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When rock bands play free concerts in Millennium Park, generally a bunch of old people and tourists will wander in and populate a good number of the seats near the front. Though unfamiliar with the band playing, they are excited to relax looking at Frank Gehry's beautiful design, their dogs barking after a full day of meandering at Navy Pier and the Harley Davidson store. After sitting uncomfortably for two songs, they shuffle out.

Last night, however, as The Feelies played their first show in Chicago in eighteen years, the tourists were bobbing their heads, asking their young neighbors, "What's the name of this group? The Feel-whats?" My point isn't that the reunited band now only appeals to geriatrics. It's that they appealed to everyone.

I expected to enjoy myself; I did not expect to be blown away. I expected the crowd to enjoy it; I did not expect them to go nuts. The Feelies are of course a revered band, but I don't think there's that broad of a popular awareness of them, comparatively. They only put out four albums, none of which sold well, and probably it's only their debut Crazy Rhythms that the majority of people are familiar with. Unlike the similarly reunited Pixies, they haven't had a Nirvana or, dare I say it, a Fight Club to really elevate their status among the masses. So how can you account for the response last night? My best answer: they just fucking tore it up.

They were the coolest looking old dudes and chick ever. They're the kind of band you look at and think, "I wish those were my parents." Lead singer/guitarist Glenn Mercer maintained a deadpan cool as he rattled off fiery lines on his Telecaster, but from the way he came to downstage and postured in front of the crowd, you could tell he was loving it. Bassist Brenda Sauter seemed genuinely appreciative as she thanked us for waiting twenty years. And it's amazing how much a traditional four-chord lead gtr-rhythm gtr-bass arrangement can be enhanced by an auxiliary percussionist.

The other thing about Millennium Park shows is that the audience generally sits in their seat or on the lawn quietly appreciating the music. There was a palpable tension as this show; I think everyone knew that sitting down wasn't right, but we were powerless to do anything about it. Then, during set-closer "Crazy Rhythms," a lone kid went up to the front of the stage and started spazzing out. A security guard slowly walked toward him to ask him to sit down, but the kid danced away as the guard approached, before suddenly turning and bolting. He apparently did a lap around the seats, and reemerged at the front from the opposite side, to applause from the audience. Then, spontaneously, the whole crowd got up out of their seats and rushed the front of the stage, dancing. It was glorious. They demanded two encores, and got them, including covers of R.E.M.'s "Carnival of Sorts," The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On" (the second this month I've seen!) and the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black."

As they were leaving the stage, drummer Stan Demeski came down to the front and shook the hand of the spazzy dancing kid who started it all. A+, spazzy dancing kid.

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one...

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The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms

[photos by robert loerzel]

His finest hour. I just happened to be watching this last night too. Spoooooky!

• It's hard to determine how much my appreciation of the show would change if it had a different theme song.
• The closing credits music is strikingly similar to the closing credits music for Friday Night Lights. Overall though, The O.C. really makes me appreciate FNL even more for its unglamorous small-town Texas setting.
• In the pilot, Seth Cohen's room seems to be covered in posters of The Ramones, The Clash, and other '70s punk icons. Now, the most prominent posters are of Rooney, Death Cab for Cutie, and Bright Eyes. What accounts for the sudden degradation of his taste?
• The character of Luke at first is a broad, cringe-inducing hypermasculine caricature ("Welcome to the O.C., bitch!") that brings to my mind (and I'm sure no one else's) the super rugged character from Dark Shadows with the super rugged name Burke Devlin played by an actor with an equally rugged named, Mitchell Ryan. But by midseason, Luke becomes really hilarious.
• I haven't found out yet what happens with the character of Oliver, but Ryan's perceived paranoia regarding Oliver really resonates with me. Perhaps it's self-fulfilling prophecy, but I've yet to see paranoia of this type ever to be unfounded IRL. Maybe I like this show cause it plays to the intense distrust I have of several demographics, namely: people's boyfriends, women, and single men. The show confirms my suspicion that perhaps the only worthwhile people are husbands.
• I was asked recently if I watch the show because I genuinely like it, or if it's because I find it funny. It's a question I'm asked a lot about many of the things I like, from '60s vampire soap operas to teen-pop music, so it's something I need to think more about and be able to articulate better. I can safely say, first of all, that it's not irony. At the same time, I'm always conscious of its absurdity and of its transparency as an expertly crafted and marketed product. Some of the appeal to me with these things is an academic interest in the ways pop culture has been sold to teenagers since the rise of the independent, car-driving, disposable cash-holding teen in the 1950s. I can laugh at a show's silliness, but I never ever like something because it's "so bad it's good."

The WXRT DJ introducing bizarro supergroup Tinted Windows at this weekend's Taste of Randolph festival recounted the incredulous moment of discovery of the band. A group of girls in their late 20s, apparently unfamiliar with the band, listened in as he named each member of the band. With increasing confusion, the girls accurately identified the act each musician was normally associated with ("Bun E. Carlos!" "...From Cheap Trick?" "Adam Schlesinger!" "Wait, from Fountains of Wayne?" "James Iha!" "Woah, from the Smashing Pumpkins?!") Oddly enough, they couldn't figure out what band lead singer Taylor Hanson was from. Much of the rest of the crowd made up for them, however.

So that's where all the aging (at 23-years-old) Hanson fans went. They still can hit those high-pitched screams, but the years have taken a little bit off of the dynamics. Some had Hanson tattoos on the back of their necks. In April, when Tinted Windows played in Chicago for the first time, it was at the 21+ Double Door. I was told that the promoters expected a healthy crowd this time around for all the young Hanson fans who couldn't go before. I didn't quite understand this, as I didn't see how there could possibly be new fans of a group whose last hit single was in 1997. It seemed like my predictions were largely correct, though I did spot a few high school age fans there, which I announced with the unfortunate remark, "Look! Those girls are under 21!"

The Hanson devotees near us were impressed that we were able to name all three of the brothers' names (we admitted that "Zac" was just a lucky guess, as it's the default '90s boy's name). They were pleased with the makeup of the crowd. At a typical Hanson concert, they explained, the audience is about 95% female. Though the Hanson fans were the most audible contingent at the Tinted Windows show, the audience was more accurately a fragile alliance that also included old Cheap Trick fans in Sturgis Rally tank-tops and curious Pumpkinheads like myself. My attempts to identify and characterize Fountains of Wayne fans failed. The Hanson fans suggested, however, that perhaps there was a stronger connection between Pumpkins fans and Hanson fans than we might expect: "A lot of people at Hanson concerts are actually goth girls."

The show itself was a pleasant way to spend an evening. It's hard to analyze songs from the nothing-but-overtones sound systems that are standard at outdoor festivals, but it was energetic and the hooks were there. From the way Taylor expertly worked the crowd, you'd have thought he'd been doing it since he was thirteen. He's grown up into a pretty snazzy dresser, sporting a silver tie against a bright orange shirt with the sleeves rolled, tucked into fitted black pants. Maybe I just say that cause his stage attire is rather like....well, mine.

Though Taylor and Iha were certainly the most recognizable band members on stage, it seems like Schlesinger and Carlos are the more likely architects of the band's power-pop sound. The set even included a cover of a song by The Knack! And, to make the line-up even more WTF? worthy, Evan Dando of The Lemonheads came out as a surprise guest to sing The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On." Well, a surprise for most people, but not for me. I already knew, because Taylor had tweeted about it minutes before the show, and one of the Hanson girls next to me had gotten an automatic text message notification from his Twitter. Adorably, Taylor posted it to the Hanson account by mistake instead of the Tinted Windows account:

To his credit, from the timestamps you can see it only took him a brief mmmbop before he realized his error. I don't know how I feel about abbreving Chicago to "chic" though. At least he didn't say Chi-Town.

[photos by dan m parker]

My Viennese friends introduced me to Rainhard Fendrich's moving ballad "I Am From Austria," a kind of unofficial national anthem, which apparently is also a classic and inevitable party foul. At some point during any given Austrian party, someone is guaranteed to put it on, bumming everybody out. I particularly like the line, "I am your apple, and you my stem."

As a counterpoint, here's Die Prinzen's slightly more irreverent tribute to their homeland, "Deutschland":

Last night I moved from my longtime rehearsal space (dubbed The Holodeck) into a more proper, amazing studio a floor above. Finally, we actually have both a live room and a control room, with pretty good isolation. We're getting an amazing deal on it. Now that I have the space, the key thing is for me to actually make some music. It'll happen. I can feel it.

It's also next door to the nicest space in the whole building, which is generally rented out by touring musicians to rehearse in temporarily. In the past, it's seen Billy Corgan, The Black Crowes, and Sting, among others. And you know who my next-door-neighbor for the next few weeks is going to be?

R.
Kelly.

Here are a few crappy pictures of the closet I will be trapped in. They don't really give a very good sense of what it's like, and please excuse the terrible no-name drumset that's in there right now, but here it is: