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It's been two years since the California band, Incubus, charmed Chicagoan's with a stellar performance on the scenic Charter One stage. For anybody who attended in 2009, the set was amazing - complete with a great light set, killer vocals, instrumental perfection, and an ensued misty rain that only enhanced the experience further. Fast forward to 2011 and Incubus is back with a new album, If Not Now, When? , and they are ready to grace the stage yet again for another incredible show. The set will include classic Incubus songs, as well as new material for hungry Chicago fans. Opening for Incubus is Tom Morello, former vocalist of Rage Against the Machine, making this show one worth catching. Everything kicks off at 7:30PM on Sunday, August 21st, 2011.

Tickets are still on sale for both general admission and the seating area, so grab yours before it's too late and I'll see you there!

Check Incubus out at www.enjoyincubus.com

As an ardent, obsessive fan of Pink Floyd, you can imagine how excited I was sitting on my stiff, metal stadium seat, gazing out into the vast space of the United Center arena, where the beginning constructions of a wall stood on either side of the stage, waiting for those explosive opening chords of "In the Flesh?" to blast through the speakers and for Mr. Roger Waters to grace us with his presence. My ticket read "8 PM, PROMPT" for the show's starting time. Since my friend and I had arrived a few hours early -- just to have a beer, and to check out the $45 t-shirts (which we each bought, thank you very much) -- we hoped it would start promptly at 8. We didn't want to wait a minute longer.

Well, we did have to wait a minute longer. Twenty minutes longer, in fact. And all the seats in the stadium had just about filled up. I thought I might slip off the edge of my seat and off the balcony into the crowd below in my jittery excitement. The lights went out. Camera flashes and the blue glow of cell phones were the only things illuminating the pitch black arena. The room screamed and cheered. The very air was bristling with energy. Oh my god. This was it. It was happening.

A blue spotlight revealed a lone sax player in the middle of the stage, solemnly warbling out the slow, sad opening tune -- the same melody that ends the show -- as we yelled our elation into the stadium and waited with tingling limbs for what was to come. The audience would grow quiet, then scream again, then quiet again, then scream once more. We didn't know when it was coming, when the sorrowful melody would be bombarded with heavy guitar chords out of the blue, thus truly starting the show. There suddenly was a lull in the music, we all yelled and screamed, and then BA-NUM! BA-NUM! DUN, DUN DUN DUN! The stage was a blinding flash of fire and light and the room erupted. It was already a climactic moment of the show and it had only just started. My friend and I sang along to all the guitar parts until Roger Waters, in all his Roger Waters glory, (because there is glory in simply being Roger Waters), took his place center stage to welcome us with his opening lyrics: "So you thought you might like to go to the show?" Screams. Applause. Whistles. Yes, Roger. We did indeed think that we'd like to go to the show. We did, indeed.

And what a show it was.

Although keeping to the traditions of the original Wall tour from 1980, with the wall being built across the stage as the show progressed, with enormous moving puppets of the school teacher, the mother, and the wife creepily lurking and, seemingly, peering at the audience from the sides of the stage, and with the final tearing down of the wall before the very last song of the show, there was much modernization. The wall itself served as a screen for projecting elaborate, ever-changing images, animations, and quotes, as well as the signature Pink Floyd circular screen that hung behind the stage. These technological advances helped to drive home a message that is deeply relevant to our time.

The anti-war theme of the album was brought to life with such clarity throughout the show; for instance, at the end of "Vera," a clip was shown on the wall of a little girl sitting in a classroom when she gets a look of surprise on her face, then disbelief, then an overwhelming flood of emotion and tears as she sees her dad, a soldier who has come home, walking through the door as she runs to embrace him. I was teary-eyed at this, and even more so when the pulsing drumrolls, triumphant horn section, and Roger Waters's pleading vocals burst into the air for "Bring the Boys Back Home."

There were also messages to be wary of the government and large corporations. During "Run Like Hell," logos of gas companies and car companies washed over the wall amidst the words "You Better Run!", and these same logos were being dropped by military planes during the animation on "Goodbye Blue Sky." Other corporations were attacked as well, one of the most obvious being Apple, with mock iPod ads being projected onto the wall alongside phrases like "iBelieve", "iFollow", "iProfit", "iLose". However, the most prominent and most blunt theme was clear as glass: The lyric "Mother, should I trust the government?" was met with "boo!"s all around, and then euphoric cheers and applause when the projection on the wall answered the question itself with the words "No Fucking Way."

The pungent smell of marijuana hung heavy in the air during "Comfortably Numb," and I would have had it no other way. We stood up in our seats and swayed side to side as we sang along, and I never wanted that guitar solo to end. After "The Trial," in which it is decided that the wall must be torn down, the room chanted louder and louder "TEAR DOWN THE WALL!!" as the music built. The music then died away and the first few tiers of white bricks fell forward and onto the stage floor accompanied by booming sounds of explosions and falling rubble. We screamed and screamed as row upon row collapsed until only the sides of the wall remained standing. A light illuminated the front of the stage and the band was revealed, with Roger Waters joining them amongst the debris.

After a long while of cheering and applause, the noise of the crowd abated somewhat and Roger went into the last song, repeating the final line twice, "After all, it's not easy banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall." The room erupted once more and this time we wouldn't stop until the house lights came on and forced us to leave. Over the shouting and clapping and screaming, Roger addressed the crowd, saying, "Thank you, from the bottom of my heart! You've been a fantastic audience!" My friend and I proceeded to repeatedly bow with oustretched arms yelling "Roger! Roger! Roger!" We were still ecstatic, but also bereft, now that it was over. We had waited for this our whole lives; Pink Floyd is in our blood! It runs in our very veins! We didn't want this to be the end. After Roger waved and walked offstage and the house lights went on, everyone made a scramble for the nearest exit as the two of us remained in our seats yelling "Dark Side! Do Dark Side!" at the stage.

All in all, ticket prices may have been steep, but if you like this music and you're going to spend money on anything extraneous, like at a fancy restaurant or on $11 movie tickets or to buy food for your kids, do yourself a favor and spend it on a ticket to Roger Waters instead. He may not be in Chicago anymore, but he's around, and this is your last chance to see him before the wall comes down forever. All in all, it's all so much more than just a brick in the wall.

Lincoln Hall is, hands down, the weirdest concert venue I’ve ever set foot in.

And I’ve been to The Fireside Bowl.

I made my L.H. debut last Wednesday night for Thee Oh Sees, a garage pop outfit from San Francisco, about whom my roommate had said, “I think I’ve heard they’re pretty much pretty good.”

They were just so.

Lincoln Hall, too, was a pretty much pretty good place to see music performed. Opened in 2009 by the owners of Southport Ave.’s Schuba’s, L.H. is the renovated Fullerton Theatre of 1912, which most recently housed the 3 Penny Cinema. It’s on Lincoln, just north of Fullerton in Lincoln Park. The venue feels like it’s on Lincoln, just north of Fullerton in Lincoln Park. Which is not a bad thing, exactly, but it makes seeing punk performed there a little weird.

It was almost too nice a venue.

First things first: I headed for the men’s room – little did I know that I’d be micturating in the most pristine bathroom that a music venue about to put on a punk-ish show has ever presented to the world. It was . . . weird. The urinals themselves, for instance, were shaped like 1960’s mod chairs, the shape and color of massive eggs inset into the wall, with each egg missing what could only be termed its front hatch. Why would you make a urinal look this way?

Furthermore, and perhaps more noteworthy - there was not a drop of graffiti in the joint. Not one mark in the bathroom of a concert venue. Not an exploded pens worth of hieroglyphics. Zilch. Nada. There were some flyers put up on the door, but they were arranged tastefully in columns and rows, all of them advertising the upcoming Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s show (Sept. 19). Conspicuously, nobody had torn any of the flyers down, nor desecrated them with blasphemy, awful song lyrics, or phone numbers and the reasons one might be prevailed upon to call them. It was pure Twilight Zone, I tell you. I got out of there as soon as I could.

Lincoln Hall is divided into two sections: there’s an antechamber with tall circular tables set on crane legs resting under soft lighting. There's full bar featuring two smiling bartenders and a kitchen lurks somewhere nearby because there are lots of food scraps left on the tall tables. And then there’s the second room: the stage room. The stage room’s walls are exposed brick until they meet intricate metalwork that spins and curls up to the stage room bar, a bar with plenty of on-tap beer options and built-in wood-paneled shelves that hold bottles of expensive-looking liquor, each bottle backlit by a little light fixture in a way that renders the bottle’s contents into highly desirable shades of gold.

Let it be known that I’m not trying to paint L.H. in hoity-toity pen-strokes. I don’t actually think it is very pretentious or haughty, and I think that most people who might claim to feel that way are simply reacting to the unexpected. L.H. is actually quite warm, both temperature-wise and in the feelings it evokes. Unzipping my hooded sweatshirt, I took in a crowd of mostly thirty-something alternative types dressed in plaid shirts and tight to semi-tight jeans or Dockers. Almost everybody drank beer either out of plastic cups or glasses, chatting amicably in clusters, apologizing when they bumped into one another during a particularly demonstrative retelling of a story. It’s a warm place that just happens to be nice.

The first band of the evening is Paul Cary. I think. They never actually say their name, and they’re a three-piece group, Possibly Paul Cary is - guitar-keys-drums - with a lead singer/guitar player whose gravelly vocals crack in all the right places as it's transmitted through old-school ribbon microphone effects. P.P.C.’s sound is bluesy and melodic, like a more melancholy version of some The Strokes’s songs. The keyboard sounds good when you can hear it, which isn’t often enough. The lead singer (possibly Paul Cary himself?) should annunciate better. I caught maybe every third word. And the guitar playing trends towards the simple - especially the solos, which were not understated so much as casual, and far from the blues-driven self-expression I’d been hoping to hear.

Up next is Hot Machines, who thankfully identify themselves as such. They’re a really fun band, a jump-around squawking punk band that’s mostly upbeat. They employ both a male and a female singer, and Hot Machines are at their best when the two of them overlap voices, the melodies and arpeggios commingling, her chirps bisecting his microphone-effected crooning. The lady singer, Miss Alex-White (according to MySpace), has a great, rangy voice that’s smoky and seductive on their one slower song, and I wish we could have heard her full range more often. As it was, she stuck mostly to chirping. She also has great, massive hair, billowing curly hair that’s red or gold or American cheese yellow, often all three shades in one song when the stage lighting flickers back and forth across the color spectrum. Like this evening’s openers, Hot Machines are largely indecipherable. I believe I heard not infrequently the words, “Fire” and “Go,” but can offer little more than that in regard to their lyrical selections. And I was listening. My lamentations about understanding words might make me come off like a hearing aid-straddling octogenarian, but, man, let me at least a little bit into what you’re trying to do lyrically. Slurring ninety-five percent of its lyrics makes a band sound insecure, not indifferent. Likewise, like a lot of punk bands, Hot Machines are musically repetitive. After twenty minutes it all starts to blend together, I think, feeling again like an out of touch old-person, though I might be the youngest guy here. Music should take risks, and surely Hot Machines took one in their determination to play this music of fire and go, but the risks seem to have faltered there, confined to choices of style and tone instead of exotic instrumentation. Deviate and be rewarded. As is, however, they’re still barrels of fun.

Thee Oh Sees go on last. They’re a San Francisco outfit once known as Orange County Sound, which doesn’t make too much geographical sense, but who knows? Live music can be wonderful because just when you’ve fallen in love with an opening act, when you’ve determined that they’ve got a great sound, decided that they should go places far and wide, the headliner comes on and reminds everybody in attendance about how inventive, poppy music can really sound. The headliner tells us what it’s like to own true showmanship; they let us see for certain how a band’s cleverly crafted dynamic can play out on stage before our very eyes. Thee Oh Sees perform twangy, slippery punk songs with surfeit energy and verve. They craft catchy melodies to be sung over by lead singer John Dwyer, whose stage presence is phenomenal. He whirls around and kicks his legs, dancing, holding his guitar high on his chest like a machinegun or placing it headstock down on the ground while drummer Mike Shoun unleashes a vicious, five-minute drum solo. Dwyer has so much life in him that he cannot help but end nearly every poppy line with a “Whoop!” or a “Yip!” and by the end of the night those whoops and yips feel trademarked to him and to him alone, and I will think of Thee Oh Sees when I hear a dog yip or a crane whoop for a long time to come. Dwyer has so much stage presence that half the time it feels like he is up there performing by himself while the eyes of his comparatively humdrum band mates follow him around, distractedly playing their instruments, taking in the show as an on-stage audience.

Thee Oh Sees’ sound is hard to describe with anything approaching a realized fullness, but that’s because they’re originals. There are traces of Devo in the melodies, I suppose, and particles of surf rock, too. When Dwyer solos it sounds like he’s improvising, and he might be, taking off whole bars at a time between notes, then returning with a flurry up the guitar neck and back down it again before rediscovering the melody. The solos, and virtually everything about Thee Oh Sees, feels patient, in spite of their fast tempo. Patience welded to experimentation sounds like inspiration, even if its all been hashed out ahead of time. They just sound alive - eagerly alive – playing the same three chords in every charming song.

On my weirdest nights, it is nice to know that I have, at least, been charmed.

http://www.myspace.com/ohsees

http://www.myspace.com/hotmachines

http://www.lincolnhallchicago.com/

Josie’s on vacation far away. Come around and talk it over.

The opening lines to The Outfield’s “Your Love” implore the packed house at Duffy’s Tavern and Grille (420 ½ W. Diversey) to take part in an illicit encounter with a dude whose girlfriend is way out of town, and on Wednesday night the people respond favorably. Eager screams and empty glasses dominate the spacious bar’s back room topography. I feel my own fist inexplicably rise above my head and begin to pump back and forth. Two young women rush up to the stage, and then they climb onto it.

Perhaps we are so excited about being prompted to commit adultery because the suggestion comes from Louis Stigwood, enigmatic nerd vocalist for The Spazmatics, Chicago’s best 80’s New Wave Synthpop cover band, the band that has played Duffy’s Tavern and Grille every Wednesday night for nearly five years.

Donning his trademark suspenders, horn-rimmed glasses and rainbow propeller hat, Louis fits right in – at least on stage. His fellow band-mates are garbed in white button-down shirts, ties of varying lengths and widths, a protective helmet, slicked back hair and, of course, pocket protectors; these rockers appear more likely to subscribe to Mental_Floss than to Rolling Stone. The cumulative effect of the motif and their outstanding stage presence sets The Spazmatics apart from any band you’ve seen in the last ten – wait, make that twenty-five – years. They’re an hommage to the great New Wave bands of the 80’s, bands like Devo, The Buggles, and Men At Work, who celebrate nerd culture instead of stepping on it.

Importantly, beyond costumes, synchronized dance moves, and over-the-top ribald banter, The Spazmatics are solid musicians who consistently put on a good show. Louis’ impressive vocal range allows the band to transition seamlessly from Billy Idol to Cyndi Lauper, while Shureman Larusso’s guitar shredding always makes me stop and appreciate, about four dollar-beers in, how these guys are talented, and how I’m lucky to live in a city that houses professional cover bands.

The night wears on but the music keeps coming. It’s nearly one in the morning, and everybody knows that this set will soon end. The band starts up one of my favorite songs, The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” with Shureman on the mic; I go crazy, I am afforded extra personal space, and then they say goodnight as the last reverb fizzles away. The DJ starts to play Top 50 radio jams. Duffy’s is somber for a drunken mass of young people. We’re somber because the night is over, because the Brown Line is no longer running, and because, for almost a whole week, it is no longer 1985. Thankfully, sometimes The Spazmatics play Friday nights at Uncle Fatty’s Rum Resort (2833 N. Sheffield). Let’s be grateful for small mercies.

To learn more about The Spazmatics, follow them on Facebook, check out their recently renovated website, www.chicagospazmatics.com, or come to Duffy’s next Wednesday. We’ll all be there.

The bands fun., Anberlin and Taking Back Sunday stormed The House of Blues for this Q101 show with high energy and charged the crowd with positive vibes. Every once in awhile there is that band that you feel iffy about and can’t decide whether or not you want to like them. At this concert I had this fork in the road and made my decision.