Big Mike: This Means War

I was on the phone with my esteemed colleague, the renowned author Benny Jay, the other day. Somehow the conversation got around to the first concert I'd ever attended. I told him that I'd seen Parliament and War at the International Amphitheater in 1973. There was silence for a moment, then Benny Jay launched into hosannas about my coolness that led me to believe if we'd have been in the same room, he'd have begun salaaming me.

Now, Benny Jay is as wired in to the Brother Culture about as much as any white man ever has been. I assumed he'd been in the groove from childhood on. Sadly, he wasn't. Benny Jay later admitted that way back in 1973, he was still listening to Top 40 songs on WLS and WCFL.

In the 60s, these two seminal Chicago rock 'n' roll radio stations had introduced me to Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson and the Chambers Brothers as well as blue-eyed soul brothers like the Rolling Stones, Tommy James and the Shondells, the Young Rascals and others. I still listen to all of them to this day. But by 1973, the two radio titans had grown stale, reflecting the state of pop music at the time, and my radio dial never again came near either AM 890 or 1000. I refused to listen to the unbearable crap they were playing. To illustrate, here's a list of some of the top songs of 1973. Read it and try to refrain from retching:

• "Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Old Oak Tree," by Tony Orlando and Dawn
  
• "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia," by Vickie Lawrence
  
• "Little Willy," by Sweet
  
• "Half Breed," by Cher
  
• "Wildflower," by Skylark
  
• "The Morning After," by Maureen McGovern
  
• "Diamond Girl," by Seals and Crofts
  
• "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," by Bette Midler
• "Funny Face," by Donna Fargo
  
• "The Twelth Of Never," by Donny Osmond
  

And some people think waterboarding is torture. Poor Benny. He says it wasn't until he went away to college that his musical horizons broadened. He became infatuated with Jimi Hendrix, among many others. Now, I can take Jimi Hendrix or leave him (well, to tell the truth, I'll leave him, period) but that's a matter of taste. At least he turned a youthful Benny Jay away from Tony Orlando and Dawn.

Our conversation got back to that first concert I'd attended. My pal Whitey and I took the No. 72 North Avenue bus from its western terminus at Narragansett Avenue seven miles east to Halsted Street, where we picked up the No. 8 bus and headed south another 57 blocks to Bridgeport and the Amphitheater. The ride took a good two-and-a-half hours but we both loved War. The song, "The World Is A Ghetto," was a brilliant, haunting, 10-minute-long masterpiece. Whenever it came on the radio (by this time, I'd become an habitual WGLD listener - the low-watt Oak Park station that later gave way to WXRT) I became lost in it, cranking the volume up to Nigel Tufnel's mythical 11. A bomb could have gone off next to me but I'd take no notice.

Neither Whitey nor I were familiar with Parliament but by the time its opening set was finished, we'd become diehard fans. Since we were a couple of half-broke Northwest Side teenagers, we could only afford cheap seats. We sat somewhere near the upper boundary of the troposphere and viewed the proceedings through a dense haze of legal and illegal smoke. We got back home to Galewood around 4:00am, proud of ourselves for our sojourn into the big, black inner city.

"How many white people do you think there were at the Amphitheater that night?" Benny asked.

"I'd say two - Whitey and me," I replied.

"So, you were the only two white guys in the whole place, and one of you is named Whitey!" Benny exclaimed, roaring. Then, he added a correction. "Three white guys - you forgot War's harmonica player, Lee Oskar."

I congratulated Benny Jay on his knowledge of War. Thank the gods, dumb luck or modern pharmacology, his listening to Donny Osmond hasn't resulted in brain damage.

Benny Jay: My Time Of Year

It's Daddy Dee who tells me about the concert at Martyrs. He says he's singing with Tributosaurus, this cover band that sings the songs of the legends, and on this particular night they're singing War.

For a minute I think I'm not going cause it's raining, number one; and, number two, I don't want to play the part of the old timer gathering with other old timers to sing old songs from the past.

But forget that. I am old -- no use sitting at home about it. And I love War. Always have. Always will. Plus, my wife got me this new umbrella -- cherry red and everything -- which covers up the whole sidewalk, it's so big.

So my wife and I go. And they knock us out. There must be ten guys in the band, including a horn section, a keyboardist, a bass player, a drummer and a percussionist. One of the singers is a big feller named Matt Spiegel, who's deceptively nimble. Moves like a cat. Reminds me of Nathan Lane. And he's got almost operatic range -- he really sounds like the singer in War. The trumpet player is, of all people, Mike Cichowicz, who happens to be the older brother of The Tit, the kid who snuck me into see "The Godfather" about, oh, two billion light years ago. And the coolest of the cool is the guitar player, who sits on his stool and barely blinks an eye. Daddy Dee calls him Big D, but I think of him as Baby Buddha cause he radiates a peaceful kind of mellow.

Daddy Dee and Matt are trading solos, singing every song in the book -- "Spill the Wind," "The World is a Ghetto," "Why Can't We Be Friends" and so on. I'm on the dance floor, not so much dancing as tapping my umbrella to the beat. Got a couple of beer-bellied old timers in Hawaiian shirts standing behind me. They know every word and they're singing along, bringing back phrases I haven't thought about in years: "Let's have a picnic go to the park, rollin' in the grass `til long after dark...."

The band does an off-the-charts version of "Slippin' Into Darkness." In my mind, it's the summer of `78 and we're down by the boathouse on the North Avenue beach around midnight. Some one's passing the wine and the weed -- must be two dozen people crowded around a boom box that's playing this song. A police car cruises up and everyone scatters cause it's after curfew. I run all the way to Fullerton and double back after the police car's gone. Every one's returned. Got the song playing right where we left it -- "Slippin' into darkness, takes my mind beyond the trees." Didn't miss a beat....

The band moves into "Summer," one of my all-time all times. Now I'm singing with the boys in the Hawaiian shirts: "Ridin' round town with all the windows down, eight track playin' all your fav'rit songs...."

The concert ends and we head outside, walking down Lincoln Avenue in the dead of night. Rain's stopped. Clouds gone. Seems warmer. I take off my jacket. A cool breeze strokes my arm. I'm tapping my umbrella against the ground like it's a cane. Feeling all sprightly -- like Fred Astaire. Summer's coming. I can feel it. Gonna ride my bike up and down the lakefront. Check out the outdoor concerts in Grant Park. Dance under the stars `n everything. From the corner of my mind the refrain returns: "Yes, it's summer, summer time is here/yes, it's summer, my time of year...."

Big Mike: I'll Kiss You On The Strikes And You Kiss Me On The...

Friday was a very special sports anniversary. On March 6th, 1973, New York Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich announced to the world that they'd swapped families. Yep, wives, kids, and - as every news report was obliged to mention - even dogs.

How weird were the 1970s? I grew up in the era. As a 17-year-old in 1973, I concluded that sex of every stripe and variety was my birthright. And that wasn't just because my glands were pumping out male hormones like a kegger on St. Patrick's Day but because I'd taken a look around and seen my fellow citizens humping like toy poodles.

I also was a relatively well-read kid so I kept up with every advancement made by one oppressed minority or another. This new era thrilled me. Blacks were slowly but surely gaining rights and opportunities. Women were standing up. Gays and lesbians were peeking out of the closet.

I wanted in on the party so I searched for the ugly brutality that had been keeping me down. I longed to thrust my first in the air and declare death to The Man. Unfortunately, I was a white male growing up in a middle class family in a comfortable bungalow. There wasn't a right or privilege envisioned by Jefferson or Douglas or Freidan or even Abbie Hoffman (my idol - I insisted my friends call me Abbie) that I did not already possess. I was in no position to fight The Man; I was only a couple of years away from becoming The Man.

But I was a clever revolutionary tyro. Why, I'd simply become a member of an oppressed class, like magic! So I pondered who I should become. I had a beard worthy of the Smith Bros. so telling people I was a woman was out. My hair was kinky (my grade school nickname was Nigger Hair) and I became rather dark in the summer but I realized few would believe my ancestors came from the Ivory Coast. Then it hit me.

I'd discovered Woody Allen's movies around that time. He not only talked openly about being a Jew but he elevated Jewishness to an art form. And, yeah, I had the kinky hair. That's it - I'm a Jew!

The fellows at my Roman Catholic high school were immediately skeptical when I adopted a trace of a New York accent and interspersed my conversation with Yiddishisms. One Friday in the lunchroom, my pal Bronson (who'd taken his nickname from the motorcycle-riding drifter in the television show "Then Came Bronson") ran up and told me he'd gotten tickets to see the bands War and Parliament at the old International Amphitheater that night.

"Let's go, Abbie," he gushed. "It's gonna be dynamite!"

"Oy," I moaned. "If only I could. Such a drive! And the noise! You want I should have a headache for the next three days?"

"Abbie," Bronson said firmly, "you're not a Jew."

My face turned red. After a beat, I admitted in a low voice, "I know." Thus ended my flirtation with the tribe of Abraham.

Next, I decided to become gay. Well, not in practice, for god's sake. Only in my public pronouncements. And not fully gay either. My pals and I were sitting on a bench in Amundsen Park, palming a joint, when I blurted an announcement. "I gotta move down by the lake," I said, trying to keep the toke down. "Gotta be around my own kind. I'm bi."

This statement was met with less than rousing enthusiasm. In fact, later that night, Fat Marc, the toughest guy in the neighborhood and heretofore one of my best friends, blackened both my eyes.

Finally I concluded I was sexually oppressed. Heterosexually oppressed, that is. After all, I thought about the subject night and day yet I was no nearer to tasting its pleasures than I was to leaping to the top of the new Standard Oil Building. Society was keeping me down, man! This sick, repressive, puritanical country was denying me my basic right to ecstasy. I was ready to take to the streets.

No matter that I was a gawky, pimply-faced dweeb with moves that would have made Julius Kelp look like George Clooney. That wasn't keeping me chaste. It was The Man.

Even though I had all the zeal of a newly converted revolutionary, I still couldn't get laid. But I talked a great game. I announced that I planned to have sex with as many human beings as possible. I'd do it in beds, on kitchen countertops, in parks, on sunlit hills, in misty forests, in luxury hotels, in confessionals, in the soup aisle, and in the bleachers.

Especially in the bleachers. It would combine the two loves of my life - baseball and sex. I might be assumed into heaven had I the opportunity to display my swordsmanship under a blanket in the sparsely populated centerfield bleachers. Heck, the camera might even catch me at work and Jack Brickhouse might say, enviously, "Now there's a young man who knows what he's doing!"

It was at this time I read about Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich. They and their wives had attended a wife-swapping party one night and gotten into the spirit of things. Next thing they knew, each had fallen in love with the other's mate and vice versa. Soon, the moving vans were on the way.

Sportswriters and other establishment types had apoplexy. The world, they predicted, was about to spin wildly out of its orbit. I loved it. Peterson and Kekich became my favorite baseball players.

They knew how to stick it to The Man.