“Who did you have to blow in order to get into The Green Mill?”-Fast Fingers Wallace“The entire staff…”-Sid Yiddish
In order to understand my apprehensiveness about The Green Mill performance that took place on Sunday, October 7, 2007, I need to back up a bit. Back to the early days when I first went to The Green Mill; back in the day when it first back in the late 1980s. Back when founder & host Marc Smith roared each time I showed up with great sarcasm, he’d point me out and say, “There he is with his tape recorder.”
Back in those days, I used to record everything I did on tape, every scrap of cassette I could find, I would tape every performance of mine & others on my small portable tape recorders, that I would run through just as easily as a working woman runs through panty hose.
But in those days, The Green Mill was brutal. The audiences and the performers were like a bunch of Dick The Bruisers, all waiting to pin the next man or woman down to the ground and sit on them until he or she cried “uncle.”
That’s no exaggeration.
In the spring of 1999, I am competing for a spot on the Chicago Poetry Slam Team, that will go on to the finals, being held that year in Chicago; the city that is birthplace of the Slam.
I advance to the semi-finals; then the quarter finals; then the finals, at which point I am knocked out of the third round at The Green Mill. I get easily disgruntled & disillusioned by the entire process & notice that the folks who I call “the dramatists,” verses “the real poets” have won.
Some of those dramatists had egos the size of black holes; never-ending, while others remained friendly & polite. Not always the case; but they did it the hard way; the school of hard knocks.
Dismayed, I turned away from poetry entirely & concentrated on my own muse; refocused my attention on music; in particular voice lessons, followed by piano, song & lyric writing, music theory & throatsinging.
I continue this process & slowly re-enter the performance arena with a richer & wider range of talent and skill in 2003. Then I drop out of the scene again & go into acting & improvising, but come back full circle to performing poetry again.
Then I drop out. In 2004, I jump back in & decide to do out-of-town gigs only. I like the thrill of an unknown audience & the ability to try out new material.
In 2005, as you’ve previously read, it’s my good friend and fellow writer/MRR columnist Mykel Board who really encourages me to come back out & perform more often than not. So I do. I begin building up courage, work on my weaknesses & sort out my disillusions with the entire process of performing poetry.
These days they call it spoken word. Looks more sophisticated; sells more books & CDs, anyway.
Fast forward to July, 2007; I’m in the middle of booking 2 Jew$ Be@t Poet$ Tour 2007, when I decide to inquire about the possibility of performing at The Green Mill, but I wonder and all those wounds come rushing back. But I decide to inquire anyway & send an email off to Marc Smith, the founder of the Slam. I receive a response, but it’s virtually nothing and I press on with other venues. In August, I get another email from Smith with further inquiry & a phone number & decide to contact him.
When I tell him who I actually am, he asks me why I didn’t tell him originally. I explain that I’m going under the guise of my recently established stage name, Sid Yiddish. We talk for a bit & he tells me he’d like to see my new act & he’ll give me a shot.
Inside, I am screaming with joy, jumping up & down, while doing cartwheels, combined with summersaults. Yet, I’m still nervous. Not sure what’s going to be by the time the fall rolls around. When The Green Mill gig is confirmed, everything else, including other shows seem to fall into line, almost exactly into place. It’s almost too perfect.
Fast forward again to Sunday afternoon, we’ve just finished up the gig at the Chicago Cultural Center. I’ve parted ways with Rat & I’m waiting for Wes to pull up in his overstuffed station wagon for a lift to The Green Mill.
While, I’m waiting in the lobby a week-old baby wails in front of me, until I suddenly break out in throatsinging & it quiets down, that is until his parents look at me with astonishment & disgust all in the same breath, wishing they could do that.
20 minutes later, Wes pulls up to the curb. We load all of his & my stuff into his car. I plop myself into the front seat. Wes comes out to literally strap me in, as I throw both my legs & feet up on the dashboard & away we fly down Lake Shore Drive until we get to our destination. Wes parks the car a block away & out I pull my belongings & head toward The Green Mill.
When I walk into with all my luggage & props in tow, I open the door & am greeting by about 20 or so people who shout at the top of their lungs “Happy Birthday!” to me and start singing the song of the same title.
I am amused.
I get settled in and see Smith & talk to him for a bit. After conferring with him about something, I begin to place little plastic toy instruments on the tables within the club. They’ll be used for one of my performance pieces later in the night.
Another 30 minutes pass, then I see him; my buddy, my good pal, fellow adventurer & tour-partner, Mykel Board. We talk for a bit & then he sets up the booth where we hope to sell merchandise. I thumb through my work, to see what I’ll be reading, but I already know, as I sort of had a simple plan set up for The Green Mill show.
The hour grows closer. Then at 7pm, the show begins! Wes performs during the open mic. Before the break, Smith holds a contest; the best poem that uses the words meatloaf, Venus & volcano wins $10. He says he needs four contestants. Mykel, myself & two others volunteer. We don’t win, someone else does, but I whip off a quick poem about anal sex, while Mykel writes up a quickie with a Jewish-related theme.
During the break, I see my good friend, The Rev. in the front row; he comes up to me and pumps my right hand. “Hey Squirt,” he laughs, referring to my anal sex poem.
I smile. It gives me true hope, that knowing he’s in the audience, that I will do okay tonight.
After the break, Mykel is introduced by Smith & reads one of his prose pieces about plastic medicine from his book of columns entitled, “I-A-Me-Ist.” I’ve heard it before, probably half-a-dozen times; I never get tired of his work.
While he is reading, I get myself prepared; I am nervous, but calmer and more determined than ever.
Then I’m up.
The first piece I do is Jazz-Haiku-A-Rama; the crowd “gets” the concept of the piece & responds joyfully with the little toy instruments that I had laid out on the tables only hours earlier. I’m pleased.
I follow up with Moloch The Watchman. The crowd claps again. I’m intrigued.
Then I tell the audience that I‘m going to do a little throatsinging. That’s when I hear Smith say, “I’ve been waiting for this.”
I launch into my throatsinging mega-hit “Mykel Board Weasel Squeezer.” I hear a deafening roar & thunderous applause from the crowd. I am thrilled. I’ve survived my comeback. Just as I am leaving the stage, Smith asks me if I might do another one.
An encore!
I stop & think for a minute and say, “Yeah, I do have another one, but I need a drink of water first.”
A man in the front row offers me his glass & I take a few sips from it. Then, another man comes over & hands me a tall glass of cool water. Smith says, “That’s the first time Pete (the club manager, I later find out) has ever brought anyone a drink to the stage.”
I start drinking while I hear choruses of “chug-chug-chug” along the way.
Then I tell the crowd that I will be doing a Yoko Ono cover, called “Don't Worry Kyoko(Mummy's Only Looking For A Hand In The Snow),” to which I hear murmurs of groans & laughter. I tell the audience that I will be doing the cover in two voices, first throatsinging, then falsetto, then back to throatsinging.
I eye the crowd and then I launch into the piece. The crowd is stunned, but in a good way. I finish the piece, to which the crowd responds with great enthusiasm.
I feel like I’ve conquered one of my greatest fears. During the break, I spy one of my co-workers sitting at the bar; he tells me I did well. Then I see The Rev. who tells me I was “smoking!”
Everybody else I talk to all say the same thing, different phrasings, but the same thing.
I am sitting on a cloud at this point.
Wes and Mykel both congratulate me as well.
But the night’s not over; no, not by a long shot or a rocky mountain slim, either. The first-ever baseball poetry slam is about to begin…
The teams are ready. It’s The Green Mill slammers verses the Bardball team. On my team, besides me, are Jim Garner & Stu Shea, both gentleman are well-established authors & founders of the website, in which people submitted poems during the 2007 baseball season.
The rules are simple. In order to get a home run, one has to have three placards held up by the judges that all say “Going,” but if they get two of the “Going” placards & one “Pop Out” placard, then it’s considered an out & no runs are scored. Of course, the worst case scenario can also be three pop-outs too.
One by one we all come to “bat.” I, for one of a better phrase, am batting 1.000 all night! Mykel is amazed; so is everyone else inside The Green Mill, including my teammates.
We get to the seventh inning stretch & I hear Smith mention something about a song. Without having to be asked, I stand up from our booth, hop up onto the stage & lead the crowd in throatsinging “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” and hop back down.
The crowd is mesmerized.
We go to extra innings and I am sent up to bat for our side. Meanwhile, Smith pinch-hits for the other team & smacks a grand-slam within the slam & beats our team quite handily. Still, everyone goes home a winner.
As the night winds down & I pack up & leave The Green Mill & go out for a steak burrito at Garcia’s in Lincoln Square with Mykel, I am still on fire, stars in my eyes & the moon in my throat.
And I all I can think is, what a grand night!
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