Live and dangerous

Because this is a live album," explains Bobby Conn on his new CD, "I would like you people to imagine that you've just heard the best song you've ever heard. Okay? Ready? One, two, three..."

The applause that follows may be artificially enthusiastic, but Conn's banter is as genuinely ridiculous as Paul Stanley declaring, "There's a lot of you people that like to drink vodka and orange juice" on KISS' Alive, or Robin Zander's meta-statement, "This is the first song off our new album" on Cheap Trick's Live At Budokan. Conn's spent the last decade developing a character that parodies and distorts the outrageous excess of rock stardom, but with his new CD on Thrill Jockey, Live Classics Vol. 1, he has created an earnest tribute to a format that is more often maligned than celebrated.

While most classic concert albums share a certain DNA (they're almost all preposterous stews of egotism, overkill and cliches), there are a number of different motivations for releasing them. For a hot act, it's a way to keep product on the market, a filler album with a little more integrity than a Best Of. For an act still struggling for an audience, it can be a nice showcase of an overlooked catalogue. And for a band with a legendary live show it can be a time capsule. Though Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies' legendary status is still in question, the latter is the closest model this album follows. "We've played more than 250 gigs in the past few years with the same lineup, and our live set has chrome-plated pointy metal spikes that you don't hear on the records," Conn says. "It would be a tragedy if future generations never got a chance to hear us playing 'Winners' or 'Baby Man' at our best."

And more tragic still if they didn't get to hear that minute-long guitar solo. Or if they didn't get to see the dozens of photos featuring the band dressed in metallic gold tunics, looking like a comet-worshipping suicide cult. But dismissing this album as a joke is a mistake—Conn is an absurdist, but he isn't a novelty act. For the past decade he has floated somewhere between Chicago's theatrical, bizarre post art-school scene and the musically serious post–post rock scene of his Thrill Jockey colleagues.

Conn's diversity allows him to collaborate with a large pool of local musicians, bringing his grand visions of melodramatic glam-pop to fruition. You see it in his records: While joyful and dance-inducing, they're also disturbing, powerful and challenging. His last album, The Homeland, risked becoming dated due to the specificity of his anti-Bush themes ("The election and war are very depressing.... I made The Homeland out of sheer frustration," Conn explains), but his live version of "We Come In Peace" demonstrates his depth. How many glittery glam rockers can write powerful anti-war anthems?

Thrill Jockey founder Bettina Richards dismisses the idea that Live Classics is a joke record: "The concept may embrace and mock rock & roll excesses, but the music isn't a parody. His music is far more complex than his persona would have one believe. But to be honest, I never expected to release a live record because they seem redundant. Except, of course," she adds wistfully, "when I was a kid, Frampton Comes Alive didn't seem redundant at all."

Though Live Classics arguably isn't a "real" album, the record release show at the Double Door should still be an event. An album like this is a declaration of power: Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies have to be this good, or better, in concert. And they'll pull it off, because they've finally become an actual band. Conn's dense, layered studio productions often leave a cloud of ambiguity hanging over his bandmates' contributions. Here they can finally prove their mettle. "I'm not the only personality in the band," Conn offers. "Every one of us is the star in his or her own mind. That's why we over-play so mercilessly! More is more!"

Live Classics ends with Conn urging the cooperative crowd "to imagine that you've heard the worst song you've ever heard. Let's hear what that sounds like." It's a ridiculous request, and the histrionic boos that follow paint a picture of a room filled with people who think they're involved in a hipster parody of a '70s live album rather than an earnest revival of the format. As Conn himself sings on "Home Sweet Home," "Ironic distance isn't very far."

Bobby Conn & The Glass Gypsies play Double Door Friday 17.