Jam Band: !!! Live at Milwaukee's Eagles Hall (The Rave), May 10, 2007

Arriving late to the show had one benefit: an image for describing the evening’s experience. Stepping into a !!! (“chk chk chk”) show is like stepping into a dance club. I don’t just mean walking into a packed disco where everyone is on the dance floor grooving to the beats laid down by the DJ. I mean literally walking into the dance club, walking into the sound and energy itself, stepping behind reality’s curtain and becoming part of the music, rhythm, lights, and club itself.

When I finally got to Milwaukee’s the Rave, descended into the Eagles Hall, !!! was in full progress. I made my way into the heart of the dance floor and was struck by the freeform, uncoordinated, sloppy, silly, constant dancing of the crowd. That’s when I realized I had stepped into another dimension where !!! was leading us like hamsters to power some dance club in the first dimension. A dance club in reality was relying on us—and if we stopped, their beats, music, lights, and dancing would stop.

!!! frontman Nic Offer is the foreman of the hamsters. While his vocals and charisma certainly lead a portion of what !!! does, he also gave us hamsters directions for our dancing—like a third base coach, armed with plenty of hand gestures that were code for “dance more,” “take it down a notch,” “here comes the big push,” or “relax.” Offer’s dancing comes straight out of the perimeters of a high school dance, the guys who love music but cannot stand what is being played, the guys who are there because of a girl and the only way to cope is to dance—making fun of the unimaginative club moves the in-crowd is displaying. Offer’s movements could be part club redux, part cheerleader mimicry, part punk, part indie hip hop, part Offer. As coach and foreman, he gives his hamsters plenty of permission to be just run on whatever shaped wheel we designed in our little, alternative dimension cage.

Despite being late, I still worked for a hour knowing that somewhere in reality a dance club depended on me. When Offer declined requests for one more song, the house lights came on, signaling as they do in most venues that the band is really not coming back for an encore. However, here the lights came on, I blinked, I was done being that dance club hamster, I was back in reality, I was sweaty and tired, I was exhilarated. !!! takes into the music in a way that no other band offers, and I was glad to have that as my paycheck.

!!! on record: Myth Takes
Myth Takes obviously finds !!! in a much better environment to finely hone their craft at making intricately simple dance jams, letting individual lines of melody and rhythm come through more clearly than heard through the muddy PA at the Eagles Hall (why is that system always so muddy?). However, the album still seems to be in large part a live show souvenir—something cherished by those who have seen !!! live. I hear the passion, the abandon, and the “we can dance if we want to” air, but really it just channels memories of the show. Had I not attended the show, I may not find the same connection to Myth Takes.

Thanks to !!!, Tag Team Media, and Warp Records for their help. Thanks also to Brian Berry, music editor at 411mania.com, who wrote an excellent, much more reality-based review of !!!, and encouraged me to make sure I caught the Milwaukee show.