Chicago, IL (October 31, 2009) — For the first time in more than ten years, the legendary band Recollection has reunited under a new name — Guy Incognito — to christen Amp Rock Lounge in what some are hailing as the band’s werewolf bar mitzvah.

“Get it? Werewolf bar mitzvah?” said Amanda Newman, band manager and wife of keyboard player Rob Newman. Newman also masterminded the Groucho Marx glasses as a Halloween costume for the band.

“Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I suggested ‘Kosher Delight,’ but they just had to be ‘Guy Incognito.’”

For more than two hours on Saturday night, Guy Incognito delighted a drunken audience of dozens with their awkward jubilee and self-aware swagger.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, they’re so good,” said fan club president Ben Ferguson, whose wife, Abbie, wore a shirt with band members’ faces strategically situated atop her breasts. “I want to have their babies,” he added.

Once hailed for their electrifying live performances on the North Shore coffee house circuit and exclusive rehearsals in their drummer’s mom’s basement, Guy Incognito has spent the past decade cultivating their introspective pop sound. That is, they haven’t been doing much of anything for a long, long time.

[Caption: Drummer Scott Hinden's mom has a really sweet basement.]

Despite this hiatus — this period of “going incognito,” if you will — Guy Incognito continues to be one of the most influential bands in the lives of their little sisters, girlfriends, and would-be girlfriends, who know who they are.

Guy Incognito is the reunion of front man Barry Horwitz with his longtime collaborators and BFFs Rob Newman on keyboards and Scott Hinden on drums. The trio, then known as Recollection, first released an album in 1998 that featured photos of them at a suburban train station posing pensively while wearing denim jeans and sport coats and carrying single red roses. I mean, if that doesn’t make you swoon, then you’re just an animal.

In the past year, the band added bass player Matt Wechsler, primarily for his ability to grow his own ’stache.

“They hadn’t had much luck with keeping new bass players,” Amanda Newman said of Wecshler. “This time, they kept it in the Tribe. Sure enough, Matt stuck around, and next thing you know, the band was back and better than ever.”

“He’s hairy, just like us,” added Horwitz, whose own arm hair actually looked like crazy rocker tattoos that night. (See first photo, above.)

[Caption: Horwitz gets nice and sweaty, too -- just like Steven Tyler.]

Though not actually a member of the band, legendary rocker Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, pictured above, made a cameo. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, no one could really hear his voice very well.

“It’s too bad the balance was off,” said Kenny G, father of band manager Newman. ”I couldn’t hear Rob enough,” he added, placing his beer hand territorially on Newman’s keyboard. “I really, really love Rob. Have you seen that smile? It’s like the Kennedys!”

Kenny G later noted with some excitement that Newman wasn’t even wearing his wedding ring.

“I was afraid my ring would catch during a really intense glissando and I’d break a key,” Newman later explained. Newman’s signature is his athletic manner of playing the piano as if it were a drum set, including a lot of banging and foot stomping and often leading to cracked, bleeding fingernails. “Why, is Amanda pissed?” he asked.

Uncharacteristically, Newman’s wife did not fly into a jealous rage, although she was quick to indicate that, back in the day, the would-be girlfriends of the band then known as Recollection would routinely give her “the stink eye” when she showed up for gigs.

“They can have him,” she said. “He’s out of his mind. I mean, have you seen this guy? He’s dressed up as a Newsie, and not even for Halloween,” she said, referencing the 1992 cult classic film, Newsies.

Newman had no comment on her own ensemble, which was described by audience members as “showy” and “obnoxious,” though it remained unclear as to whether they were talking about the costume or Newman herself.

“I mean, she showed up with her parents in a white stretch limo,” said one audience member, who declined to give her name but was dressed up as what appeared to be a rose. “That’s a bit over the top.”

Newman, after claiming her parents ordered the limo without trying to be ironic, quickly added, “But, I mean, it went really great with my outfit, don’t you think?”

But no amount of sequins or Aquanet or electric blue tights could upstage the musicians of Guy Incognito that evening, who performed at their signature high intensity. Even the bartenders took note.

“I just wandered into this place after grabbing some pizza next door,” said some drunk guy dressed like Big Bird, “and the bartender is all, ‘Did you see Guy Incognito play? They totally rocked.’

“And I was all, ‘Guy Incognito’ — who’s that?’”

Indeed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The above footage was selected for publication specifically because it is Kenny G’s favorite song, and because it best illustrates Newman’s “foot-stompin’” style that his grandpa (who numbers among the six or seven who actually read this blog) loves so very much. More videos, in larger format, here.

For a complete photo gallery of the evening’s events, look at the pictures on the right. Or, oh, OK, I’ll make a link.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: We got married!

No, seriously. I almost forgot. You know that feeling you get in the middle of winter, when the wind is blustering around you and you haven’t been able to feel you toes since Thanksgiving, and you just can’t seem to remember how it felt to stand in that exact spot in the middle of sweltering July?

That’s how it feels to get married on vacation. You know it happened, your memories are fond if hazy, and yet it seems more probable that it was all a hallucination.

In the interest of, um, remembering The Most Important Day Of My Life So Far, here are a few favorite, hilarious, or otherwise blog-worthy moments.

(dusts off the slide projector, dims the lights)

Here we are on the plane to Maui. We flew with Rob’s family and got to sit in first class.

I never realized that airplanes operate under something of a caste system. The difference between coach and first-class is absolutely appalling, what with the hot towels and the beverages served in a real glass and the course dinner (no kidding), when everyone else was crammed together and trying to hold themselves over on a meager bag of airplane peanuts.

Rob even got a plate of fruit, including honeydew melon, which, he was surprised to learn, was not, in fact, cantaloupe that wasn’t done cooking, nor was it called “greenaloupe.”

It was the best part of the trip so far, which is saying a lot, because I did find myself getting pretty giddy and into the “bride” spirit (uh, FINALLY) that morning, what with all the attention a person gets from walking around the airport carrying a huge bridal garment bag high above her head so as not to wrinkle the train.

Likewise, Hawaii did not disappoint, being as beautiful and paradisical (is that really not a word? I am making it one) as everyone says it is. Accordingly, I will spare you the gratuitous photos of vivid sunsets and abundant hibiscuses (hibisci? I’m really striking out here) as big as your head and will share just one shot, taken from our table at the very delicious Mama’s Fish House, where we enjoyed the world’s most expensive Mai Tai ($18 ) and one of Maui’s most beautiful views:

It is a bizarre experience to travel for 15 or more hours to a remote and foreign island, only to arrive at your hotel and be immediately greeted by EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Hosting fifty of our family and friends in Hawaii was absolutely wonderful and, in that special way Rob and I have of turning fun into work, maddeningly stressful. We so wanted to make sure everyone felt comfortable and happy and loved and, most importantly, appreciated for trekking halfway around the world for our nuptials.

Meanwhile, for practically every thank-you we said, we were thanked for getting married in a fabulous location, though mostly by our 26-year old family friend, Jason, who came with his parents and couldn’t stop marveling that he hadn’t spent a dime, and by my 18-year old cousin Kevin, who was mostly thrilled that some woman on his plane gave him a hundred bucks in exchange for his aisle seat.

It is just incredible how special people make you feel when you get married. Particularly my dad, who, just before walking me down the aisle, told me something along the lines of, “Listen, now, you got a good thing going for you here, so don’t f*ck this up. Just take it easy on him. You gotta let the little sh*t go.”

That’s some classic “Kenny G” (as his friends now call him) for you, folks. Believe it or not, he meant it in the sweetest, most fatherly way — as advice, not a reprimand — and it takes a special person (and perhaps many years of therapy) to understand that.

Anyway, here we are going down the aisle. I love the looks on our faces here:

So, when you are getting married in Maui, you don’t really make an “inclement weather” plan. I mean, it hasn’t rained in Wailea in June, like, ever.

But what I hadn’t counted on was the possibility of wind. And not just that famed trade wind that blows continuously across the island. We are talking gale-force, hair-whipping, skirt-uplifting, I-can’t-hear-you-and-you-are-standing-next-to-me, oh-my-gosh-is-that-a-cow-flying-
through-the-air, I-don’t-think-we-are-in-Kansas-anymore, 45-mile-per-hour GUSTS, people.

During the rehearsal, I thought I felt a drop of rain, but then I realized it was the waves crashing into the shoreline with such force that the bridesmaids were in real danger of being completely doused, dresses and nosegays and updos and all.

Minor glitch.

Still in vacation-on-a-tropical-island mode, I was (surprisingly enough) unfazed, but everyone else (*ahem* ROB *cough* *cough*) got themselves into such a tizzy over it that my inner Bridezilla came roaring out. It was not pretty, but a few phone calls and one medium-grade hissy fit later, our entire day of wedding festivities was bumped back by 45 minutes with the hope that the wind would die down later in the day, as it had been the past several days.

It, unfortunately, did not.

OK, so it really wasn’t that bad. Here we are during the ceremony:

You may be wondering why I am adjusting Grandpa’s tie as he officiated our ceremony. Well, actually, I’m covering his lapel microphone in a somewhat futile attempt to block the wind. That’s also why we are standing just a little to close to him.

Oh, and if you are one of those people who doesn’t like me but reads my blog anyway and are about to start in with the snarky commentary about the way my dress is pulling in a horribly unflattering way, you can can it right now. Believe it or not, I hadn’t gained ten pounds from drinking too many poolside smoothies. (That was on the honeymoon, thankyouverymuch.) I had a horrendous experience with my dress shop, Weddings 826, and their alterations person. Go ahead, go read my review on Yelp. Now start feeling bad about yourself.

But if a small monsoon and a little polyester was the worst that could happen to me on my wedding day, I count myself as a very lucky girl.

Truly, I thought everything was more perfect and wonderful than I dreamed it could be. In fact, I surprised myself to realize that I was actually having FUN on my wedding day. I didn’t cry once, simply because I just couldn’t wipe the huge smile off my face.

I mean, Rob actually kissed me in public, TWICE! Once when we were pronounced husband and wife, and once here:

Of course, right now, I’m bawling like a baby thinking about how happy and fortunate I felt that day, to be marrying my best friend and partner, to be surrounded by so many of the people we love most in this world, to be on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, and to have the best damn reception I’ve ever been to, if I do say so myself (or, if my Auntie Peggy says so herself, “Nobody was NOT dancing!”).

The next day, we’re sitting at the pool with a group of friends when I suddenly realize aloud, “Oh crap! We didn’t get your grandpa to sign our wedding license!”

To which my dear husband replied, “Oooh! Does that mean we’re not married until today?” There was hope in his voice, as he dislikes odd numbers and would far prefer that our anniversary be on the 22nd.

After some quibbling among our friends as to what I would take as my full married name (maiden name as middle name? New last name altogether? The addition of an “L apostrophe” before my last name, followed by a “de la Mancha”? We have weird friends), we became the first couple in history to have their grandfather sign their marriage license in his swim trunks at the pool:

There is more, of course — you do know there are professional pictures and a honeymoon, not to mention two more wedding parties (who has three weddings?) — but that’s quite enough for now. Even I’m sick of hearing about my wedding!