by juan simons
Instead of the usual rigamarole of interviewing a rock band prior to their performance in our humble River City to help you decide what it is you want to do this weekend, I thought we could change it up a bit this week. Jacksonville local, Juan Simons, recently moved to Chicago. When he told me he was going to see Of Montreal with plenty of time to send me a review, I thought a show review of their current tour prior to their performance here, would provide exactly the information you needed to make up your mind, without all the self-involved rock star banter. What follows is Juan’s report.
“Don’t worry, Jon. I won’t drink to the point where I don’t remember the show.” I relayed these famous last words to the editor like a modern-day Custer. In this case, The Metro was my Little Big Horn.
March 16 started like any other day. Extremely cold. I went over to Monsignor Murphy’s, my neighborhood bar, to watch the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament with the intention of having a few drinks and watching a couple of games before the Of Montreal show at 6. Everything was going well until the “Mystery Shots.” Alex was a new bartender working his second shift, so he was messing around behind the bar trying to familiarize himself with where all the bottles, cleaners, and assorted bar supplies were. He found a container with a mysterious dark liquid. After opening it, and confirming that it wasn’t anything vile or toxic, he decided to pour me a shot.
“Only if you have one too, Alex.” It went down smoothly so we had a few more. My girlfriend met me at the bar some hours later and we hopped on a bus to Wrigleyville for the show. It was our first time going to The Metro and, like a few other venues in Chicago, it was formerly a theater, which gave the show a sense of grandeur even if it was a bunch of 18-year-old girls watching a hippie pop band with a flamboyant lead singer.
We decided to watch the show from the balcony that was maybe half the size of the main floor, thus actually making it pretty big given the fact that floor itself held roughly 200-250 people. Thirty minutes later, I had a Long Island Iced Tea, which coincided (or in this case, awakened) with the effects of the “Mystery Shots.” Three drinks later I started to realize what touring with Ozzy must’ve been like. Yes, I did leave after 5 songs, but what I did see was a show in every sense of the word. Opening acts Grand Buffet and Walter Meego were forgettable. Well, Grand Buffet’s tired white boy hip-hop routine was quite memorable in a way you want to forget. Then came what we’d been waiting for. There were three 4’ x 6’ screens set up on the stage. One was directly facing the crowd; the others were off to the side but turned slightly inward. The band took the stage and went directly into their first single from Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? ‘Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse’ and set the entire crowd off.
The band was adorned in their usual smocks that combined glam aesthetic with whatever term you would use for the fish-man on the cover of Trout Mask Replica. When you couple this with the three simultaneous videos playing on the screens, you get a sense of what a Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol collaboration must’ve been like. The videos combined psychedelia with bizarre, yet cute, children’s book images. Throw this bizarre presentation in with completely eccentric keyboard-driven pop and neat props, such as 10-foot long dresses and lobster claws, and you get a show that’s more like a contained carnival. In addition to the aforementioned song, I heard ‘Suffer for Fashion’ (also on the new one) and a few cuts from Satanic Panic in the Attic and The Sunlandic Twins, their two previous albums.
It was at about this time that the mystery shots turned Juan into General Custer and the show, although not nearly over, was over for Juan. The last time he saw Of Montreal he said it made him just a little gayer. This time he wasn’t there long enough to turn even gayer yet. Of Montreal plays Freebird Live in Jacksonville Beach on April 1st. No fooling. Check out freebirdlive.com for more details.
|
