Deerhunter, No Age, Deacon Tour Crosses Finish Line Despite Injury, Illness

"It's like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Deacon here," joked Deerhunter's Bradford Cox at the Logan Square Auditorium in Chicago on Sunday during the last night of the illustrious "No Deachunter" round robin tour. Indeed, Dan Deacon's presence was a force to be reckoned with throughout the final show, but the real story that had fans talking was whether or not No Age guitarist Randy Randall would be able to play given his shoulder dislocation during Friday's Milwaukee show.

Randall appeared to be recovering nicely, staying seated with his guitar in his lap during No Age's portions of the performance. In the spirit of camaraderie, Cox also sat in a chair next to Randall throughout most of Deerhunter's set. Later, he revealed that it was actually a case of the flu that kept him from performing at his full potential.

Despite injuries and sickness, the three bands managed to put forth a great effort. Deacon was backed by the What Cheer marching band from Providence, Rhode Island, who started things off with a surprise warm-up set behind the crowd and continued to play while standing on top of the speaker stacks surrounding Deacon's Technicolor set-up.

The acts took turns backing each other up, but mainly stuck to their own material. The crowd was equally receptive to each act, but their enthusiasm was most evident during the mosh pit and crowd-surfing that broke out for No Age. Ever the loyal bunch, Deacon's followers gave the No Age fans some stiff competition when they formed a massive, writhing dance party for Deacon's hit 2007 song, 'The Crystal Cat.' It didn't hurt that opening act and professional ringleader Ed Schrader had just led the crowd in a large-scale dance-off, in which he got almost the entire room to mimic his precise moves.

Although Deacon's dance extravaganza would have been a great note to end the show on, Deerhunter closed things out instead with several crowd favorites, including the hypnotic 'Nothing Ever Happened' off of last year's 'Microcastle' album.

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