Man Man @ The Grog Shop, Cleveland Heights, OH

All Photos Courtesy of Judie Vegh

Man Man Live My notes made no sense. Most of it was the oddity that was Man Man. In retrospect, I should have guessed I was in for a weird night when their set was decorated with happy, neon-colored drums and keyboards juxtaposing against shrunken heads on microphones and cymbals. They placed GoPro cameras around the stage to capture their forthcoming madness – one camera set to record each of the three band members.

Lead singer and keyboardist Honus Honus set up the stage dressed like a truck driver before starting the show in a white blazer and cut off jean shorts. Guitarist Shono Murphy took out a cap gun, firing off several shots into a microphone, and we were off. Leaning over his keyboard, Honus Honus shouted, “Why can’t anything be easy?” The audience sang along from the start.

That crowd was the other part of why my notes made no sense. They bumped my already chicken scratch handwriting into almost indecipherable hieroglyphics. Everyone but the large, ill-tempered man in front of me danced constantly and with abandon in a packed Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights last Thursday night. Cleanly written notes were a pipe dream.

Honus Honus was a mad scientist showman. He jumped up from his keyboard and strutted along the front of the stage, punctuating certain high points every song before darting back to his keyboard and picking up without ever dropping out of pocket. Smiling and hamming for the crowd, licking his fingers and sticking his tongue out, he put on dozens of strange faces – all of them creepy yet extremely cool.

Not since I saw Fucked Up at the Beachland Ballroom over a year ago have I seen a front man more physically commanding or more interactive with the crowd. They loved him, hands raised in the air from the start that only came down to compliment some other form of dancing. For his part, he would jump into the audience, wrapping his body around the head of sometimes unsuspecting and sometimes very suspecting patrons.

During the middle of the show, my photographer Judie Vegh texted me, “He is making crazy eyes at me and I’m scared he is going to do something.”

She was very much right as he grabbed her and shouted in her ear. Others weren’t so lucky, these attacks coming suddenly where he blindly dove toward the edge of the stage without ever making eye contact first. The audience ate it up, cheering each time he came into their midst.

The show felt like a creep show carnival. It felt like a 1970s dance party. It felt like experimental theater with Honus Honus going through several costume changes. The awakening of the best cult ever. The last party before the destruction of planet Earth.

This was the best show I have ever seen, and whether the music itself was good or bad kind of didn’t matter. The showmanship of not only Honus Honus but Murphy and especially drummer Pow Pow would have been a blast even if the music was terrible. Pow Pow was the Scottie Pippin of hyping the crowd up as he often beckoned the crowd to clap along and spun his drum sticks in the air and caught them without dropping a beat. The three of them together never let the energy of the show drop.

So it was a treat that the music was outstanding. For as crazy and unhinged as the show felt, these guys are real musical pros.

Pow Pow again gets special mention. He was a crazy good drummer who has gained a lot of prominence in Man Man’s music since their last album, Oni Oni Pond. Many of their older songs featured more drums in the arrangement. This is particularly true since Honus Honus would jump up from his keyboard a lot throughout the show, and it was up to the other two band members to fill the musical void his absence left. Pow Pow’s creative fills really stood out.

Murphy was no slouch either. Most of the show, he played lead guitar, but he brought out other instruments as well – most notably a trumpet that magnified the old world underpinnings of the music. He even took over on drums at one point when Pow Pow hopped along the stage as front man on a song he spent beatboxing through a vocal modulator. Murphy was the least showy of the band, but his musical versatility gave the band a fullness it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

By the end of the show, a pungent stench of weed and sweat mixed in the air while Man Man and every member of opener Shilpa Ray (except their lead singer, Shilpa Ray herself) started hitting the various drums that scattered the stage. They weren’t making music anymore or trying to make music – it was just a heavenly blast of raw noise with the crowd’s cheers wavering underneath.

I wanted to stay with the cult of Man Man forever. We all did.