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.
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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.”
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.”
Where Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western
The theme of the night is all-female cover bands–the mostly ad hoc groups are taking on tunes by the likes of the Sonics, the Flaming Lips, and Bikini Kill. Park herself will drum in the Blitzkrieg Bopz (Ramones covers) and front Girls on Film (Duran Duran covers). “I’ve been wanting to start an all-girl Duran Duran cover band for a year,” she says. “I was obsessed with Duran Duran as a kid. I ate them, I slept them . . . and now I want to become them.”
