The supposed cousin of Rogue Wave’s drummer stopped me in the Price Center East hallway, needing someone to understand how fucking amazing this band was. I guess he had thus far cried to every song — something about the Bloc Party-ness of it all, and what he referred to as the mind-boggling “melodic tones.” Thanks, Hallway Loser, for spelling out for me exactly why I had begun to feel nauseous in there.

For night two of the week-long Loft-Off, the variously shaped cafeteria tables — a huge contributor to an OVT-meets-Mandeville feng shui the night before, not to mention a pesky obstacle in achieving complete dance party chaos — were cleared out to create more standard concert space, though Rogue Wave didn’t inspire much more than impassioned swaying. The mop-headed lead singer switched on his romantic Shins/Decemberists accent to further dramatize a mediocrity-disguising assault of “melodic tones,” graciously provided by his rather dopey-looking band mates (one in a corduroy fishing cap — just saying).

At their own loss, most of the crowd trickled out behind Rogue Wave, unaware they would miss the Loft’s first official case of audience/artist anarchy. As local DJ Shark Attack spazzed out to his own top-rate, Timbaland-heavy club mix, a few especially inspired ladies rushed the stage to try their luck at backup dancing (Shark Attack’s partner-in-crime had been arrested en route to UCSD, so he was looking a little lonely up there). When a Loft stagehand politely requested they get the fuck down, Shark Attack halted the turntables and refused to continue without his girls — at which point the entire remaining crowd joined in revolt and made a stage-exclusive party of it.

The sleek, high-culture intentions of the Loft’s stiff wallflower couch, bomb-ass tapas and theatre-intermission alcohol table are all fine and dandy — but in the end, it may take our long-formed instincts to rebel against authority a little transition time to fully digest the concept of a university-run venue that’s also, like, awesome.