The Blue Meanies, a Molotov cocktail of sound and motion, stomped, shimmied and rattled the floorboards at Metro one last time Thursday, and then, presumably, called it quits.
“You’re witnessing history tonight,” said singer Billy Spunke, midway through the septet’s set. “This lineup, these seven guys, they’ll never share this stage again.”
Whether this signaled the band’s complete dissolution or simply a retooling wasn’t clear, but it was a bittersweet moment nonetheless in Chicago rock history. The Meanies’ finale has to be regarded as a major loss for anyone who gives a flip about underground music.
The decade-old band epitomized the DIY (do-it-yourself) ethic of punk, forming their own record label to put out their music and playing 200 shows each year around the world while booking, managing and producing themselves. At the same time, they refused to adhere to punk orthodoxy in terms of sound and presentation. The Metro performance was in many ways typical — several of the band members outfitted in suits, and playing with a high level of technical command foreign to the punk circuit. The brass section of Jimmy Flame (trumpet) and John Paul Camp III (saxophone) flavored their lickety-split unison riffs with Jamaican blue-beat and Yiddish klezmer accents. Keyboardist Chaz Linde favored a soul-flavored Hammond organ sound, while Sean Dolan chopped up the beats with chicken-scratch funk in addition to hammering punk chords.
The Meanies bust up beats like atoms, rarely bothering with standard four-four rock tempos, instead splitting whole notes into sixteenths and thirty-seconds, so that the pace and volume bordered on the frenetic. The septet signaled their intent from the outset, slamming out a savage version of the Clash’s “White Riot,” the near-metal fury of “Camaro Man” and the delirious polka “Grandma Shampoo.” The latter was a throwback to the Meanies’ days as the party band of choice on the Midwestern college circuit. But in recent years, their music has expanded in scope and sophistication, with Flame and company’s development into accomplished musicians and Spunke’s impressive growth as a lyricist and singer.
After years of living in the word-of-mouth world of indie rock, the Meanies put out their first, and what looks to be their last, major-label album last year, “The Post Wave.”
The band’s scattershot energy became a bullet train of tunefulness on newer tracks such as “She Breathes Fire” and “Chemicals.” Spunke’s social commentary came without preciousness or preachiness: “Smash the Magnavox” was a celebratory screed, while “Mama Getting High on Chardonnay” transformed the message behind the Rolling Stones classic “Mother’s Little Helper” into a dervish frenzy.
The wiry, wired Spunke climbed into the crowd near the end of the set, singing from amid a sea of swaying bodies, an ebullient mixture of Cab Calloway and Johnny Rotten. He, and the Meanies, will be missed.
