Eventually, the crowd participation grew from a hesitant hum to full-blast accompaniment, and the most remarkable thing about the evening—Mangum's first of two shows in D.C.—was how he used his fans' goodwill as an instrument in its own right. At several points, he lead them in la-la re-creations of horn parts. In "The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three," Mangum sang, "Jesus Christ, I love you, yes I do," and the audience knew to hold the last word of the lyric as Mangum proceeded to the next line: "And on the lazy days, the dogs dissolve and drain away..." He pulled a similar trick midway through "Oh Comely."

Mangum was right: They do all sing along at home. Mangum disbanded Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998 and has performed only very occasionally since, so most of his fans had only heard his songs one way (or maybe two) before the past six months' acoustic gigs: on the studio albums. In his absence, Mangum became one of indie rock's favorite recluses, and Friday's gig was a testament to his fan's intimacy with the material and their empathy for the man.

Which, you know, still didn't rule out heckling. "Don't disappear for so long next time!" shouted one fan to nervous chuckles. "What did you want me to do?" Mangum shot back, and the crowd roared. He smiled. "I deserve a little shit. I was gone for 10 years." In other words: He had every right to disappear for as long as he did. But he was grateful to be back.

Sometimes, you were glad when the singing-along died down: Mangum's voice is still singularly nasal, evocative, and—when he stretches out a note—disarmingly free of vibrato. Other moments were straight-up group hugs. For his encore, Mangum performed "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" accompanied on musical saw by Julian Koster, of openers The Music Tapes. Much of the previously seated crowd rushed to the front of the theater, but after Mangum retreated with a smile and a wave, they stayed put, clapping for more music, even as the speakers began to play a go-home-now soundtrack. He came back with "Song Against Sex."

In the end, then, there was no ex-recluse freak show, no weirdness to pay off the 13-year absence's accumulated mystique. Instead, we got a concert that was, well, pretty gratifyingly normal. Mangum even looked kind of unremarkable, at least to my eyes: newsboy hat; stringy, inky black hair.

Well, maybe. A colleague who was in the audience sent me an email a few minutes after the show ended. "If he wants people to stop worrying about him, he should stop looking and dressing like Elliott Smith circa 2003."

Think of all the truly awesome things that Merge Records has accomplished in its 20-year existence. Not only has the label—founded in the late ’80s by Superchunk members Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan—released countless 7" singles, LPs, and at least one boxed-set by myriad worthy artists, but they've pulled off a few truly improbable feats. Merge basically invented the tolerable use of brass in indie-rock. Before Neutral Milk Hotel, the best you could get was June of 44's Fred Erskine playing balloon-on-scalp-style free jazz trumpet. The label also put out countless Lambchop records, even though Europeans were the only people who listened to them.

But most remarkably, Merge has grown into a widely successful record label in the most humble and respectable way possible—keeping their business personable, modest, and honest. Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, an oral history assembled by John Cook alongside Ballance and McCaughan, tells the label's story through countless photographs, fliers, and extensive interviews. Washington City Paper recently spoke with McCaughan, who will be reading selections from the book tonight at Crooked Beat.

Q&A after the jump:

Washington City Paper: When did you decide that Merge was finally ready for the book treatment?

Mac McCaughan: We started talking about it a year and a half ago, maybe even longer than that. It was the idea of an old friend of mine who works in publishing. He’s not even that into music, he just thought the story of the label was interesting.

We were a little skeptical, though. Being in the middle of the label it’s hard to see what the dramatic arc of a book would be. There were no dramatic moments in our history where we almost went out of business. We were never teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It’s always just been this slow steady thing. But once I read the proposal, I was a little more into it. It put the history of Merge in the context of the music business as a whole, in contrast to the major labels. That made a lot of sense then.

WCP: What made you decide to make it an oral history, instead of a more conventional narrative?

McCaughan: It didn’t start out as an oral history. I guess once John [Cook] started doing the writing and organization of the book, it became clear that it was too hard to incorporate as many quotes as he wanted into standard format. Also, I love oral histories. I love reading them.

WCP: In the beginning, Superchunk record sales basically drove Merge, sort of in the way Fugazi's sales and reputation drive Dischord. When did that start to flip-flop? When did the label become an established entity independent of your band?

McCaughan: It was a little bit of a gradual thing. It kind of happened once we started putting out full-length records. We put out the Superchunk record On the Mouth and we put out the first two Polvo albums. That changed the label in terms of perceptions in how it had to function. After that we hired our first full time employee. Another shift was putting out bands that were from outside of North Carolina—Magnetic Fields, the 3Ds.

WCP: Was that it a difficult decision to move beyond just releasing records out of the local scene?

McCaughan: That wasn’t a hard decision at all. It was exciting for us. And even before we did albums we did a 7” by The Renderers. That was really exciting, too. But once we were doing albums that opened us up. If you were Claudia [Gonson] and Stephin [Merritt, both of Magnetic Fields] you could see Merge as a legit label. But I think that really the transition came in the mid-90s. By that point Merge was a label and not just Superchunk’s label. And certainly by the time of 69 Love Songs and Neutral Milk Hotel came out, in the late ’90s.

But yeah, I don’t think that you can pinpoint a couple of big turning points or a couple of big decisions that caused it all. It was just a general approach to business and music. When we were starting out one of the things that kept us going was that we weren’t trying to have the label be our job. We were putting out records because we loved music and the label never had to be anything. Even after we started having a staff and selling more records I think we still tried to keep that approach. There were labels that started around the same time that thought, “Well, if we’re a label we need to have this kind of office and have these people working there.” To us, that seemed like a backward way of looking at it. The label was going to become what it was going to become.

Even though we’ve put out records in the last few years that have sold a lot more than we ever could have imagined selling 10 years ago and certainly 20 years ago, I still feel like we operate on a different level than a major label. When people talk to me about the music business…I kind of think that we’re in different music business than they are. If we’re putting out and Arcade Fire or a Spoon record, sure, we certainly have to do some things to keep up with that. But we try to have the flexibility to do a good job with a record that’s only going to sell 3000 copies, too.

WCP: There’s some pretty personal stuff in this book, specifically the details about your breakup with Laura [Balance, bassist of Superchunk and co-founder of Merge]—was it difficult to be forthcoming about that stuff?

McCaughan: Well, I mean, it certainly wasn’t fun to maybe talk about that or read about it. But if you’re going to write the book, tell the story. Don’t gloss over the difficult parts. I mean, if I’m reading a book I want to feel like people are being honest.

WCP: Were there things that you learned from reading other people’s interviews that you didn’t know before?

McCaughan: There’s a lot I learned about the history of some of the bands. Bands like Spoon, that had a long history before we started working with them and how close they came to breaking up or stopping all together, I didn’t know some of that stuff. I learned a lot about Jeff Mangum and his friend’s history in Ruston. Also, you learn stuff about the way other people perceive you.

WCP: There are a few bands—like Lambchop—that Merge has stuck behind for quite a few albums, even though they don’t sell very well. Has keeping them around ever been a tough call?

McCaughan: It may be hard for the bands to stick with us, but not hard for us to stick with them. Lambchop specifically–every record they make is a masterpiece. If you’re an indie label and you’re putting out a record, you must love it. So it can be frustrating when something doesn’t do as well as you think it should. But no, it’s not hard to stay with those bands. They’re still making music that we love.

Mac McCaughan reads from Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records
October 5th @ 6PM
Crooked Beat
2318 18th St. NW

The bike under the tree: As a devout fan of The Muppets, the guest-Sleigher finds some pleasure in hearing a version "Silent Night" that sounds as if it is being sung by Beaker.

The lump of coal: With its unsteadily oscillating tones the singing saw might rival the slide-whistle for the title of "Most Depressing Instrument Ever." It is difficult for the guest-Sleigher to listen to Koster's interpretation of "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" without being plagued by visions of sad clown-hobos shivering in a rail yard alongside a starving dog and a dwindling campfire.

Cheer factor: Zero. Negatory. Practically non-existent. Still, as far as non-traditional Christmas music goes, the ethereal and downright bizarro sounds that Koster elicits from the saw make a preferable alternative to whatever Mannheim Steamroller is up to this year.