Photos by Julia Steinhouse
The two girls you saw at Barney’s karaoke last Thursday night absolutely nailing the harmonies to Teenage Dirtbag? Yeah, that was us. And last Friday we took our talents to the big stage (or rather, below the stage) at The Echo, where Wheatus played their debut 1999 album in full- including Teenage Dirtbag.
Upon our entrance, smooth jazz played through the speakers of The Echo, perhaps urging the crowd to preserve their head-bashing energy for Wheatus’ arrival onstage. We took a lap around and joined the beer-toting crowd with Stellas of our own (Stella is a very mature beer – or to enhance our outward appearance of maturity). As we sipped, we engaged in our favorite concert activity: people-watching.
People spotted at the Wheatus concert: a man with blue hair, a woman with orange hair, a 5-year-old wearing Spider-Man headphones, a girl in a beret, the 5-year-old’s dad who reminded Clem of her dad, and innumerable men with facial hair. In sum, the majority of the crowd emanated the feeling of rock-nerd Gen X-ers and late Millennials who hadn’t been to a concert in quite some time but channeled their retired high-school and college selves for the emboldened return of Wheatus’s self-titled album on a live stage.
Brendan B. Brown, Wheatus frontman and the only remaining member of the band’s original lineup at its inception in 1995, fit right in with his doting audience. Brown’s goggle-like glasses with a wraparound strap clung to his face like a young child’s first pair of glasses would, and a pair of colorful South Park socks could be seen pulled high above his lace-up boots, reaching just below his knees where his cargo capri pants ended.
If this doesn’t make it clear enough, Brown doesn’t carry himself like a rockstar. And just like the crowd before him, Brown, too, was a complete rock-nerd growing up, and was even bullied by his peers at the Catholic school he attended an hour outside his home in the coastal Long Island suburb of Northport. Brown’s love for bands such as Metallica, ACDC, Iron Maiden, and Rush motivated him to pick up guitar and songwriting as an outsider in his small town, and the humility with which he carried himself onstage is a clear reflection of his persevering adolescence.
Brown engaged the crowd at the Echo with ease and humor, beginning the night by declaring that the band had no plan: “You pick the setlist.” Throughout the night, passionate shouts from the crowd could be heard between songs; the dedication with which fans have held Wheatus’s music to their heads and hearts was undeniable.
Although widely considered a one-hit wonder, Wheatus showcased their cohesive and largely no-skip album at The Echo. They started off with “No Respect,” a song that exudes the energy of Wheatus’ stylistic nuance of 90’s alternative pop-rock. It’s reminiscent of high school boyfriends, MTV, baggy pants and baseball caps, and teenage angst. Many of Wheatus’ lyrics reflect on experiences that were had in the age range of 17-23, but the band brought an undeniably youthful exuberance to their performance. Brown’s nerdy dad charisma, nasally voice, and anecdotally lighthearted songwriting paired together were impossible not to enjoy, especially as he continued to make unabashed statements through the microphone, such as “Sudafed sucks and makes the next day suck so that’s why I blow my nose onstage.”
In addition to showcasing Wheatus’ musical chops and animated rapport, the concert also served as a confessional tell-all for Brown. As he continued to blow his nose (using toilet paper) onstage, he confronted keyboard player Brandon Ticer for telling his girlfriend all about the nose-blowing situation. He turned to the crowd and continued his rant, saying that “Randy snitched me out to my girlfriend for showering in gross places.” At this moment, it was hard to believe that Brown was in fact 51 and not an irksome 20 year-old.
With clear talent and a style similar to many popular bands of their time, such as Bowling for Soup, Weezer, The All-American Rejects, blink-182, and Jimmy Eat World, we were left wondering, what went wrong after “Teenage Dirtbag’s” immense success?
We got a taste of the sourness with which Wheatus views their former record label, Sony, when the band fulfilled a fan’s request to play “Sunshine.” The song, Brown shared, is about him writing an entire record that he shared with the label, who then proceeded to “cut [Wheatus] out of a million-dollar deal”. The track’s opening line makes Brown’s frustration obvious– “When I look at your face I see dirt” –employing his trademark tongue-in-cheek lyricism to reflect the pain of being underappreciated and exploited by a major label. As he sang, “I did the work/ For somebody else’s dream,” Brandon alluded to the narrow parameters with which Sony attempted to control Wheatus’s image and music in the early 2000s.
Whether by suggesting that the band condense into a more palatable 3-person ensemble, or encouraging Brown to stop singing in his striking high-pitched register, Sony painstakingly tried to mold the geeky rule-bending rock band into a commercial success, but ultimately dropped Wheatus following the release of their 2003 sophomore album, “Hands Over Your Loved Ones”. The group’s incessantly rotating suite of band members– drummers, in particular, joked Brown onstage– didn’t help with the group’s cohesive image and mainstream appeal.
Despite their record label-adversity, both Wheatus and the crowd as a whole continued to relive their glory days as they worked their way through the entire album, playing songs like “American in Amsterdam,” which Brown introduced as a song he wrote about the first time he did mushrooms, the post-apocalyptic love ballad “Valentine,” and “Truffles,” which Brown proclaimed to be “terrible” and told the suggesting fan, Elizabeth, that he “didn’t trust her.” Finally, with a laborious grab of his microphone, Brown asked his band, “is it Teenage Dirtbag time? Because I’m about to die.” And so the crowd convened in a simultaneous transportation back to our angstiest, sleaziest, teenage dirtbag selves to belt out every defiant word.
