Indecision ruled Saturday night. I got
to Oaktoberfest in Oak Park around 7:30 p.m. and discovered The
Lemonheads' sound guys to be unsure of everything. It continued
unabated until the band left the stage a few hours later.
Side note: A trip from the end of the
Red Line to the end of the Green Line takes a long time and
exponentially increases the odds of peculiar co-passengers. I had one
middle aged drunk man fall on top of me because the train took a
slight turn. “Oh, nice to meet you,” he said as he slumped beside
me, where he struggled against the impending passing out.
Back to the main event: Indecision.
Woof. The crowd was massive and seemingly wanted to ebb and flow in
every direction at once. Getting around was not the easiest thing.
The cranky sound guy provided a meta
narration to it all. “No, a little higher here. Check, check one.
Here, here.”
Nothing was to his standards and the
crowd responded.
I wanted a beer, but the line was about thirty deep and 100 wide at what I think was the only beer vending section of the beer-themed event. After waiting several minutes and moving up a couple feet, a sign came into focus. “No beer purchases without 21-and-over wristband.” “Where do I get that?” I asked myself.
I wanted a beer, but the line was about thirty deep and 100 wide at what I think was the only beer vending section of the beer-themed event. After waiting several minutes and moving up a couple feet, a sign came into focus. “No beer purchases without 21-and-over wristband.” “Where do I get that?” I asked myself.
So I
gave up. Beer was off the table. The food tents looked much more
sparsely populated.
I
walked past the normal options. Burgers, hot dogs, tacos. I wanted
something a little stranger, but not, like, cow tongue strange. But I
was hungry, so it needed to be fast. My head swiveled along the line
of food tents. “I don't know, I don't know,” I muttered to
myself. So I went with the most out-of-the-ordinary thing I could
think of that was within 20 feet of me: a cup of spicy Venezuelan
chili and a bottle of water.
Now
the sound check guy was audibly groaning as he couldn't figure out
the right microphone configuration for the drums.
I
found a spot about 50 feet from the stage where I was able to eat my
food. It was physically hot, and the double styrofoam cups solution
the restaurant provided was still a bit inadequate. Instead of
finding a table – the ones that weren't wet from the day's earlier
rains were filled with people talking loudly about drug addict
ex-boyfriends – I chowed down rapidly. I downed the near-pint of
hot and spicy chili in about five minutes and chugged my water
bottle, desperately in need of relief.
But
that relief didn't come in the form of more water, for another
inebriated man fell into me.
“Woah, I'm drunk!” he said to his embarrassed wife as she shuffled them away from the creepy guy drinking chili remnants from a styrofoam cup.
“Woah, I'm drunk!” he said to his embarrassed wife as she shuffled them away from the creepy guy drinking chili remnants from a styrofoam cup.
The
Lemonheads were finally about to hit the stage. The crowd of graying
Gen Xers and their indifferent children gave a polite introduction to
Evan Dando and company.
It's a shame this wasn't a rapturous applause because this band has made some of the best fuzzy pop music I've ever heard. I've been obsessed with them for a decade, when they were already rock elder statesmen. My older sister has long teased me for having a particular pop culture taste set – “Rob bands” – but looking at all the people 15 or more years my senior ready to relive their glory days made me think that my personal ownership of this band's music wasn't true.
It's a shame this wasn't a rapturous applause because this band has made some of the best fuzzy pop music I've ever heard. I've been obsessed with them for a decade, when they were already rock elder statesmen. My older sister has long teased me for having a particular pop culture taste set – “Rob bands” – but looking at all the people 15 or more years my senior ready to relive their glory days made me think that my personal ownership of this band's music wasn't true.
The
first thing I thought was, “Man, Evan Dando got old.” Obviously
that's what happens to people, but when I had never felt the need to
check up on him, I had in my mind the 1990s-vintage videos of him
looking like a model with long hair. Now he looks like a
longshoreman, with a gruff weeklong beard, shorter-but-still-long
hair, a beanie, and a windbreaker with the ABC network logo
emblazoned on it for some reason.
The band launched into a rollicking,
distortion-heavy set. While their sonic output on record is more
balanced between lightly fuzzy guitar pop, '60s-inflected garage, and
Alt. Country, that changes when they go live. The pedals make the
guitars raucous. Punky little love songs like “Allison's Starting
to Happen” become giant barnstormers. Dando's usually syrupy vocals
become a shredded melange that don't always hit the high notes in
pleasant ways. Sometimes, in fact, it seems he purposely makes wacky,
nails-on-chalkboard mouth sounds just because it seems fun to him.
His between-song banter confirms his
“just having fun for myself and nobody else” attitude. “Usually
these things suck but this is kinda fun!” he said early on, before
later telling strange, often non sequitur jokes from the stage,
including one about how we celebrate births and mourn at funerals
because we aren't involved. Then there was something about ducks and
microwaves. Some didn't make much sense to the non-initiated (re:
anyone not in Dando's brain), but this was his show and he wanted to
make it fun for himself.
Dando's banter and constant tinkering
with his guitar levels between songs – “Which one are we doing
next?” was a regular question posed to the other band members, who
had to often think on their feet to let him make up his mind about
what to do next – made me think he must be a major annoyance to his
bandmates. They seem like Ur-professionals who want to put on a great
show and he's the twitchy goofball they need to wrangle into a
productive night.
They did wrangle him well enough,
because once they began playing the songs, he was magnetic. Mournful
classics like“My Drug Buddy” became a celebration of a time and
place that can now be looked upon with nostalgic eyes now that the
problems described within have left Dando relatively unscathed.
For a five-song interval, the bassist
and drummer disembarked from the stage to allow Dando and the other
guitarist to perform the band's electric folk output, most notably
their masterpiece – it's my favorite, at least – “The Outdoor
Type.”
For a short while, the full band
returned, ran through “Rudderless,” then left Dando alone for
“one more song” that became four. He didn't know where he was
going, but he seemed to enjoy himself, and I got to see a great
fuzz-pop band that has meant much to me since my formative years.
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