As many of you probably don’t know, Wackadoo’s Grub and Brew
hosted its first concert from outside the St. Louis area last
Friday. Put on by KSLU, the Grand Rapids, Mich., band Venkman
played to a near-empty room for nearly two-and-a-half hours. It
wasn’t a bad show, either.

The band came on around 8:30 p.m., hoping to catch people still
eating dinner at Wackadoo’s. Unfortunately, the plan backfired
because the patronage of Wackadoo’s was sparse to begin with, but
there were still enough people to warrant not walking off in a
huff.

It was these few-but-proud crowd members that kept the band
lively. It seemed reminiscent of an episode of Saved by the Bell
when a “local” band would play at the Max, except there was no
Screech for comic relief.

Probably realizing that they were strangers in a strange land,
Venkman mixed their original songs with a cavalcade of cover
songs.

From Blur to the Beatles, Venkman put their spin on all of their
favorite bands. In every one, though, the band added a
country-tinged feel to it.

This was strongest when vocalist Rory Miller added a Southern
drawl to The Beatles’ “Mean Mr. Mustard,” especially since a live
version of the song is an unusual experience unto itself.

As the concert went on, Venkman relied on covers to keep the
crowd interested, apparently after exhausting its own songs. This
was a shame, since the original material wasn’t that bad.

Mostly an amalgam of artists like Guster and Tom Petty and the
Heartbreakers, the sound of the band is a representation of
Venkman’s major audience–college students.

The band itself is also a group of college-aged guys, so that
may also tie into their sound. At times, they moved away from this,
showing their love of Britrock and ’70s power pop groups like Cheap
Trick or Big Star.

After trying hard for a while, the band realized that the crowd
would not grow any time soon and started to just mess around on
stage. Songs like “Lump” came with the preface that the band hadn’t
played the song since high school; with this in mind, the songs
were just as strong as when the band played newer covers. In fact,
it seemed like the band was at its peak musically when they stopped
caring and just did what they wanted.

The culmination of the show came when they mixed Weezer’s
“Sweater Song” and Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice.” These might not
songs that combine easily, but the band pulled it off
brilliantly.

Even though the band’s set was more than two hours, cutting into
time at the bars and at parties, most of the people who first
showed up for the show stayed until the very end.

If only people showed up to the show, this could have been a
great show and a great night. This wasn’t the best of shows, but it
surely wasn’t the band’s fault.

There was one ray of light in this situation: Wackadoo’s has the
potential to become something of a Gargoyle-style venue: It just
requires a little love and a lot of promotion.