It was as if I had temporarily forgotten that bands were supposed to enjoy what they're doing up there on stage.

It's interesting how, if you attend enough shows, you start to get the impression that many artists are more or less going through the motions on tour. Not that they don't sound good and not that hearing great songs live isn't exciting regardless, but if you really start to analyze it -- and I do -- it becomes obvious from time to time that cycling through the same set list is less than thrilling.

It's an easy thing to empathize with -- that is, until Spoon comes to town and immediately sets a new standard for live performance. Forget justifying the hardships of life on the road, forget the repetitiveness and the whole tortured artist bit. Forget sitting in your seat through a rock 'n' roll show.

Last night Britt Daniel and crew reminded a packed Pabst Theater crowd -- most of which was on its feet from start through second (yes, second) encore -- why it pays for live music and may very well have spoiled this town on what a concert experience should be.

There were no frills, no fancy stage decorations, but there was Daniel, center stage, in his tight white pants and a huge smile on his face that said, "I'm having as much fun as you guys are."

Spoon wasted not a moment's time in the spotlight with mindless banter, allowing for a complete representation from its latest "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" and nearly all of 2005's "Gimme Fiction," pausing a total of three times in two hours -- once to praise The Pabst Theater and its staff, once to praise "crazy Milwaukee crowds and their Tallboys" and once to say hello to 10-year-old Sawyer, the son of Cactus Club owner Eric Uecke.

There is something to be said about bands experimenting on stage and attempting to create an environment never achieved on hard copy -- that's actually why most people go to concerts. But rare is it that a band can successfully conjure the surreal while staying in touch with what makes hundred of people get up and dance, which is to say, the familiar fever of their favorite songs.

Ten years ago, Spoon was just another four-piece band treading water in Austin's emerging indie scene, and getting dropped from Elektra Records for less than stellar album sales. But by the new millennium the band was starting to get pegged as "the next big thing," and although it's decidedly difficult to measure the degree to which a band truly becomes the ambiguous "big thing," it's safe to say the band's new home, Merge Records, is more than pleased with its choice.