The upside of Chicago weather is it can be so bad, it doesn’t take much to cheer up residents.

Yesterday, at the butt-ugly end of a day filmed in black and white with sideways rain for special effect, 200 ticketholders clung around the Vic Theater entrance at Belmont and Sheffield avenues like icy ship barnacles.

The scheduled band of small reknown arrived in a big white bus and plunked itself in front of the theater. The crowd let out hoots, bleats and yumpin-yimminees louder than loud, bigger than the roar at a three-point winning dunk at the buzzer.

It was a magnificence not born of volume but spawned by joy. Powerful stuff.