Before this Friday, I had been a casual Dan Deacon fan. By that, I mean that every month or so one of my friends would play a song for me. However, that night, I found myself attending a Dan Deacon concert at The Bowery Ballroom in New York for my two friends’ birthdays. I can safely say that this is amongst the most fun shows I have ever been to.
We got there in time for all the openers, which there were four of. My only comment about them is to look up Alan Resnick, he did a comedy act that left me laughing for thirty minutes straight. Anyways though, afterward they put on music to fill the time before the main show, which was unusually good. The last song they put on was “Bohemian Rhapsody”, and obviously everyone in the entire venue sang along. Toward the end, a lightshow began to sync up with the song, and I realized this was not to be an ordinary show.
After this, Dan Deacon, a chubby bald man in his thirties, and his band came out. Rather than beginning playing, Dan went on a hilarious tirade on Scrabby Doo, and then had us all get on our knees and say an oath regarding Rob Schneider and netflix. To an outside observer, it was really creepy and cultish. In the moment though, it was just so ridiculous and intentionally campy that you couldn’t help but laugh. Then, he began playing, and everyone began dancing.
This was not the end of his audience participation-related antics. On three occasions throughout the show, everyone was told to make a circle in the middle of the room for various “games”. The most notable of which was the high five circle, where one person (one of the birthday boys actually) went in the middle of the circle, running around and high fiving people. Eventually, my friend grabbed someone else to help him high five people. They were to continue bring people in, and so on and so forth, until eventually, everyone in the room was just running around in a circle. It was exactly like this.
Otherwise, the show was incredible; there was so much energy. For the first time in my life I moshed, and I probably danced harder than every single person who attended my bar mitzvah combined. My only advice is that if you go to a Dan Deacon show you shouldn’t bring in valuables. The birthday boy lost his sweater and a shoe (although he recovered them both later) and my friend’s glasses broke.
After the show, Dan Deacon was hanging out by the bar just talking to people. I figured I would go say something to him. So after waiting in line, I summarized the experience in the best way I could think of: “I didn’t really know you before tonight, but this was one of the most fun shows I’ve ever been too, and not just because of your beard. I’ll see you again soon.” He responded quite eloquently, “The beard certainly helps though.”
Lee Seltzer