I am a sweaty blonde guy. I don't know what it is, but I think my body is always racing to process heat (I used to get heat exhaustion more often than I liked when I was a kid in south Texas) so torrents of sweat are constantly flowing at the slightest uptick in temperature. Brendan Benson is much the same way. I remember seeing him play Double Door a few years ago and was amazed at a) how quickly he sweat through his outer layer of clothing and b) how fan-fucking-tastic his set was. At the time, all the albums I heard were filled with well constructed but polite power pop, and his live show took those constructs and blew them apart with fire and passion absent from the studio versions.Benson plays tonight at Schubas, and while I'm still not sure if I can attend (I'm still waiting for confirmation from his publicist), the people that will witness the two shows will most likely walk away with a new appreciation for the guy. I'm betting there will be a bunch of old school fans in the audience, but I bet there will be even more folks who only know Benson as Jack White's sweetly voiced foil in The Raconteurs. It's those folks who are for a real treat, and I slightly envy their innocence since it means they get to be surprised and fall in love with the sweaty blonde singer from Detroit for the first time, and that first experience is always the sweetest.
(Also, it should be noted, Benson's new album, out this week, is phenomenal and finally does capture some of that fire I spoke about earlier.)
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