The Librarians

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For the Australian television series, see The Librarians (TV series).

The Librarians were a power pop band from Berkeley, California who formed in 1999 by Damon Larson and Ryan Gan. They released one album, The Pathetic Aesthetic, in 2002, which received 4/5 stars from All music guide.

The group was famous mostly for their raucous live act:

But (Ryan) Gan, the anti-frontperson frontperson of the Librarians, isn't even fazed. Though on the record, Gan's job is limited to backup vocals and tambourine for vocalist-guitarist Damon Larson, he explodes into his full potential onstage with spastic tambourine beating and poster-worthy one-hand-on-the-hip-the-other-thrust-skyward poses. His performance is truly horrifying in its cheesiness, and yet it's unnervingly mesmerizing. It's a kind of innocence-lost scenario: everyone reaches the same guilty conclusion, "Christ, why don't more bands do this?" [1]

Interestingly enough, Ryan Gan received his Master's in Library and Information Science in 2006 and is now employed as a librarian in Orange, California. Prior to this and the formation of the band, Gan played the euphonium at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, California between 1990 and 1994. According to Gan, it was the achievements of Melvil Dewey, noted American librarian and euphonium enthusiast, that inspired both the name of the band and the choice of his career. Since leaving the Librarians, Damon Larson has continued his musical career. His newest band, the Paranoids, is a fixture on the San Francisco music scene.

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