Because I arrived at Canopy ultra early, I headed over to the UGL to kill time before the show and did some Wikipedia-aided research on the night’s performers. This turned out to be a great decision because the entry on Tim Fite provided me with a startling (and awesome) fact: Fite was the first half of Little T and One Track Mike, the white rap duo behind the goofy 2001 MTV hit “Shaniqua.” (If you’re not familiar, check it out below.)

Although Fite was instantly recognizable to me from his one hit’s ubiquitous music video (even his haircut was identical – a crew cut with one long string of hair coming out of the front) his overall appearance has changed drastically. Wearing a cream-colored button-up shirt paired with suspenders, Fite seemed intent on channeling a fundamentalist minister who wouldn’t be out of place in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

This image matched well with the preachy content of his songs. It appears to be no coincidence that Fite has found a label home on ANTI-, as his lyrics railed against consumerism (the hip-hop rant “It’s All Right Here”) and “the Man” (folksy single “Away From The Snakes”).

While I wasn’t particularly impressed with the songs themselves (an exception being the plucky, acoustic strains of “Big Mistake”), there’s no denying the show was strangely entertaining. In lieu of using live instruments, a video screen showed weird footage of Fite sitting in a wheelchair playing a guitar and keyboard while other images of himself danced in the background. Between tunes, short animated cartoons (similar in style to the ones Demetri Martin uses in his stand-up) entertained the crowd and twice led them to act out “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

All of these slightly juvenile attempts at humor provided an unsettling juxtaposition with songwriting that was seriously aimed at exposing society’s faults and left the impression that the transformation from Little T to Tim Fite was not yet complete. In contrast to his own claim, perhaps it’s not quite true that Shaniqua don’t live here no more.

If Tim Fite had actually been the leader of a Southern Baptist church revival, than Man Man was exactly the sort of evil he would seek to exorcise – a gypsy camp after dark, reveling in sin and sound into the early morning hours.

Despite also being signed to ANTI-, about the only thing the Philadelphia-based quintet seemed dead set against was silence. Never once pausing to address the crowd, the band filled its time slot with the typical strumming of bass and guitar coupled with the banging of drums and piano keys – but also added to the mix metal pots, whistles, xylophones and whatever else could be used to produce noise. (At one point, lead singer Honus Honus even went up to the mic and jingled his keys, prompting many in the crowd to do the same and making the place sound like Memorial Stadium before a kickoff.)

Starting off with two consecutive tracks from the April 2008 release Rabbit Habits (”Doo Right” and “Easy Eats Or Dirty Doctor Galapagos”), Man Man maintained a fairly high level of energy via uptempo cuts including “Mister Jung Stuffed” and “Harpoon Fever.”

Although the action on stage wasn’t nearly as raucous as I had been expecting, the pit was even more so – as people in the crowd (some of whom sported fake moustaches, war paint and cloths tied around their heads in homage to the band) seized every opportunity to dance and jump around.

After playing roughly 15 songs, the band came out for two encores (and possibly a third, although I left during the second). Somewhat disappointingly, these returns to the stage established a much less lively tone than was featured in the original set. Leaving behind its signature groove-worthy tunes, Man Man offered up more subdued, expansive cuts such as “Skin Tension” and “Gold Teeth.”

While it was nice to see a different side of the band whose frenetic songs seemed to meld together when played one after the after, I would rather have seen more of an effort to mix up the tempo throughout the show than to end it on such a downbeat note.

But I guess even the most roaring of campfires dies out eventually.