By: Ryan Ruff Smith
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Man Man - Photo by Ryan Ruff Smith
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I recently graduated from St. John's University in Central Minnesota. It is one of few all-male schools left in the nation, and though we do now have classes with girls and stuff, there is still a strong emphasis on men’s studies. “Through research, education and understanding,” the SJU Center for Men's Leadership and Service website states, “we strive to create a more enlightened concept of manhood informed by our Benedictine values.” Perhaps the Philadelphia-based freak-rock band Man Man shares this same goal (minus the Benedictine bit). If so, creating an enlightened concept of manhood apparently includes growing gratuitous facial hair, beating various items with drum sticks, swinging from the rafters, jumping around like monkeys and working a 7th Street Entry crowd into an absolute frenzy.
Or maybe Man Man isn’t concerned with gender roles. Perhaps their name actually expresses that they are the human superhero. Rather than deriving their powers from spiders or bats, they derive them from the creature known as man. The heroic Man Man is not superhuman, but is super-human, beating its everyday problems into wild and rollicking shout-along anthems.
Whatever the case may be, on Saturday night the fearsome bearded quintet put on one of the best shows I have seen in some time. A couple of notable opening acts accompanied them as well. Minneapolis’s own Fort Wilson Riot started things off with an engaging set of quirky indie-rock. They lost me a bit with an epic theatrical song about pirates, but pulled it together as the song evolved in many different surprising and exciting directions, which finished off their set on a high note.
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Man Man - Photo by Smith
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Pit Er Pat, a keyboard/bass/drums trio from Chicago, played second. They traverse the same icy landscape as Bjork, Broadcast, Ladytron and post-millennial Radiohead, but with a post-rock sensibility that makes them unique. Drummer Butchy Fuego was a churning combustible rhythm machine, changing rhythms so effortlessly that I sometimes thought it sounded like he was playing transcriptions of programmed beats.
Pit Er Pat was very well received by the crowd, but once Man Man took the stage the excitement was palpable. And it was well founded; the Man men wasted no time launching into a frenzied set of absolutely stunning energy and intensity. They started off with the relatively subdued “Feathers,” off their most recent album Six Demon Bag, and didn’t stop for what must have been an hour, at least. They transitioned seamlessly from one song to the next, stringing them together into one epic Man Man suite. I realized early on that it would be futile to try to keep track of the set list.
Every member of the band played at least three instruments, and they switched between them suddenly in the middle of songs. Lead singer and keyboard player Honus Honus led the proceedings, but the quintet played together so tightly that they often seemed like a single, ten-armed, five-bearded organism. Without warning, they would launch into drum-circle throw-downs, gibberish vocal breakdowns, or free-jazz freak-outs. Honus shout-sang with a powerful rasp reminiscent of mid-to-late era Tom Waits, while the rest of the band interjected backup vocals in bizarre falsettos or occasionally just joined him for a gruff, manly sing-along.
The audience was going absolutely nuts by the time the band finished their dizzying set and called the band back out twice for the first double encore I’ve ever seen in such a small venue. Actually, it was something of a triple encore. Man Man closed out their second encore with the final track from Six Demon Bag, “Ice Dogs.” The song ends with a fade out on the album, with the band singing, “This ship will sail/ and this heart won’t die” over and over. They got the audience singing along with them as they walked offstage one at a time… and then the audience just kept singing. I expected it to fade out into applause after the band left, but it just kept going. So to put an end to it, Honus Honus and the drummer ran back on to stage. Honus handed the drummer his sticks and the drummer jumped up and down like an excited monkey before banging on his drum set a few times in rapid succession to end the show. It was a fittingly bizarre and hilarious ending to a show I won’t soon forget.
Location Info:
7th Street Entry
Artist Info: Fort Wilson Riot, Man Man, Pit Er Pat
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