Seven Nights Deep, Jeff Rosenstock Has More Than Enough Left In The Tank
As we trudge through another summer where the majority of the entertainment at the box office is the choice between a soulless sequel and a soulless remake, I'm reminded of the saying popularized by PT Barnum: "Always leave them wanting more". As a younger man, I didn't always agree with this. I wanted what I liked and I wanted so much of it that I could drown in it if I chose to. Music, tv shows, food, whatever. Top-tier gluttony is a young man's game. As I get older, I appreciate restraint more. Whenever there's a character in a movie or tv show that I really wanted more of, I have to imagine they were used the exact perfect amount. Too little is almost always preferable to way too much.
And yet there's an equally famous, yet historically far more destructive phrase that seems to sum up society today for better or worse: "Give the people what they want." A lot of the time, this is not a great thing when it comes to entertainment. Every executive seems to think the solution to "we made something people loved" is "so let's make six more of it, but worse and with more explosions." By the time you're at franchise entry number nine (looking in your direction Fast and Furious), you're less making art and more just processing a factory order.
But every once in a while...the people can be trusted. And the end result is absolute magic.
Earlier this year, Jeff Rosenstock announced a residency at Chicago's legendary Metro. For how long? Potentially an infinite residency! The first show was announced, and as soon as it sold out a new show with a new opener was announced for the next night. Rinse and repeat. By the time the dust settled, Rosenstock had sold out a whopping eight shows, making the ninth night the close of the run. Normally when hearing news like this, my first thought would be jaded suspicion. Nine nights in the same room is either a testament to genuine, bottomless demand, or it's the live-music equivalent of stretching a two-movie idea into a trilogy because the first one made money. I needed to see for myself. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I went to night seven.
Seven out of nine is deep sequel territory. If this were a horror franchise, we'd be well past the point where the killer's mask stopped being scary and started being a brand logo. If Rosenstock and company were phoning it in even a little, this was the show where it would show.
It did not show. If anything, this thing had gotten tighter.
Openers AJJ set the tone immediately, and if you're unfamiliar with the band formerly (and still occasionally, out of nostalgic spite) known by a name involving the seventh President of the United States, know that "tight" doesn't mean "polished" so much as "controlled chaos with a very specific engine under the hood." They tore through fourteen songs that ping-ponged between gut-punch and stand-up bit, sometimes within the same verse. 'Brave as a Noun' got the room dancing, 'Body Terror Song' got it dancing but also contemplating its own mortality, and "Kokopelli Face Tattoo" got it dancing and also reflecting on the similar poor tattoo decisions of their own lives. Basically, there was a lot of ground covered thematically but the one thing tying it all together was the frenetic moshing that was going on the entire time.
Fittingly for a night deep into a numbered sequence of shows, AJJ made sure there was room in the setlist for 'People II: The Reckoning', one of the few sequels that improves on the original. By the time they closed with 'Big Bird,' the crowd was thoroughly warmed up and AJJ had done the opener's actual job: made you glad you showed up early instead of just texting "on my way" from the Gingerman next door.
Jeff Rosenstock took the stage looking exactly like Jeff Rosenstock should look: Suicidal Tendencies hat on, cutoff jean shorts, and a Metro t-shirt that had been surgically altered to expose enough midriff to make your high school teacher uncomfortable. This is a man who understands branding a room in real time, showing up to his own residency merch'd out in the venue's own logo, then hacking it apart to make it his. If there's a better visual metaphor for "I've claimed this building for nine straight nights!" I sure haven't seen it.
And what followed was twenty-six songs of a guy who, seven shows deep, should by all logic have been running on fumes and instead sounded like he'd just discovered how much fun this was. He opened with 'All Blissed Out' and never really came back down from that altitude, tearing through fan favorites like 'SKrAm!,' 'Festival Song,' and a genuinely wild show of bodies upon bodies upon bodies slamming together like waves on a shore during "LIKED U BETTER". Deep cuts like "Snow Charges" and "The First Time I Met Sanawon" rewarded the hardcore longtime fans (some attending ALL nine nights) ," the whole set feeling less like a static list and more like Rosenstock genuinely rearranging his own furniture every single night just to keep himself honest.
What struck me most, though, was the ending. No walk-off. No two minutes of the crowd chanting for a fake surprise before the house lights that were never actually going to be a surprise. He played straight through to "We Begged 2 Explode" and that was it: no encore, no theater, no manufactured suspense, lights up on the venue and start handing out the setlists. On night seven of nine, in a run that could have very easily turned into a rote greatest-hits machine, that felt like the most honest move of the whole night: no gimmick needed, no need to fake anyone into thinking the show wasn't already complete.
Turns out nine sequels in a row can work, as long as somebody actually cares enough to keep writing new jokes into the script. Rosenstock and AJJ clearly do. With most of these reviews I do, I feel bad because by the time you read what it was like, you missed your one shot to see what I did. But this was NINE NIGHTS BOOKED MONTHS IN ADVANCE. If you missed your shot during this residency, that's all on you.