Wesley Willis Fiasco
((Dragonfly; 400 capacity; $ 7))
Band: Willis, David Nooks, Brendan Murphy, Pat Barnard, Dale Meiners.
The puzzled other third didn't quite know what to make of the whole thing.
Willis, whose American Records debut, "Feel the Power," is due this summer, has dispensed with the simple and endearing Casio keyboard production of his 15 independently released solo albums, choosing instead to go full-force with his punk quartet.
The heaping, 6-foot, 5-inch Willis charged through an hour of stream-of-conscious song-rants about public transportation, "Casper the Homosexual Ghost," true love and his new $ 150 headphones, which he had flung across the room and broken just before his set. As is Willis' trademark, most "songs" were punctuated with a random ad slogan along the lines of "A-1 is how steak is done."
Willis used a black spiral notebook as a prompt, his voice speeding up and down like a verbal two-step. Between-song patter consisted of self-effacing harangues, mostly about the stupidity of smashing his headphones, and requests for audience members to cheer him up with friendly head-butts. Many obliged.
When Willis' diatribes lasted too long, his Fiasco players would launch into a twin-guitar assault, drowning out his words and cuing him to move on.
Before his set, Willis, also a sketch artist, sat at a table and frenetically worked on a poster-size picture, screaming at amused onlookers and pumping his fists to the punk spew of Chi opening act, Wax.
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