Dan Deacon + Video Hippos @ the Jackpot Saloon [6/29/07]

So okay, my rationale for going to this show was that when I go to the Pitchfork Music Festival next month I thought I wouldn’t be able to see Dan Deacon because his set overlaps with Clipse, and lord knows that Clipse is incredible, so I should probably see him now. But now I am having serious second thoughts about that plan, and I am thoroughly convinced that Dan Deacon is a beautiful, beautiful angel. Like, from heaven.

Seriously, Deacon is an awesome performer and a super-rad guy who comes off as totally un-pretentious and un-self-conscious and un-everything that’s shitty about anything. Spiderman of the Rings is both brilliantly titled and one of my favorite albums of the year so far, just way off-the-wall and ecstatic and annoying in the best way possible.

If you don’t already know what he is about, watch this hilariously awkward appearance on an NBC affiliate station.

Deacon’s friends/fellow members of the Wham City art collective the Video Hippos opened the show. The drum/guitar duo (with backing bass/synth tracks) play tripped out, garagey pop music in front of some actually really cool projected psychedelic imagery — one of the best uses of a projector I’ve seen, I’d say (behind Sigur Ros. And Tortoise, maybe). One song was accompanied by manipulated Teletubbies footage, and another by that awesome fly-swatting game from Mario Paint for SNES (you know, with the mouse). They surpass the pretension of other similar bands I’ve seen (Mixel Pixel came to mind), and play some damn catchy jams.

Dan Deacon started his set with a countdown from the number 35, first by just saying the numbers 35 and 25, saying each syllable with one whole breath, then saying nothing between 25 and 10 and just sort of shimmying around and making awkward eye-contact with a stranger, and then from 10 to 1 real sassy and suave-like. Fun! He then proceeded to essentially blow away everybody in the place away with quite a few of his best jams, about half from Spiderman, including “The Crystal Cat,” “Trippy Green Skull,” (yes, the trippy green skull itself was present) and “Okie Dokie.” His set-up consists of a table (always on the floor of the venue, never the stage) with various electronic instruments; a Casiotone keyboard, effects pedals, a vocoder, lightswitches, an iPod shuffle taped to a banana (his “backing band”) — very mad scientist. How much of the music was actually being performed? Probably not very much. But who cares? Deacon is all about interacting with the crowd, which he does superbly.

I have this thing about dancing around like an idiot and looking really stupid at any vaguely dance-oriented show I go to. For the first time ever I felt like one of the least stupid-looking people there. Deacon’s utter lack of self-consciousness apparently rubbed off and basically everybody was getting down. He put together a dance circle, and plenty of people threw down some way awesome moves. I wouldn’t have guessed that people would be jumping off the stage into the crowd and almost destroying my glasses, but, well, they were, and they did.

Toward the end of his set, before his 12-minute epic “Wham City,” he passed out the Wham City robes he has been handing out to a “choir” of 8 people at each date, and I wore one (yellow, with a W on it). They haven’t been washed since the beginning of the tour, and goddammit that thing smelled and felt disgusting. But seriously, going bat-shit and singing along (he handed out lyric sheets) to one of my current favorite songs with a bunch of other people going crazy was just fucking awesome. I think the moment kind of personified the inclusive, joyful vibe that makes Deacon’s music and the whole Wham City thing in general so great.

I think I said it was the best night of my life several times in the couple hours following the show. I hope that wasn’t true. But maybe it was. He is unofficially planning on playing at the Pistol, a warehouse in the West Bottoms in KC, in October, which could quite possibly be an even better show, so LOOK OUT FOR THAT!