Dan Deacon at Emo's
If Dan Deacon had passed around the Kool-Aid on Friday night at Emo's, the ecstatic audience would have gulped it down in a heartbeat with no questions asked. Sweaty, balding, hiding behind thick glasses, and a little on the heavy side, Deacon looks more like an amateur ham radio enthusiast than an electronic music messiah, but that humility is the bedrock of his charisma. While Teeth Mountain and Future Islands opened up the show with noisy (the former) and effervescent (the latter) highlighter electronica, Deacon manned his own merch table and chatted genially with the crowd. Approachable and affable, he joked around and made everyone feel welcomed, eschewing any sort of indie-rock star complex. And that's what makes Dan Deacon so dangerous: Before you know it, sweaty, dancing bodies surround you with circuit-bent synthesizers blaring in your ears, and strobe lights flash hypnotically. All eyes are on Dan, and you’re helplessly following his every command, having way more fun than you thought was possible.
The vegetable oil-powered school bus Deacon and his 15-piece ensemble (though it looked more like 12) tour in draws quick comparisons to the bus commandeered by another cult figure, and while Deacon's bus may lack the DayGlo paint job of Ken Kesey's Furthur, the live show it unleashes certainly invokes those early “acid tests.” Reassuring any fans who feared a live band meant he would be leaving their midst, Deacon set up his plywood table, a mess of wires, electronic boxes, black light tape, and glowing doohickeys, in the middle of the teeming audience. Onstage, Deacon's post-modern Merry Pranksters worked as fast as they could to set up their intense amount of gear.
Comprised mainly of members of Deacon's Baltimore collective/compound Wham City, the ensemble dressed in sleeveless white jumpsuits, resembling a poor man's Ghostbusters. It was an orchestra of overkill: three drummers, multiple guitarists, wind instruments, a xylophone, and even a modified Nintendo Wii remote used to manipulate the kaleidoscopic, lysergic swirls of the digital projections.
After the astounding success of 2007's Spiderman Of The Rings, Deacon found himself in a tricky position: He was way more popular than he'd ever planned, and his music was frequently described with the obnoxious adjective "wacky." A second album of glitchy, cartoonish, electronic manipulation could have pushed him into the realm of "novelty act," and pigeonholed him forever as a once amusing, now annoying, flash in the pan.
But Deacon deftly sidestepped that fate, reminded everyone that he holds a Masters in computer music composition, and responded with Bromst, an ambitious piece of music reminiscent of everything from Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Philip Glass' Einstein On The Beach. The next step was figuring out how to translate those sweeping soundscapes of Bromst to the stage—again, a much bigger stage than Deacon had played previously thanks to the breakout success of Spiderman.
As it turns out, Bromst works fantastically well in a live setting, and Deacon found the perfect compromise between embracing growth and retaining his roots. For anyone afraid of joining those rabid hoards pressed up against his plywood table, there was still plenty to see while watching safely from the perimeter. And for the diehard disciples who miss his house party days, Deacon still walks among the commoners and creates the fun, funky free-for-all that everyone came to see.
Half Jim Jones, half camp counselor, Deacon conducted the audience in a manner similar to the way he manipulates his thrift-store keyboards. Before starting his set, Deacon set up three zones, asking everyone to find the tallest person in their zone and let that person become the focal point of their attention. "Don't look at me," he said. "This isn't about me." (Of course, Deacon's cult of personality is too considerable to be ignored, and all eyes remained on Dan despite his pleas.)
It’s refreshing how tirelessly Deacon strives to create this participatory environment, encapsulating innocence and exuberance in a manner increasingly rare in these too-cool-for-school days. He encourages participatory games seemingly cribbed from after-school programs. Whether egging everyone into closing their eyes and spinning in place, running a human gauntlet, or engaging in brief, non-competitive dance contests, Deacon reminds the crowd that there are more ways to have fun than just gyrating up and down.
Though his adherents may follow a little too unquestioningly, Dan Deacon exudes an attitude that makes you feel young, safe, and free to have unabashed fun. By the time that metaphorical Kool-Aid gets passed your way, you’re convinced that nothing harmful lurks beneath its sugary surface. No dissolved poisons, no mind-altering psychedelics; it's just a little pink water in a Dixie cup—maybe served with a couple of vanilla wafers—to help you come down from Dan Deacon's old-fashioned fun.
