The show began with brash high-schoolers and beanie-sporting frat boys launching paper airplanes across all tiers of the pristine Overture Center. It ended with the headliner's frontman giving a heartfelt thank you with a party-staple red plastic cup in hand.
Sure, O.A.R. can attract an immature crowd and the band members themselves look like aging frat boys, but what echoed during Saturday's two hour set was not the expected musical offering fitted for the "Jackass" soundtrack, but, instead, a polished musical nirvana, an energized audience, a chiseled sound and a stage of fiery passion.
Riveting tenor sax solos that ripple the auditorium, refreshingly innocent band camaraderie, a delicate tribute to John Lennon and a surging, bone-shattering encore cover of Bob Dylan's revolutionary "Like a Rolling Stone," featuring openers Steven Kellogg and the Sixers. O.A.R.'s electrifying performance showcased five diverse but equally talented friends, each carrying their own personalized strength that seamlessly adheres to craft a sound so intoxicatingly blissful the audience is advised not to go home alone.
Precocious and pint-sized, O.A.R., an acronym for " … of a revolution," a phrase alluded from a short story lead signer/guitarist Marc Roberge wrote as a teenager, have recently celebrated their decade anniversary, meaning they have spent more than a third of their lives making music together.
The last 10 years have been quite a jaunt for the east coast-bred quintet, recording their first album before graduating high school, taking the Ohio State musical scene by storm, becoming a cross-country dorm room staple and finally achieving muliti-generational, mainstream, selling-out-Madison-Square-Garden kind of success.
But despite their dedicated and zealous fan base, the band has been slapped around quite a bit by the critics who have been fast to deem their music as unoriginal and amateurish. Much to their disapproval, the group has been boxed into unfitting categories and rendered with confining labels. Attached to its name consistently camps an unwanted classification — they're known as a jam band, a frat band, granola rockers and reggae wannabes, but the label O.A.R. really yearns for is simply that of independent individuals.
Drummer Chris Culos reveals the band's struggle to liberate itself from the perceived jam/frat-band harness and echoes a hopeful mentality that the mainstream is beginning to accept them for who they are.
"Just because we've played at frat parties doesn't mean we're a frat band," he said during an exclusive interview with The Badger Herald. "We've played at churches and no one's called us a Christian-rock group. I mean, half our band is Jewish."
"We don't consider ourselves a jam band [either]," he continued. "We've kind of modeled ourselves after jam bands with a grassroots and word-of-mouth campaign, but what we do is completely different. We have a unique kind of situation. No one knows how a band with no radio play or mainstream publicity got to sell out the kind of arenas that we've sold out."
And what resonated at the sold-out Overture Saturday was a more distinct, a more mature O.A.R. The set contained a handful of tracks from their latest release, Stories of a Stranger, including the vibrant "Wonderful Day" and the infectiously tickling "Lay Down." It's a new sound for the group, as they've broadened their range and tightened their cohesion, making their performance as inspiring as it is riveting.
Before they sold-out arenas by whimsically alluding to binge-drinking and date rape, but as witnessed at the Overture, their sound is so different that when the instruments were hushed, vocalist Roberge was reminiscent not of Trey Anastasio but of Paul Simon — the same short stature, the same rasping echo voice and the same lyrical ingenuity.
But fine-tuning their sound ultimately and unfairly leads to accusations of selling-out, becoming vulnerable to fame and influenced by money. Such allegations really rile the band, especially Culos, as he passionately asserts that the band is not manipulatively searching for any TRL airtime.
"It does sound completely different, but that's because of natural progression," Culos said. "We've worked hard to get to our own sound. … I, for one, think selling out has something to do with some sort of change of intentions, when music isn't as important as popularity. But we have more fun in the world when making music. It's what we love to do."
But those are easy words to say and equally easy to doubt. Most of the group first met before they could even read, and as the majority of elementary school friends depart ways at puberty, it's hard to imagine how these 20-something-year-olds haven't asphyxiated each other yet and how they can still earnestly enjoy each other's company both in the studio and on the stage.
Their performance at the modestly sized Overture Hall, however, proves Culos' words true as the band tackled the stage as if it were the Grammy's. Every time they perform it is as if it's the biggest and best performance of their lives. Their audience size may fluctuate depending on the locale, but their passion and energy cease to weaken.
Never was this truer than during the band's most recognizable smash, "It was a Crazy Game of Poker." The audience threw off their beanies and let go of their inhibitions at the first hint of this song, once again projecting paper off the balconies, but this time the littering had transformed from an annoyance to a delicacy, like doves being released from the sky as each and every ticket-holder relished in artistic bliss and band/fan camaraderie.
Roberge wrote "Poker" as a 16-year-old kid from Maryland, and while most bands bemoan playing the songs they wrote as amateurs, O.A.R. expressed no sign of exhaustion. Giving the audience what they want, the band prides itself on being constantly fan-orientated. Whether it be selling autographed copies of their latest CD for a modest $10, offering free access to every song they've recorded on their chiseled website or hosting almost daily meet-and-greets, O.A.R. takes nothing for granted and, as Roberge preached toward the end of the performance, lives everyday like it's the last.
O.A.R. knows that luck has always sat in the passenger seat on their journey to success, but they're also confident enough admit they deserve all of the accomplishments they've achieved. Watching them perform live provokes a feeling of false nostalgia, vicariously living a life that's not yours but could have been had you tried a little harder, fought a little stronger and never given up. O.A.R. is a raw band that followed its dreams, too passionate and impatient to wait for dreams to find them.
"We're a hard-working band that has done it ourselves and refuses to be labeled. We've been able to stand out without selling out," Culos said. "We'll continue to do whatever it takes to give our fans what they want."
Once you pass the unfitting labels, once you pass the attire of the fan club, you find a humble group who enjoy rocking in their parents' basements as much as they love rolling to a sell-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. And no matter where they land in the decades to come, it's sure to be exactly where they want to be. Now that's a revolution.
