You probably didn’t know there was such a thing as grunge bar rock. It’s cool, I didn’t either. Not even after listening to some of Big Head Todd & The Monsters’ smokey alterna-rock on record.

But when The Mercury’s Business Editor Michelle Karas coerced me into nabbing a peak of The Monsters’ live show last Saturday at the TLA in Philly, such a sound suddenly existed.

Put it this way; if Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, The Boss’ E-Street Band, The Eagles, and Blues Traveler were all stars in the sky above, Big Head Todd & The Monsters were the constellation that night as they tumbled through their long set of career staples and coal-cracked bar rock. And they played their melodic grit so loud and bright, we didn’t even have to get out our telescopes!

First off, front man Todd Mohr (whose head, honestly, was not big at all) was by far the heart and soul of everything happening in that room. There was little movement on stage by either of the four (The band also includes Brian Nevin on drums, Rob Squires on bass, and Jeremy Lawton on keys and steel lap), but when Mohr let his guitar riffing off its leash for some spotlight solos…whoa. Babies wailed, devils cried, and I drooled all over my sport coat.

Every time he leaned away from the mic to stir up a new grungey sonic rush of messy guitar goodness, I closed my eyes and thought, “Ah, so… this is what a stick of dynamite feels like.”

They played to a full house, pulling a wide variety of songs out of their deep 22-year career pockets. There were the obvious hits that brought them glimpses of 90’s fame like “Broken-Hearted Savior,” and their fanstastic spit-shined cover of the Johnny Lee Hooker classic, “Boom Boom,” as well as newly minted material from their recently released “All The Love You Need,” which you can (legally) download for free (gasp!) right here. They also played “Blue Sky,” the song that Hillary Clinton has been using for her campaign, even though it was written as a dedication to astronauts, “Blue Sky.” (C’mon guys, Hillary? Ick.)

But let’s take a step back to why I said these guys were an ultimate grunge rock bar band. The TLA was packed with all ages, from balding married couples to 21 year olds all sludging around together, elbow to elbow, face to face.

The band hammered their songs out through the musky room as raised plastic cups and cell phones sauntered through the air. Sneakers squeaked along the sticky concrete floor of spilled beer and spit. The faint smell of certain, uh, smokey substances rimmed around our necks. Die-hard fans shouted along to every word til their own voices went horse. Married couples slow-danced to the slower songs and happily bounced around to the upbeat ones.

Obnoxiously drunk and single (weird how the two go together sometimes) middle-aged men wearing frat boy t-shirts that read “Half Man, Half Horse” lugged their way out from the bar at the sound of their favorite song to play air-guitar entirely off cue (like, when there is no guitar for instance).

Dads stood aside sons, not dancing or singing, just occasionally glancing down to see if their boys nodded their heads to the beat or not. Some women tossed back shots of cheap liquor together. Some guys sang with their arms around each others shoulders. Some of us others just stood in awe at the whole moment, all these different people of all different ages having the time of their lives, together, singing songs that some of them don’t even know the words to.

Not any band can be a band like this. U2 can’t. The Killers can’t. Fall Out Boy? Ha! Sure they got dedicated fans, but that's not what this is about. It’s not about the band. It’s not about their songs either. It’s not even about the bar when it comes to a bar band. It’s something that just happens.

It’s when you stop thinking about what music is and start realizing what it does. It’s when you forget there’s even a band up there on stage and you wander into a blind cloud of endless music. Next thing you know two hours have passed and the band are packing up their things and you have to take a second to ask yourself what your name is, where you are and how long you’ve been there.

You can walk into any corner bar in America and find this disorienting phenomenon. But the magic with Big Head Todd is, you don’t have to go bar diving. You can count on them to deliver this feeling when they come around on tour. Just buy some tickets, and dive right in.

Now, I’m not saying Big Head Todd & The Monsters will unhem the seat of your pants. They are an ordinary kind of extraordinary. It’s not the band themselves you have to see live, but what the band does to everyone and everything around them when they come around town that you have to make a point to see.

You can find more tour dates here.

Here’s some tunes:
Big Head Todd & The Monsters - "Bittersweet" (Live @ Sandstone Ampitheatre, July 5, 1993)

Big Head Todd & The Monsters - "Resignation Superman"

And here’s where you should buy stuff to support them.