THERE ARE SO many ways to express one's fandom. Some people buy records. Some make Web sites. Some turn into stalkers. Some turn into stalkers and then become the lead singer in the band. Some engage in drunken, appalling karaoke. And some take an album revered by three decades of experimental and glam rock worshipers and cover it track by track, as Doug Hilsinger of Waycross recently did with Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy), with bandmate Caroleen Beatty on vocals.

Others have walked this path (see Pussy Galore's Exile on Main Street, Camper Van Beethoven's Tusk, and Carla Bozulich's Red Headed Stranger) – proving it less risky than, say, scaling Mount Everest off-season. Still, such an undertaking isn't without peril. The thing about being a fan is that you're probably not alone. You may be the only one to have recorded an entire cover album in homage, but chances are good there are multitudes ready to fall on and devour you for your trespasses.

On the other hand, maybe they'll just be grateful you thought up the idea. That was more the vibe the other night at the Eagle Tavern when Sunny Haire and Bruce Ducheneaux from Waycross, Steve Perrone from Dirty Power, and Seth Lorinczi from the Quails joined Hilsinger and Beatty onstage to give us the entire album in sequence.

Thursday-night rock at the Eagle has the feel of a really good block party, but that night's mood verged on anticipatory fervor. As the band picked up their instruments, you could hear the buzz of at least 15 separate conversations about the perfection of the original 1974 album and the relative merits of Hilsinger and Beatty's update, which hit record stores in May. The general consensus in my corner seemed to be one of approval. A woman loudly declared TTM's superiority over Eno's other early efforts, chastening a bystander with a shy but ardent liking for Here Comes the Warm Jets. The crowd shifted around. It smelled a bit like no one had bathed since Velvet Goldmine.

And then Hilsinger, wearing a feathery headdress that threw shadows, was speed-walking us through the album's history (highlights: the unlooked-for opportunity to put a copy in Eno's hand; a telephone call – I mean, what if Eno just called you up one day? – full of praise; a follow-up e-mail full of more detailed praise). And there we were, listening to the opening notes of "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More," sounding slightly more minor, slower, and more syrupy as laid out by Beatty and Haire in beautiful harmonies (occasionally laid low by technical difficulties).

It was slightly stressful at first, before you got used to it. When Chan Marshall performs her covers, you may not know whether she'll manage to finish any of them, but you know she'll have made them completely her own and almost unrecognizable. Here it was like being visited by a past you'd mostly experienced via speakers and fantasy – over and over – that was subject to sudden, unforeseen change.

Applying a guitar-laden, rock and roll touch, Hilsinger's arrangements blended mimesis with interpretation, and Beatty and Haire's gorgeous, fervent vocals carried the ardor of someone who's listened and sung along. Looking like a cross between a nurse at a fetish ball and an old-time nightclub chanteuse, Beatty sang and smiled like she knew all your dirty secrets and found them amusing – kind of like Eno. The songs came out like a cover flung down inexactly, blanketing the original on the driving, slowed-down "Third Uncle" and the vocals of "Mother Whale Eyeless," exposing it beautifully in songs like "The True Wheel." Nothing, perhaps, could beat the first song for sheer exalted drama. But other high points – aside from the lull in which someone asked Beatty where the acid was, and she directed them to the trough in the men's room – came toward the end, in the climbing, thrown-together energies of the title track, and in the moment in "The True Wheel" when Hilsinger shouted out the chorus line "row, row, row." He sounded like a fan who'd been waiting 30 years to do it. (Lynn Rapoport)

Doug Hilsinger, Caroleen Beatty, and friends perform the album again, with Tarentel, Fri/2, 10 p.m., Bottom of the Hill, 1233 17th St., S.F. $8. (415) 621-4455.