In the 23rd year of my existence, 1984, I sought out comfort and joy. My eternal flame was being challenged yet again, for my beliefs, my age, in that, what was a 23-year old doing in a dormitory at Western Illinois University (WIU) in Macomb, Illinois with a bunch of 18-year-olds, as well as my taste in music and my politics, which at some point all seemed to go hand-in-hand.Ronald Reagan was still President of the United States back then & by the looks of things was about to be re-elected again & all four of us known liberals willing to take a stance (the rest of them remained in the closet until they graduated) and fight the ever-growing insurgency of the young feeble-minded conservatives in our building.
The best-known form to do this was through, of course, music! Music would push them back, so we thought, but alas it only alienated them. Punk rock was a relatively new term back then, a little harder around the edges than new wave music.
Throngs of kids with multi-colored hair and mohawks didn’t exactly fill our building, but there was at least one guy. The rest of them I read about and viewed photos of in a cool fanzine called Maximum RocknRoll, then out of Berkeley, California. The kids that were into it, in grew into epidemic proportions, but there were just as many adults over the age of 21 that were into punk music as well; normal-looking folks who didn’t fit the stereotype of what a punk looked like.
Some went to shows for the music, while others went listening to the words being spit out from the singers and searched for the meaning behind them. Folks like me & Benjy. Before I went attended WIU in the summer of 1984 through the spring of 1986, I held down a seemingly normal job, that of elevator operator at Chandler’s Used Textbooks in Evanston, Illinois from October, 1982 to early June, 1984 .
My younger brother Benjy was just joining bands back then (he was a bassist) and listening to a lot of different records and of course, he would let me hear what he had and let me tape them. One of those bands he found that would eventually turn us both on our heads came forth a band Benjy thought at first was nothing more than “synthesizer music.”
That band out of San Francisco was of course, named The Dead Kennedys (DKs).
We had missed their first show when they came to Chicago in 1982 and played at C.O.D. Lounge on Devon Avenue, (next to Larry's Comic Book Shop, for those of you who may not have known where C.O.D. was), but were determined to see them again when they came around this time, so we bought out tickets and impatiently waited around for the show date to arrive like a couple of fidgety kids waiting for the ice cream man to make his usual rounds.
At last, Sunday, June 11 had arrived. We got to the show early and waited outside the Cabaret Metro in line with everyone else, with scores of people in cars along Clark Street, slowing down and gawking at all of the kids with mohawks, making lewd remarks, while still Chicago Police paddy wagons were cruising by as well, making the stereotype come to life that all punks lives revolved around rioting & violence, which of course was ridiculous!
When we got in, we raced up the steps and grabbed two seats closest to the balcony. The balcony at the Metro was always the best seat in the house to watch a show. Besides it was a little safer above and we could scope out all of the action below, which was mostly stage-diving and slam-dancing.
Usually, the shows were jammed-packed to the gills, hot & sweaty, the walls were dripping from sweat as well and it was for certain the number of people inside the Metro was way past the capacity level back then; most shows were like that and nobody really was that observant about those types of rules, unlike now where the E2 nightclub disaster in Chicago a couple of years ago seemed to wake everybody up, but back then it was different.
Two bands opened for the DKs; local beloved Chicago band Articles Of Faith & my personal favorite, Men Of The Negative Effect. There on the stage for this band stood a young man, probably about my age who blew hard non-sensical & discombobulated notes, while another man leaned into a microphone screaming both coherent and incoherent words. It felt as if I was in a trance watching him, yet it also felt like I was drinking in my first taste of free jazz, improvisational or perhaps experimental music. I loved what I heard, but Benjy and the rest of the crowd absolutely hated them and booed them loudly off to get off the stage.
At last the headliner hit the stage; Jello Biafra looked ferocious as he grabbed the microphone and spit words into the air, as his band played at a blitzkrieg pace. Other than the swirling masses of bodies we watched bouncing off of each other that night, there was one particular guy in the audience nicknamed “Crown Boy” for the golden crown he wore on his head that night. Presumably blasted out of his mind, he dove off the stage and into the frenzied crowd below whenever he had a chance.
When the show was over, we knew we had witnessed something special, but most of all, we were both hooked! We went to lots of punk shows over the next year and a half before I went away to school (WIU). Never did I imagine in one thousand days that I would bond with my brother Benjy this way! It was the flavor and the beat of the music that bought us together, for certain.
Punk music to me upon discovering it, was fast, loud, raw, unstructured to a degree and drew us into the realm by not only the sounds, but the words too, most of it, which at the time was very political. Kind of similar to free jazz and improvisational music.
Reagan had proved to be good springboard for punks, as well as the musicans & poets too. The bands were telling us things the mainstream wasn't telling us. And of course the band names were cool & funny too.
Subsequently, on Halloween night, 1984, I came home from WIU in the middle of the week on a Wednesday, just to see the DKs perform in Chicago yet again. That show was mind-blowing and left the kind of impression on me that music teachers usually leave me; breathless and panting for more!
So, when I heard the DKs were coming back around to perform in Chicago the following year (1985), I knew I had to get home somehow to see them. I decided the best way to do it was to place an advertisement in the Western Courier the college newspaper that I had just began to cover news for.
I made an offer not many would refuse; I’d pay gasoline to and from the venue a place to crash and of course the ticket in exchange for a ride to and from the show. After what felt like hours waiting for a call, I finally received a phone call from a guy by the name of “Bob” from St. Louis, who drove a yellow Volkswagen Beetle.
We left for Chicago early on Thursday morning, November 1 and arrived mid-afternoon, picked up Benjy, caught a little dinner and drove up to the show. This time the venue was at a place called “The Palace,” a former movie-house. The show of course was tremendous, far better than anything we’d ever seen. The audience was so wild they tore up the first full row of seats that had been nailed to the floor and just flung them on stage. Opening acts for the show included Naked Raygun, The Crucifux & Criminally Insane.
The first two bands were fantastic and quite frankly, the last opener band stunk! The crowd went absolutely wild when the DKs took the stage, as we did up the balcony and of course there was Jello on stage scolding the audience for too much stage-diving without thinking about what the band was playing or the messages they were conveying within their music, plus knocking the guitars out of tune.
By the time the show was over, we were in a daze, our ears ringing for hours; mine for at least four days, but we were happy and contented. Bob drove Benjy back home at about 1:30 am (November 2) and we hit the road back to WIU. We got back four hours later, glaze-eyed and crawled into our respective beds in different residence halls and went to sleep with visions of DKs dancing in our heads, just as the sun rose to start a brand new day.
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