When Robert Marks was a junior in high school, his frequent fender benders earned him the nickname Skid.
The now 46-year-old Ladies and Gentlemen frontman still answers to Skid.
Marks, who was born and raised in Chicago and works the box office at the Vic Theatre, has been a fixture on the local music scene for years. With both The Ladies and Gentlemen and its previous incarnation, Box-O-Car, the singer has refined a style of power pop that is as catchy as it is danceable. Fittingly, his current band’s self-titled debut even centers on “The Dance Floor,” a swinging celebration that rides an irresistible rhythm to its climax.
“For a while it felt like the [local] scene was getting heavier and more macho,” Marks said. “We’re more about entertainment than the gloom and doom. I want to go out to shows and have fun. I didn’t come here to think about my problems. I can go home and do that.”
But that’s not to say that being in a band comes naturally to Marks. He says he’s a “very inhibited person for a business that is not about being inhibited.” Visit the group’s MySpace page (myspace.com/theladiesandgents) and you’ll even be greeted by a band photo with Marks’ head buried in his hands as if to say, “Get me out of here.”
For this reason, the band did the bulk of the recording in Marks’ Ukrainian Village home–free from the pressures of the studio. It was a place where they could take their time to get things just so, which often meant redoing the songs dozens of times before eventually reverting to the first take. The album even contains vocals from home demos Marks made shortly after the band formed in 2004.
“When I record at home I’m just singing and I’m not trying to impress anybody,” Marks said. “That first recording documents a moment in time. It’s more in the moment.”
“Nobody Home,” a hip-shaking mix of guitar crunch, distorted vocals and space age keyboard, is exemplary of this approach. “J.A.N.W.T.B.” glides on Mike Zelenko’s steady left hand, the ex-Material Issue drummer laying down a smooth backing groove for Marks’ disaffected singing. “(Power to the) Luv Brigade!” is a glam-rock anthem that doubles as something of a call-to-arms. And its message? Escape the daily grind, hit the rock clubs and dance the stress away.
Taking its inspiration from Weezer’s “Green Album,” everything clocks in at right around three minutes (aside from “The Dance Floor,” which stretches all the way to four), making for an effortless listen.
“We would listen to a song and say, ‘OK, this is eight bars. Is there any way we can cut it to four? Two?’ Instead of asking what we could add, it was what can we get rid of,” Marks said. “It seems simple, but that’s the kind of music I’ve always been into. And I’m more inspired now than I ever have been.”
The Ladies and Gentlemen
When: 9:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Subterranean, 2011 W. North Ave.
