Years have gone by since the last time when the Coke Dares played in Chicago, but the trio returned on Friday, April 22, and played two sets at Logan Arcade. As the night began, guitarist Jason Evans Groth said that the band had rehearsed 700 songs, but it was going to play only 70. That wasn’t much of an exaggeration — most of the Coke Dares’ songs are short. Very short. The band ripped through one song after another, playing just a riff, maybe a verse, maybe a chorus and then screeching to a halt as Groth either jumped into the air with his guitar or abruptly announced, “Thank you!” before proceeding to introduce the next song. It was all quite amusing, with some fun tunes crammed into those brief snippets of rock. The longest song of the night may have been a cover of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4.” Or maybe it was the medley that closed the first set, including the commercial jingle for Juicy Fruit gum — a jingle that the Coke Dare reprised an hour later as they ended their second set.
