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House party brings pop star to living room- House party tour brings pop star into Aurora home
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/1512080,
By STEVE LORD-
I cannot help but feel a bit like an intruder.
I'm in the unusual position of being the first to arrive at a party -- a party I invited myself to, no less.
Fortunately, Jay Noecker and his wife Ellen, are more than amiable hosts, welcoming me into their home on the far West Side of Aurora as they run around taking care of those inevitable last-minute tasks that always need doing just before guests arrive.
Pat DiNizio, lead singer and guitarist of the Smithereens, rocks out at Auroran Jay Noecker's house, in front of 40 to 50 people.
The house looks like any other suburban home before a party -- clean, neat, everything picked up and arranged, strategically lit.
There are candles on the brick-and-wood fireplace mantle; the myriad family pictures in frames are dusted; the ice is in tubs in the garage, awaiting beverages to be chilled; chips and crackers are on the island in the kitchen, their accompanying dips cooling in the refrigerator.
The only thing that gives this party away as being something different is the mixture of card table chairs set up like a theater in the family room, facing the fireplace.
And the single frame disc showing on the big screen Blu-ray player next to the fireplace: "Pat DiNizio 2009 Tour."
Pat DiNizio is probably best-known as the lead singer and guitarist of The Smithereens, a power pop band that hit it big in the 1980s. If you remember "Blood and Roses" from "Miami Vice," you know DiNizio and The Smithereens.
And tonight he is performing in the living room of the home of Jay and Ellen Noecker.
The party is in full swing. Guests are eating and drinking, music is playing in the background and there are conversations throughout the house. The dip is out now, and bottles of wine are cooling in the ice.
The guest of honor is late.
Jay figures it probably has something to do with the traffic between the area around O'Hare Airport, where DiNizio is staying, and Aurora.
Not that DiNizio is unfamiliar with traffic -- as a touring rock 'n' roller, he has probably experienced heavy traffic just about anywhere.
So how is it that the lead singer of a rock band that has gone platinum, that appeared on "Saturday Night Live," "The Tonight Show" and "Arsenio," is in a rental car on Interstate 88, boxes of his CDs in the back seat, on his way to be guest of honor and the night's entertainment for a house party in Aurora?
Welcome to rock 'n' roll in the 21st century. DiNizio is in the midst of a tour with many, many stops just like this, sometimes performing four or five times a week.
On this Friday night, he is to be in Aurora, Saturday afternoon at the Kiss the Sky record shop in Geneva, Saturday night in a family room in LaGrange, and then back on the road to Michigan and Ohio.
The house party is a fairly new phenomenon for rock 'n' roll, although not so new overall.
DiNizio says he borrowed the idea from a performance artist he met from Washington state.
When he asked if he could borrow the house party concept, the performer from Spokane admitted she had borrowed it from the world of folk and bluegrass music, where house parties have been done for years.
"The Smithereens audience had grown up with us," DiNizio says. "We had all grown. None of us had the time anymore to go out to concerts. We had kids and houses. So, this was my way of bringing the music out of the clubs and into the home."
DiNizio figures his house party tour in 2000 was one of the first attempted by a pop star with some national attention. Over five months, he performed at 70 homes. He loved every minute of it.
"I showed up in the houses and back yards of Smithereens fans I had never met before," he says.
For this house party tour, DiNizio had a corporate sponsor that was supposed to rent him a van for his equipment.
The sponsor bailed out at the last minute.
Rather than cancel the tour, DiNizio decided to rent a car and do the tour anyway.
He is funding it by selling his solo and Smithereens CDs at each party, right out of the box.
The tour began in February in Iowa at the party to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the plane crash deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper. DiNizio's latest solo effort, "Pat DiNizio/Buddy Holly", is his covers of some of his favorite Holly songs.
Guests keep coming in the front door of the Noecker home, bringing food and drink.
I'm ensconced in conversation in the garage, where I suddenly become aware that the music is much louder than it had been, and sounds familiar, but not quite familiar enough.
It's "Tommy" alright, but not by The Who.
I move through the kitchen and into the family room, and overhear someone say this is the soon-to-be-released "Tommy" cover by The Smithereens.
It's a calling card.
The guest of honor has arrived.
A house party needs a house, of course.
Jay and Ellen's involvement as hosts for Pat DiNizio came about from discussions the two were having about what to do for a recent "milestone birthday" Ellen was having.
"It started as a joke," Jay says. "She said she didn't want a big birthday party."
Somehow, the idea of the house party came up in connection with The Smithereens, e-mails were exchanged and, "Pat put us on the list," Jay says.
Jay and Ellen are not charging anyone to come to their house party.
Some people do, Jay says, even using something like Pay Pal or Ticketmaster online to sell the tickets.
For this stop, Pat will sell merchandise to make any money.
Those attending are Jay and Ellen's friends and neighbors. Almost all of them are new to this kind of event.
"We're newbies, rookies," admits Kristy Laurx of Aurora. She's there with husband Andy, and she eventually will be front row center with her friend, Judy Havermann, also of Aurora, for the whole living room show.
Judy and her husband, Greg, are also at their first house party, although Greg is a long-time fan of the Smithereens and DiNizio.
"I want to hear him do the Buddy Holly stuff," Judy says, which puts a grimace on Greg's face.
"I didn't like the Buddy Holly CD -- too many strings," he says. "I want to talk to him about that."
And at a house party like this, he can do just that -- easily engage the star in conversation.
I make my way to the front of the "concert" room to find DiNizio organizing his CDs, and getting his guitar out.
DiNizio is making himself at home.
He's already shed his shoes and is in his white athletic socks.
I introduce myself, and as DiNizio pulls me into another room to talk so as not to have turn "Tommy" down, our stomachs bump against each other.
"Hey, you and me, our stomachs," DiNizio says, laughing. Yes, we were both much thinner once, I admit.
When the show begins, DiNizio simply slings his guitar over his shoulder, plays a little, steps up to the mike on a straight, stick stand, and starts singing.
Between each song there is a story -- some of them long, most of them funny -- because, as with most songwriters, there is almost always a story behind each song.
In one story, DiNizio mentions being 6-years-old in 1961.
It dawns on me that we are both the same age.
I am one of those Smithereens fans who is growing older with the band, who has kids and a house, and appreciates live music out of the clubs and into the homes.
I'm one of the reasons DiNizio is doing this.
He plays and talks for almost three hours.
He relates that his father made him choose between becoming a Cub Scout or taking guitar lessons, how he was with the Ramones in a bar and Joey Ramone ordered 30 beers at last call, how he wrote a song about breaking up with his wife while she sat there, listening to him.
The concert ends and most of the guests leave.
DiNizio stays for a while, talking some more with the Noeckers and a few stragglers.
For a man who has lived on the road, he was at home.
"There's nothing like sitting in the living rooms," he says.
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