danTheFan

Victim of time the guys at horizontal action have a new all encompassing show listing site called www.victimoftime.com in addition to listing shows all over the country (world?) they also have reviews of up and coming bands like COCOCOMA, who are featured this week! Wowsers! Check it out and be sure to submit info from your area! 777 i Love cats,i'm allergic to most of them. i Love living animals & Vegetables, i need to eat them 2 feel my best. Now i wanna be yr Dog, TV e 88888888888888888888888 From Chicago reader www.chicagoreader.com A Life in the Pit, Dan the Fan passes the half-century mark with no plans to quit pogoing. By Monica Kendrick November 24, 2006 IF YOU GO to your share of rock shows, you've probably seen Dan Urban do the dance that's made him one of the most recognizable fixtures on the Chicago music scene. He pogos buoyantly right at the edge of the stage, probably wearing a headband, possibly not wearing pants. You might know his nickname, Dan the Fan -- and if you're like me, you'll be surprised to learn he turned 50 last Saturday. That afternoon some of his friends from the local rock community roasted him at the Empty Bottle. Then they threw him a birthday party at the tiny Town Hall Pub, where some of his favorite Chicago bands played -- including the Dials, Miss Alex White & the Red Orchestra, and CoCoComa. Urban says he developed his signature dance style around 1978 at clubs like La Mere Vipere and Neo, when punk pogoing was au courant. For 15 years or so he's plotted out his show schedule in a series of day planners with an elaborate four-color notation system. "I kind of use these little hieroglyphs," he says. "I can fit a lot in a one-inch square." He also uses the books to keep track of appointments with his clients -- he makes his living as an herbalist, specializing in allergy treatments. His favorite thing is to catch up-and-coming acts, and he says he "pogotranced" to lots of his current favorites at bars like Cal's before they released any recordings. He puts Bang! Bang!, the Ponys, and Headache City high on his hot list, alongside the bands from his party. He raves about all the Horizontal Action Blackouts. And he's almost frighteningly loyal to longtime loves like Eleventh Dream Day. Janet Bean, the band's drummer, recalls looking out at a crowd in Yugoslavia in the late 80s and spotting him. "You expect to see him," she says, "so it didn't seem that odd in one sense -- at first." Urban is a Chicago native -- he was born at Saint Elizabeth Hospital just a few blocks from the Empty Bottle and grew up nearby. He says that when his father remarried in 1972, the wedding reception was held in a Polish restaurant that's now the Subterranean. "I go to shows there," he says, "and remember that it was the place where I was running around as a kid, drinking the leftovers of everybody's drinks." Though he goes out two to four nights a week, Urban's not big on drinking anymore. "I love booze," he says, "but can't do it now and dance all night." His age mostly hangs on him lightly, though. "I feel it more when I let myself get a little bit out of shape -- five bands, that's like five sets of tennis." To stay in peak condition when he can't go to shows, he says he plays records and bounces on a trampoline at home. When he was coaxed onstage at the roast, hosted by live-talk-show host Brian Costello, he was carrying a purple Powerpuff Girls backpack and a toy horse wrapped in chains. Costello got right to the point. "What better way to celebrate 50 years than to insult him, crush his ego, reduce him to tears until he never wants to talk to me or anyone ever again," he said. He pointed out that Dan looks like "John Denver's gay kid brother" and "makes Paul from M.O.T.O. look like a dirty young man." Then Costello uncorked a stream of vicious profanity and Dan fled the stage in mock despair, straight into the comforting arms of one of his many attractive young female friends. After he and Costello hugged and made up, Costello signed off with a mangled a cappella rendition of the song that gave Dan his handle: "A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy" by the Kinks. "Dan is a fan and he lives for our music," he sang. "It's the only thing that gets him by." One of the highlights of the afternoon was a pitch-perfect Dan impression from Leah Pietrusiak, an editor at Time Out Chicago: in a T-shirt reading YOUR BAND, she stripped down to boxers and pogoed around the stage, wearing a tranced-out expression and holding her hand aloft like a Holy Roller testifying. Plenty of folks shared embarrassing Dan stories, but Rebecca Crawford of the Dials clearly took the prize, declaring flatly, "Dan swallowed his pendulum and fished it out of his own feces and still uses it." (The pendulum is used for divination -- swallowing it isn't supposed to be part of the process.) Urban not only confirmed her account but went into indecent detail about it. Costello, who drummed in the defunct Functional Blackouts, told me later that he's known Urban for about four years and respects him very much. "Joe Meno first told me about him and pointed him out to me in a crowd -- you know how at shows there's that 20-foot concave half-circle in front of the stage? He's in the middle of it, pogoing away. I feel very glad to live where things like this happen -- he just drags people with him." Urban says he has no plans to slow down in his old age. "When I started out in the late 80s, early 90s, there were only a few shows of what I like," he says. "Now, every Friday or Saturday night there might be two or three. My brain chemistry would be in the toilet if I didn't do this.". fin ."& watch as my befuddled brain shines on brightlly, kwight insane"procal harumThat's me givin the unFinger in Johanna's comment pic,Love U(not f U ,4EVEr,Hail Eris, HurbALLdan(ces),MAY THE FARCE BEE WITH YOUS, 5:15-"outta my brain on the train...the ides..., ,OR CALL ME!!!(cause i love to do it while i drive...) u/we are home!!! HOME SWEET OZ (ZOLAR X) "IT'S ALL HAPPENING(AGAIN)... Jesus died for SomeBunnies Cyns butNotMine(orYours) it's Flex Time/Say kNOW/"it's ALL happening(again) PONYS Rule!!! ...HOT MACHINES(alex) @ PITCHFORK=YAY(& i hope the dials too) ♥TIME has come Today!Let the Good times roll,Time Attack,TICK TICK TICK,yes u can(thanks HWBaby) **the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,& send men to die like dogs. Then there is a negative side -Hunter s. t ****** "Oh go through walls; if you must, walk on the ledges Of roofs, of oceans; cover yourself with light; Use menace, use prayer... My sleepers will flee toward another America" -Jean Genet remember they preys the lord(ess) "i will not sell my sole/soul to..."***************** *****************************-i gotta go dance gotta go pogo/ dan urban the dan the fan name comes from the bohemia/desmond/La mere Viper/obanions/early exit/early neo/early(caberet)metro/.../ Scenes via the kinks and their song rock and roll fantasy.Have fun,don't get caught!, click on a friend and see what they say-i deny all___things!