In the 90s when The Dandy’s Warhols made their debut on Capitol, there was a buzz in the music industry. Bands today will have a hard time imagining the way bands considered making it in the music business over a decade ago. The roadmap to success was formulaic and there wasn’t the option of creating a viral experience via Youtube or Twitter. Back then your only options were to get signed with a major label. In turn, that would give you exposure via the mass communication network for music lovers, MTV—the MTV that would play music videos just to be clear. The Dandy Warhols were of the vanguard of musical acts that followed the formulaic successful music model of the pre-millennium. The Dandy Warhols are a link to how drastically the music business has changed since the mid-90s.
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Dandy’s Warhols
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Vic Theatre
Chicago, IL
October 30, 2010
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The Dandy Warhols just finishing a tour of Australia over the summer, it came no surprise that they would be well adjusted this early into their tour. They opened the show with a psychedelic anthem “Be-In” shaking the Vic Theatre into a bouncing warble of 30-somethings who’d smoked their first joint alone to the very same song some 15 years ago.
Much of the rest of the show pretty much followed the ideal of a tour constructed to emphasize a just released greatest hits album. Not much on the new frontier for the band as almost every song played had had some marginal success as a single or on their setlists over the years.
What might catch you off guard about seeing The Dandy Warhols a decade and a half since their initial big splash onto the music scene, is their stamina onstage remains just as youthful. If anything it would seem that rock and roll has, instead of making their energy wane, has engaged the entire band like some sort of magical fountain.
Who knew? The entire crowd provided the Vic Theatre with an assault of applause after “Bohemian Like You.” It had to happen. Especially, since the Warhols don’t do encores, instead McCabe insisted upon doing an a cappella rendition of “Daisy,” securing McCabe as the daintiest of all dandies.
And you have to think you’ve learned something by the end of Warhols’ show. Maybe it’s that The Dandy Warhols love playing Chicago or maybe that Courtney wrote a song after a girl he dated who was from Chicago. Personally, I learned that Devil’s Night made for an excellent photo opportunity, when the whole band played in hats that the audience threw onstage for the last few songs. Ironically, there wasn’t a single cowboy hat among the for “Country Leaver.”
* Photos taken at the Chicago Metro on December 31, 2009
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