Rock history professor plays The Bluebird

The boisterous crowd Thursday night at The Bluebird, filled with IU professor Andy Hollinden’s former students, helped his live performance go off without a hitch.\n“Performing live now is better than it’s ever been,” \nHollinden said.\nThe Benders opened the show at 10 p.m. and played about 10 cover songs by Elvis Costello, The Band, Neil Young, The Bee Gees and several others.\nWhen The Benders finished, the crowd was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, generating much anticipation in hopes of catching a glimpse of Hollinden.\nAs he made his way out of the back room, cheers filled the building, but Hollinden raised his finger to his lips, trying to silence the crowd. He made his way to the microphone after strapping on his guitar and made sure his band was ready.\n“I get the impression many of you have taken the History of Rock class,” Hollinden said to \nthe crowd.\nThe room filled with even louder cheers, and Hollinden immediately started playing his first song. Hollinden played a set of songs consisting of all original compositions, and only paused to make a few clever remarks.\n“When you do what I do for a living, you read a lot about what rock stars say,” Hollinden said. “They say they like to play live because they feed off of the energy (of the crowd). So feed me!”\nThe crowd began feeding Hollinden and his band for the rest of the first set and on to the \nsecond set.\nBefore Hollinden came out of the back room to start his second set, the crowd began shouting, “Andy, Andy, Andy!”\nHollinden’s second set consisted of all cover songs ranging from Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Cheap Trick.\n“We’re going to play a lot of the songs I try to cover in the History of Rock class,” Hollinden said.\nUpon hearing the first notes of the guitar introduction for Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” the crowd cheered loud enough to cover the sounds of the band. All around, people were holding up lighters, cell phones and beer glasses, and, with their eyes closed, singing every lyric to the song.\nHe began playing more upbeat songs like the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” and the Velvet Underground’s “Rock and Roll.” Members of the crowd were brave enough to attempt crowd-surfing under the Bluebird’s low ceiling, and one crowd member even ran on stage and sang some of the lyrics to “Rock and Roll” before jumping off the stage and surfing the crowd.\nEven though the crowd consisted mostly of former students, Hollinden said he said doesn’t feel that it affected the way he played.\n“It’s not really weird at all to play to them,” Hollinden said. “I’m glad to say it feels like they already know me. It’s kind of like I’m preaching to the choir.”\nAndrew Landau of The Bluebird said the show went even better than expected.\n“We’re glad to have (Hollinden) here,” Landau said. “It’s been my dream to have him back and it’s been his dream as well. We really did this for the students.”\nHollinden said leading up to the show, he didn’t feel nervous, but was consumed with the idea of playing the show.\n“I felt that I was really keyed up to the idea,” Hollinden said. “It’s kind of like I was strapped to a rocket before it was taking off; it could blow up or everything could go alright.”