During these years of show going, choosing concerts has been predominately based on an emotional attachment due to the music striking some interior, unseen chord. Seeing Tel Aviv's Monotonix falls into altogether different category; due to the sheer visual and auditory experience overpowering the discography. With the latter basis, the Monotonix achieved being the most memorable concert of the year without even completing a single song.
The garage rock trio inspired the classic entertainers of Alice Cooper or KISS, without the campiness but stripped to short shorts raw intensity. The necessity of the concert stage was thrown out, replaced by the whole venue right down to merch tables. The audience, typically passive, became participatory. Who needed a stationary drum set, albeit initially set up in front of the stage, when the public helped carrying symbols and toms from one end of the auditorium to the other? If you went expecting to sit back and sip away your drink at Logan Square, Monotonix ensured that this didn't occur.
Notorious for their unpredictability, unfortunately the band did not expect their only guitar to cut out at the start. Haggai Fershtman seemed oblivious as he piled on into an extended, ten-minute drum solo as Ami Shalev and Yonatan Gat, with the help of staff, tried to get the power juiced into the amps. Once restored, vocalist Ami addressed the astounded audience with an explanation. "I want to explain to you what happened. Because we've got only one guitar, it's so strong and it needs so much electricity that all power stations in Chicago collapsed after the first note." Delivered with such candor, it was a moment of polar opposite calm from the rest of the night.
Driving through the likes of As Noise and My Needs, Ami Shalev orchestrated the crowd to his bidding through My Needs and As Noise. Perched upon the bass drum, balanced by the crowd driving at a tom, and surfing while searing through his singing, he swayed the audience with a mastered showmanship teetering between lunacy and lucidity. For a jammed concert evening of stalwarts, favorites and rising artists, Monotonix seemed to channel the energy to Kedzie of all Chicago, sharing it with unparalleled ferocity among the garage rock faithful.
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