We arrived at the Commodore Ballroom fairly late – shortly before the first band came on, in fact - but the place was still nowhere near full. The crowd seemed to be, for lack of a better word, a bit older, for the most part. And although there was the odd stylin’ person there, the place appeared to be full of people who had spent every one of their lunch hours in high school hiding out in the band room. In addition, I saw more wacky dance moves perpetrated by follicularly-challenged 30-something guys than one needs to see in one’s lifetime – and this was before the first band had even started. Now this might all sound kind of catty, but just wait until you hear what happens later…
The opening band was the Vancouver act ‘Cherrybomb’. They are fronted by two female singer/guitarists who were, in turn, backed by a very solid band. Their sound is very commercial, kind of ‘Heart’ meets ‘The Donnas’, and their look is very – hmm, let’s just say they’ve covered every rock-fashion cliché in the book.
Next up were the headliners, ‘The Dan Band’. Now, I had never heard this band before, nor had I seen the movie ‘Old School’, which helped gain them a broader audience base, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I had heard they were funny, but funny can come in many different forms, obviously. Turns out The Dan Band is currently the toast of the Hollywood celeb scene – the LA Times called them “LA’s hottest nightclub act”, while Entertainment Weekly described them as “one of the hottest tickets in Hollywood”.
The band is fronted by Dan Finnerty, who dresses in mechanics duds and wears a backwards baseball cap. He has two back-up singers/dancers, the deadpan Clark Kent clones Gene Reed and John Kozeluh; and the rest of the band is made up of David Arana on keyboards, Marc Strommer on guitar, Lex Luther look-alike Dana Decker on bass, and drummer Dave Johnstone. Now that might seem pretty straightforward, but this band’s ‘thing’ is that they sing only ‘girl’ songs – and dance (sometimes quite badly). It’s pretty much a case of “beer and karaoke tragically colliding”, as Finnerty so eloquently puts it.
This band is all about irreverence, and they have perfected their own brand of mock‘n‘roll, complete with choreographed dance moves further enhanced by the addition of some rhythmic gymnastics. Their shtick is that they take (as I said earlier) ‘girl’ songs from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s (think “Gloria”, “Muskrat Love”, “Waterloo”, “Fernando”, “Mickey”, and the like…) and make them uniquely and frighteningly their own. Even sadder is the audience reaction – I strongly believe that people should not make it public knowledge that they know the words to these songs, and yet there they were, enthusiastically (and shamelessly) singing away…
Finnerty engaged in a lot of audience interaction between songs, and certainly handled the crowd like a seasoned professional – so much so, in fact, that it occurred to me that he was more about acting than he was about singing. That was a thought that stuck with me for the rest of the night, and when I later found out that Finnerty is a veteran of shows as diverse as “Stomp” and “The Guiding Light” (and is also married to actress Kathy Najimy), it all started to make sense. Which leads me back to the audience, which I had dissed so badly earlier: at one point, when Finnerty was talking to an audience member (the ubiquitous “What’s your name? Where you from?”), he got a response from a young lady from Washington state – and the crowd, upon hearing she was an American, resoundingly booed her. I was horrified – shocked – dismayed – ashamed – embarrassed – not to mention disgusted - by this behaviour. Fortunately, the young lady took it quite well – at least on the surface. But there’s no excuse for that sort of thing. It definitely coloured my perceptions for the rest of the evening…
For a band that “started off as a joke”, The Dan Band has definitely developed a loyal geek squad following – and they’ll be back on home territory in time for a show at the Avalon Hollywood on August 19 – if you’re there, you might also catch some of their non-geek fans like Brad Pitt and Laura Dern. Hopefully they’ll be better audience members than the ones I saw the show with.
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