismissive. The elder Everett was dejected, eventually left academia, and took a job with the Pentagon. He also apparently battled depression and alcoholism for most of his life, and was a pretty distant father. It would take the scientific community thirty-plus years to resurrect Everett’s theory, and begin to give him the praise he craved for discovering it. Unfortunately, that happened well after his death from a heart attack in 1982 (Mark Everett discovered his father’s body).

So as science slowly came around to appreciating his father, so too did Mark Everett. There are some remarkable parts of the documentary where he talks about how odd it’s been to learn over the years that the dad he knew who put in long days at the Pentagon, drank, and smoked around the house has slowly emerged and become accepted as one of mankind’s greatest minds. In one touching scene, Everett has just found some tapes in his family’s basement dictated by his father. The tapes have enormous scientific/historical value, as there isn’t much known about Everett’s father. In one, as the elder Everett is dictating on quantum theory, you can hear the younger Everett banging on drums in the background.

The documentary is called Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, and traces Everett’s journey to discovery both his father, and his efforts to educate himself on his father’s legacy. Unfortunately, unless you use BitTorrent, there’s really no way to get it. But here’s a clip:

Everett’s father died when he was 19. Shortly after The Eels much-acclaimed debut, Everett’s sister committed suicide. He apparently lost several friends and then, a couple years later, his mother. His cousin was a flight attendant on the plane that struck the Pentagon on September 11. The guy’s got enough dark material to fill a Nick Cave boxed set.

Despite the weighty material, Everett was witty and friendly, if in an “I tell the jokes to keep the pain away” sort of way. His voice is gruff but pleasant. At least live, his performance evoked for me later-era Tom Waits, Jeff Tweedy, Mark Lanegan, and Joe Cocker (the latter more just his voice than the music itself). He took the stage with just one other guy, a versatile fellow Everett referred to only as “The Chet,” who played a very cool (and spooky) saw blade with a stringed bow, and did readings from Everett’s autobiography, Things the Grandchildren Should Know.

Wasn’t a fan before. I am now. Here’s one from last night I particularly liked, courtesy of a YouTuber (NSFW language):

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 30th, 2008 at 11:20 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Five-Star Fridays/Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.