Hideout Block Party 1957 okay part 2

You didn't think I could write about my friends in all the bands that are playing and not mention our honorary emcees? Not a chance. Sue Miller, Julia Adams, and Joe Shanahan are also joining us for the block party. Just so happens that these three were also Sputnik babes. Speaking for eleventh dream day--our musical journey wouldn't have been the same without the people who ran the best clubs Chicago has ever seen.

Let me start with Sue and Julia. Julia and Sue. Yes, you think Lounge Ax, and you wouldn't be wrong. So many great shows. We've seen them listed. Drag City Invitational. The first Tortoise shows. I used to grab a spot next to Gary Schepers as he mixed the show. Or sat all the way back near the photo booths with Sue. Sue and Julia made playing there fun. Everybody who ever worked there was great. I was a young dad, and  for the most part didn't hang out a lot if friends weren't playing or if edd didn't have a gig. I think Doug might have been there more than he was at home. But, the eleventh dream day shows were always special. The stage was comfy--the right height, the right width. Great sound. Go out the back door and fresh air before encores. Try not to talk too loud because of the asshole neighbors. My favorite nights--when Ira Kaplan was our 4th member, the Beet release party night, the rest are frankly kind of a blur.

But we go back further than that with Sue. Sue booked the Cubby Bear for their best years. Gary at the sound booth there too. Eleventh Dream Day rehearsed upstairs so we just had to drag our stuff down. Sue let us open for Lyres, Feelies, Slickee Boys, Wipers, and gave us a bunch of our own headline shows as we began to feel our oats. We met our good friends from Precious Wax Drippings downstairs in the dressing room when they played with us. John Herndon, Jim Garbe, and the Little boys. Sue made this place the best place to play while she was there. I don't think it was squat when she wasn't.

And then even further back with Sue. To the beginning! The West End. My favorite all-time Chicago club to see bands or to play. She booked it. Gave us our first slot opening for Green when we relaunched as a four piece with Doug and Baird. I loved that place. Sunday all-ages matinee with Husker Du, a matinee show with the Minutemen (second show canceled-I've written about it elsewhere), Descendants all-ages. Feelies show which is one of the best shows ever. Sue--we used to sneak over the fence in the back. Janet was underage and got hauled away (Kevin too!) in the back of a paddy wagon. My first Yo La Tengo show. Alex Chilton first show in Chicago on return to his career. We opened for Green on Red. Mushrooms. My friend Raoul. The night we thought Ray Davies was going to jump on stage as a guest, but didn't. Sam Kinison was there. We heard him scream his patented scream at his girlfriend as they got in the cab. Lee Popa on sound board. Hot nut machine at the from door. The balcony that almost seemed like it was over the stage. Sue would give us $50 which frankly we could have been paying her. In other words, Sue has been there literally every step of the way with us, and was always nice, every step of the way, and I love her to pieces.

And then there is Joe. Before I was even in a band I was hanging out on Clark Street. Snuck in to Stages for the Slits soundcheck which was basically a New Age Steppers show. So many great shows at Metro over the years. You all know them all. For a band like us, it was the big time. Joe gave us our biggest shot to date when he booked us to open for The Long Ryders. That definitely kicked our career up a notch. Then he gave us a Meat Puppets show. Our profile was really helped by these two gigs. Joe started Rock Against Depression nights which let smaller bands like us play--admission $5. Metro was happening. And then once edd  started packing the place on our own, Joe asked if a couple of up and comers could open for us. first Nirvana, the Smashing Pumpkins. You're welcome.
Joe ran the club as well as any club we've ever played at. After the gig he always made us feel like a million bucks no matter what the door did.

So, happy Block Party guys. Joe, Julia, and Sue. Thanks. Smooches.

Hideout Block Party-- It's 1957 Okay

Saturday, September 23rd 2017, I will be sharing a stage with some of my oldest friends. By oldest, I mean those that I go furthest back with, in the long-lasting sense. A year ago, I realized in a phone conversation with my long-time guitar hero and frequent musical partner, Tara Key, that many of us were born in the same year, 1957, and would soon be hitting a milestone. I blurted out, “Hey, let's all do a show together to celebrate.” Tara joined me in the sentiment, also ignoring the logistical improbabilities, but agreeing that getting us all together would be, to put it simply, fun. 

I’ve known Tara Key and Tim Harris the longest. The first time I saw the amazing Babylon Dance Band open for D.O.A. in Lexington, Kentucky I was mightily impressed. I didn’t meet them back then in 1979, but when I did in Louisville, Kentucky at the punk rock house/ rehearsal space/ hangout 1069 a few years later, it was the start of a long-time friendship. I was visiting a friend, Kate Dunn, and happened to be there as The Zoo Directors took a break from one of their marathon rehearsals. The Zoo Directors was a post-Babs trio featuring drumming neophyte Janet Beveridge Bean and hadn’t done much yet. Within months I somehow persuaded Janet to move to Chicago and start a band. Holding no grudges for stealing their drummer, Tim and Tara up and moved to NYC where they started Antietam.  In addition to forming our current bands in the same year, we have played many a concert together, in Louisville at many a Derby party, at CBGBs, The Cubby Bear, The Hideout, etc. Tara has toured with eleventh dream day, we’ve played on each other’s records, and she and I have two duet/instrumental records together. 

I first met Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, and saw Yo La Tengo at the West End in Chicago in April of 1986. I recorded the show on my trusty Walkman (I still have the tape!). Hanging out downstairs, still giddy from their performance of Marlboro Country with Charlie Pickett, I realized Ira and I had a similar record collection and mutual love of baseball. When our bands both played at the Barking Tuna Fest in Kalamazoo (the next year?) Janet and I drove back to Chicago with Georgia and Ira in the trusty YLT station wagon where I heard Mingus’ The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady for the first time and shared a laugh over a giant glob of something alien that hit the windshield that wouldn’t come off. When we first got signed to Atlantic, we did a mini tour together (w/Redd Kross) and when we toured Europe on our Lived to Tell record (and fell in love with James McNew!), we co-headlined for what still might be eleventh dream day’s high water mark as a touring band. They of course have carried on to become the best band on the planet. Since 1992 we have done many more shows together, and I rarely miss them when they come through town. This time James, Georgia and Ira appear as Condo Fucks, the best garage band on the planet.

Rick Brown and Sue Garner first appeared on my radar when we played with their band Fish and Roses. I think it was CBGBs the first time, and Czar Bar the second time, but I’m hazy. We had common friends from NYC (Antietam and YLT), and their sound was both novel and striking. I bought the t-shirt! Our friendship really had a chance to grow when edd recorded over the course of a NYC October in 1992, and many a subsequent visit and meal in NYC/Chicago through the years. 75 Dollar Bill is Rick’s new amazing band, a groundbreaker again (he was part of the NYC experimental rock scene of the early eighties) and this will be the first time I’ll hear them with Sue in the mix!

The fore-mentioned bands all slept on each other’s couches over the years and experienced the American indie scene, but there is one participant in the upcoming block party whose couch I have never slept on, but have known a heck of a long time, and who was actually born on the very day of the Sputnik launch!—Mr. Jon Langford. When Tara and I were talking about who we knew who was turning the notch on another decade this year, I recalled that one of my musical heroes was actually my age. Which freaked me out! The Mekons first single Never Been in a Riot came out in 1977 when I was twenty years old (although I wouldn’t hear it for several more years—on the Fast Records Mutant Pop compilation I bought in 1980). In 1977, when Jon Langford was communing with the other Mekons as a drummer, I still hadn’t picked up an instrument. The next year though, inspired by punk rock, I bought a Gibson EB3 bass knockoff from JC Penney mail order, and learned enough on it so that by 1979 I was playing punk rock (and Tom Petty) covers with some friends in The Pods. Lexington, Kentucky did not have much of a punk scene, and the handful of us didn’t do much original material like the Louisville bands were doing. Back to Jon though. I first saw the Mekons in June of 1986. My friends and I went to the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty show at the big barn, Poplar Creek, then drove in to see the Mekons at Exit in Chicago. After being a mile from the action with Bob and Tom, standing at the front of the stage with the kinetic brilliance of the Mekons five feet away was unforgettable. It was a while to get to meet Jon though despite a parallel love of the Sundowners playing old time country in desolate downtown Chicago. We finally met while both in major label purgatory on tour in Lawrence, Kansas on a Mekons/ Eleventh Dream Day bill at Bottleneck in 1991. Sally was at that one. And now we’ve known each other for years. I think Janet and Sally are slowly becoming the same person. And Jon is just a force of nature and has somehow come to embody the spirit of  Chicago. He is playing the block party with Skull Orchard, one of his many brilliant outfits. 

Having been born in the year of Sputnik (the first satellite launched into space), Chuck Berry putting rock and roll on the map, and the heyday of the Beats, my colleagues and I have traversed a unique path as the generation after Pete’s generation. Baptized in rock and roll (1957), too young to be a hippie (1967), young, loud, snotty and ready for punk rock (1977), smack dab in the middle of the best indie rock years (1987), and so forth and so on. We’re all still playing, making new records, not looking back (except when chronology hits you in the chops). See you at Hideout.