This isn’t at all the story I wanted to write about Friday night (or any night, for that matter). Like this review, Friday ended unexpectedly and in a way that made me uneasy. Sometimes cold, hard facts get in the way of what you want to happen or the way you look back and decide how the night seemed or felt; if you really had fun or if it just seemed like fun and you just shined yourself on until the night was finished and you could nestle into your bed for some much needed slumber. There was no getting around exactly how Friday felt; most people in attendance will never forget it. This seems like two separate events combined into one because I simultaneously experienced two very different concerts. I witnessed something I had never wished to see in person. But some real fun happened first.
I arrived a little late to the Entry. The TV Sound were already in full swing and I was impressed already. They sounded like The Dismemberment Plan without the willful obtuseness present so often with that band. It was more straight ahead and more danceable (yes, I said it). They had the crowd pretty riled up and though I suspect they had more than a few friends (and members of both of the other bands on the bill) present to create the plethora of goofy white-guy dancing, the crowd’s reaction seemed genuine and it invigorated the room. Everything seemed to be a little bit louder, more in focus: people’s voices, the energy in the room, the perfume on the girls at the table next to me. “Thank you for dancing” they semiseriously told us as they left the stage. No, guys, thank you.
So It Goes - de Young
So It Goes were up next and they are one of the better bands to come out of 1981 London whose members are from the States and two of whom were most likely not born in 1981. While they didn’t necessarily have the most distinct sound, it was certainly easy to like. The spiky, hooky new-wave sound paired with the vintage trainers--excuse me, tennis shoes--and polo shirts and jeans as tight as embolism stockings recalled everyone from Duran Duran to Devo to The Cars to The Jam and caused more dorky white-guy dancing, though to a much lesser degree. They were a little bit too serious for my taste (somehow new-wave and political awareness don’t always meld together without some fairly visible scarring) but overall I thought they were enjoyable.
Dance Band have caused a small ruckus in Minneapolis as of late and though their set was cut short (more on that in a minute) it was easy to see why. They took the stage in matching, skintight blue polyester jumpsuits with yellow and red accents and sewn on Bundeswehr logos. They were at once the ugliest and most perfect things I had ever seen. At least two band members had no business wearing anything skintight. The fact that this was never acknowledged added to the allure. When one band member unzipped his suit to his navel and began singing “This is how you dance when you die” at the outset of their second song, it was bordering on the sublime.
Then it all went wrong. A man who had been behaving erratically jumped up on to one of the monitors (this was, according to others in attendance, his victorious attempt in doing this after being pulled safely back onto the ground by other concertgoers multiple times) and began wildly flailing his arms around. It was nothing too out of the ordinary when a band gets the crowd going, given the intimacy of the room and proximity of the stage to the floor, but, nonetheless, an unacceptable action. Two band members broke from the song, saying something along the lines of, “No, dude, off the stage,” and he disappeared back into the crowd. I didn’t give it a second thought and assumed the man would be removed from the club. A few seconds later though, it turned into a very dire situation.
“We need some help here!” a band member tersely and very loudly announced. I assumed the man was making a second run at the stage, but the crowd in the area where the man was suddenly backed up and show photographer David deYoung approached me and said, “This guy needs an ambulance, now.” I looked around the room and saw no less than nine other people doing what I was about to, so I held off on the 911 call. As more people cleared the area there was a pool of blood next to the man; he was seriously hurt. He had not simply disappeared back into the crowd, he had fallen from his perch. A friend of mine who was in attendance and is trained in CPR ran to the man and quickly established that he was breathing, but in and out of consciousness. She could do no more for him and the sirens were now audible. The room was silent, save for the repeated calls of “Is anyone here with this guy?” from the bouncers. The EMTs and a police officer entered, checked the man’s vitals, and hauled him out in a neck brace on a stretcher. Many people looked dazed and tired. The night was over.
“We’re a party band” they said from the stage, forgoing the option to continue their set, “and this doesn’t feel much like a party anymore.” They couldn’t have been more right.
This is a two-part story. Read the next night's show review by David de Young here.
