Disco Biscuits provoke flashing, glow sticks in dance party

Senior Casey Tofilon had the full Biscuits experience Tuesday night, spending nearly seven hours with Jon "The Barber" Gutwillig and the rest of the Disco Biscuits when all was said and done. She requested songs, danced ferociously in the front row throughout the entire show and partied with Gutwillig until 5 a.m. \nAnd she still made it to a test for her statistics class later that morning.\nThe Disco Biscuits had the crowd twirling glow sticks, flashing the band and turning the pit into a "real ravish" party, dancing wildly until 2 a.m. As their light show flooded the small, intimate venue of the Bluebird, the Disco Biscuits' trance rock show's energy caused doorman Michael Hodges to call the night "the most exciting Tuesday night" he has ever had at the venue.\nGracing the Bluebird with their presence for the first time since October 2000, according to set lists posted on the Web site Phantasytour.com, the Biscuits started their 9 p.m. show closer to 10 p.m. They kicked off the concert with a rocking "Pilin' It High," which had the band playing straight rock before adding techno later in the set.\nFan Kelli Martin from northwestern Indiana said she had love for the guitarist-singer Gutwillig before the band even started playing. From the front row, she yelled for his attention and showed him her homemade T-shirt, which read "Jon 'The Barber'" on the front and "You can cut my hair anytime" on the back. \nDuring the show, Gutwillig asked, "Is everyone having fun?" to which Martin responded by lifting up her homemade shirt to flash the band.\nMixing in electronic beats with their four-piece guitar-bass-keyboard-drums setup, the Biscuits stretched most songs for more than 10 minutes as they played requests and had fans yelling lyrics out, throwing their hands in the air and losing themselves in the music. \n"It was a superbly above-average first set," junior Alex Wolff said. "'Astronauts' was off the charts."\nTyler Gresh, a 2001 IU graduate, said he thinks the Disco Biscuits are the second-best touring band around, behind Umphrey's McGee, but found fault in their constant loops.\n"The Biscuits have a great way of getting into a pocket," he said. "They get a good groove going, but they have a hard time shifting gears after that."\nBluebird owner Dave Kubiak said there were just shy of 400 attendees at the Bluebird, with most of them jamming into the pit. The crowd appeared in a trance, not budging from the pit for hours at a time as the Biscuits' booming bass and ever-building guitar parts reached climaxes. As the parts grew more intense, audience members yelled high-pitched "Woos" to show their approval, even if the lyrics were often buried in the mix.\nSenior William Cornell said they were good to see live, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. He broke down his impression of a Biscuits song.\n"It's two minutes of piss-poor lyrics followed by four minutes of funk minimalism," he said. "They play one note at a time trying to make the most out of the least." \nKicking off the second set with the song "Sweating Bullets" was appropriate for a crowd dripping in sweat. Fans scooped ice from an empty beer bucket to cool off in the steamy, smoky bar. The band kept the pit rocking until 2 a.m. as they echoed fans' cries for "one more song" after nearly 3 1/2 hours of music.\nRecent IU graduate Jack Firestone said he had a blast at the "real ravish" atmosphere and said the show was easily the best he had ever seen at Bluebird.\nThe night didn't end for Tofilon at 2 a.m., even though she said she was exhausted from a night of dancing with her shirt rolled over her belly button.\nShe said she met up with Gutwillig and got drunk with the singer-guitarist until 5 a.m. at a party in an apartment above Uncle Festers. She said Gutwillig was trying to unwind by taking whiskey shots and telling her he wanted to read Friedrich Nietzsche to her. \n"He was insanely drunk. It was ridiculous," she said. "He goes, 'Are you Irish?' I laughed and said, 'No, I'm Japanese.'"\nTofilon said in an e-mail Wednesday afternoon that the show was unreal, and the band members go out of their way to stay humble and hang out with fans as if they were their friends.\n"Jon said it (the concert) was the best one so far," she said. "The Biscuits are seriously going to take over the world"