Saturday night drew the youngest crowd of all the Metro shows. The lineup was decidedly teen-friendly, although that might not have been apparent from watching openers Anxiety High, whose bro-flavored brand of punk was largely unremarkable.
If there's one thing I learned from this show, it's that Teen Idols really want you to know their name. In addition to the large, black banner they hung from the rafters, each band member wore an identical studded leather jacket blazoned with their logo. Self-promotion aside, the group ripped through a razor sharp set, and had the distinction of inspiring the most perilous mosh pit of the festival (I was certain, for a second, that someone was going to get hauled out of there on a stretcher). Combining Ramones-esque ‘50s-style power-pop with sneering Rockabilly attitude, the Idols gave the audience a much needed shot of adrenaline to prepare them for the rest of the night.
I was less impressed with Teenage Bottlerocket. Their sappy, Blink-182-but-faster angst-pop marked them as the kind of band that I would openly mock if one of their songs came on the radio. Yet there was no denying they were putting all they had into their performance, and the younger audience members just freaking ate it up. The area around the stage was teeming with teens and young adults jostling against each other and shouting along at the top of their lungs. There was a clear perimeter between the moshing youngsters and the more recumbent oldsters, but looking into the faces of the old guard that made up the outskirts of the audience, you could see expressions of almost parental fondness for the kids, a stark contrast to the disapproving glares similar actions were sometimes wont to draw at Pitchfork.
The evening's main attraction, The Dead Milkmen, brought a few old-timers to the front of the stage. The Milkmen are a band whose goofy persona often overwhelms their music in the minds of fans and critics alike, but from where I was standing, those considerations seemed downright ludicrous. The key ingredient is bass, provided by Dan Stevens in place of the late Dave Blood. The thick, funky bass-lines that slink along unheeded in many of their songs are tailor-made for the dance floor.
Rodney Anonymous was as captivating a front man as I've ever seen, shambling from one end of the stage to the other, his eyes bulging maniacally from his skull as he ranted along to “Stuart” or railed against the boomers with “The Thing That Only Eats Hippies.” His sense of the absurd had clearly not dulled an iota, as evidenced from the rambling spoken word intro (a chronicle of all the bands his father had beaten up for screwing up the words to their songs, as an object lesson to his future rock-star son on the importance of respecting your audience) to “Bitchin' Camaro.” He even paused between songs to break up a potential fight between two audience members (“Everyone's cool. I'm sure it was just a misunderstanding.”).
The band ended their encore with a potent one-two punch of “Beach Party Vietnam” and (my personal favorite) “Dean's Dream,” right before Anonymous hurled himself into the crowd.
