EXTRA: Will Disco Demolition really sell Buona Beef more sandwiches?

Thursday is the day (the night, specifically) that the Chicago White Sox will be using 40-year-old memories of exploding records and running amok on the Comiskey Park turn to try to attract fans to the old ball game.

The game against the New York Yankees is having a t-shirt giveaway -- 10,000 shirts remembering the events of July 12, 1979 when the White Sox bolstered their attendance for a double-header with the Detroit Tigers by letting people into the ballpark for 98 cents IF they brought a disco record to be blown to smithereens.

THE PROMOTION WOUND up being too successful. The anticipated crowd of some 20,000 turned out to be in excess of stadium capacity, with another 20,000 or so people stuck outside trying to figure out a way to sneak in.

And as we all remember, all the burn-outs who wanted to rock 'n' roll all night and rage against the evils of disco music (mostly because they couldn't dance) wound up losing control, storming the field, causing significant damage to the playing field, and have many people to this day ranting and raging about how "stoned" all those kids must have been.

The event is considered something significant in White Sox history -- which is why the team says it went ahead with using the 40-year-old event as a reason to celebrate.

The giveaway

Although I wonder just how many sandwiches Buona Beef (the sponsor of Thursday's event who paid for all the t-shirts being given away) will actually wind up selling as a result of the event?

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Included is a YouTube recording of that ballgame, The 2-hour, 34-minute mark is the key point where the records blow up, while 2-hours, 39 minutes is where the "fans" take over, and where broadcaster Jimmy Piersall starts denouncing the crowd as a batch of followers.

Rolling Stones; older than I am, yet still rockin’ away after all these years

Perhaps this is a tacky joke, but I have to wonder what the fine print says for anybody buying tickets to the Rolling Stones’ upcoming U.S. tour – the one that has them traveling the country come spring and summer, with a Soldier Field stop on June 21.

In fact, Chicago will actually be the final stop on the tour – which creates the potential of a band operating on pure adrenaline. They’re going to have to be outright exhausted by that point in time.

CONSIDERING THAT THE key members of the band that has operated for more than a half-century are aged – rock stars Mick Jagger and Keith Richards both are now 75 years old.

Yet carrying on as though they think they’re still in their early 20s, playing music for the masses and carrying on the image of the late, great bluesman Muddy Waters – whose hit song “Rolling Stone” gave the band their very name.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that at age 53, I’m not capable of the kind of stamina one would need to do such a tour. It kind of astounds me that Richards, of all people, would be capable.

But then again, if someone were willing to pay me the kind of money the Rolling Stones will be getting for these shows, I’d figure a way to get myself up and running so as to do it.

A favorite, particularly the cover

BUT THEN AGAIN, the Rolling Stones seem to be a unique institution, performing those concerts that still draw the kinds of crowds to pack stadiums such as Soldier Field.

Whereas most other rock ‘n’ roll bands of the 1960s who still insist on performing live are reduced to events such as the Ribfest held every summer in suburban Naperville.

Or, like the Buckinghams – the one-time Chicago native band named for the fountain – playing venues such as the Paramount Theater of Asbury Park, N.J. (they really played there back on June 21 of this year).

Although the same purpose was served – allowing aging fans to be able to close their eyes and pretend they’re still youthful. And that with the opening guitar riff of “I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction),” they can pretend it’s still 1964 and that by listening to “the Stones,” they’re making a statement about how much “the Beatles suck!”

TO BE HONEST, though, watching those old video snippets of when the Beatles came to White Sox Park for a pair of concerts back in August of 1965 (just a few days before I was born) makes me think that event was far more significant than any of the Stones’ concerts – since my own quickie research finds they have played here so many times throughout the decades.

The only way the 2019 concert becomes memorable is if, by chance, there is a fatality in the band and the event becomes an informal memorial tribute. A morbid thought that I'm sure no one is rooting for.

But I’m sure the kind of people paying hundreds of dollars to sit in the outer reaches of the Soldier Field seating bowl aren’t going to let anyone deprive them of a musical experience.

And they’re not about to let some snot-nosed 19-year-old punk make rude comments about the Rolling Stones being a batch of geezers. They’re going to enjoy their money.

NOT THAT I have any intention of showing up – mostly because I think it’s impossible to truly capture the essence of what made the Rolling Stones so incredibly unique in musical annals. Time passes us all by, and what we have left are lasting memories.

So that may be the real essence – listening to those Rolling Stones records I have amongst my collection (yes, I did buy the “Blue & Lonesome” compact disc of a couple of years ago). My memories get triggered every time I play a record or disc.

And as far as I’m concerned, I have a personal favorite recording – although not one that would come to many fans’ minds. It’s “2120 S. Michigan Ave.,” the instrumental number on one of their first records meant to be a tribute to the old Chess Records label (which was located at that address).

Which is meant to remind us of the great blues music that once came from that address. Now if Muddy Waters, or any of the great old bluesmen, were to be capable of giving us a concert, THAT might be the concert event worthy of much of the hype the Rolling Stones will try to arouse in coming months.

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A Christian takeover of the Loop?

I remember being a pre-teenaged kid back in the early days of WLUP-FM when it was at its late ‘70s peak – when Steve Dahl was a young smartass rather than his cranky aged self and before he tried turning Comiskey Park into a funeral pyre for bad music.

Back in the days when Lorelei’s lips gave many a 12-year-old boy a wet dream.

AND BACK WHEN “the Loop’s” listenership would have been people inclined to listen to “the Devil’s music” of hard rock ‘n’ roll!

So what should we think of the fact that the radio station formally brought its programming to an end this week, and on Saturday will officially be taken over by a company that desires to turn the 97.9 FM radio frequency into one that broadcasts Christian-themed programming.

Is this The Lord himself trying to purify a radio frequency that the hard-core ideologue fanatics would say for four decades has given Chicago various forms of Satan’s tunes?

Is it truly some sort of bad irony that the station would become Christian? With Dahl himself publicly suggesting that the final tune he thinks should be played on the station before it becomes religious in them is “Highway to Hell.”

AS THOUGH WE really need another playing of AC/DC before the new owners turn it into a sister station of Arlington Heights-based WCLR (The Educational Media Foundation now owns both, along with 342 others across the country)!

Should one of these t-shirts go on exhibit at the Chicago History Museum?

Personally, I think too much is made of this theme. The reality is that the radio business is ever evolving and changing. The fact that the WLUP format and image survived from 1978 to the present means it had a long run.

One much longer than many other radio stations can even dream of having.

For all the crackpots who are eager to say WLUP ultimately failed, I’d say its successes put it at a level that make it an image permanently a part of Chicago. Although I think that now-unemployed broadcaster Mancow Muller overstates his significance when he says he can now go off to broadcast retirement like past Chicago iconic figures like Ray Rayner and Bozo the Clown.

One-time WLUP competitor also now has religious image

ACTUALLY, WHAT THE WLUP situation makes me recall is another hard-rock radio station of my Junior High school years – the old WMET-FM. I can remember being a 13-year-old listening to my fellow students quarrel over which station was better.

WMET ceased to exist in Chicago decades ago. The call letters are now used by a Washington, D.C.-area radio station that is part of the Guadalupe Radio Network.

As in it offers up programming meant to appeal specifically to Catholics. The two rockin’ images of the late ‘70s on the radio are now in the hands of people determined to serve God.

I still remember when I did a stint in college in Washington in the mid-1980s and being shocked to hear the “MET” call letters in the use of the Lord. Even though none of my non-Chicago counterparts in D.C. could appreciate the irony.

From the Beatles to Rush (as in Limbaugh)

I MUST CONFESS to not having actually listened to “The Loop” in years. I don’t doubt the people writing broadcast eulogies who say the station reached its peak in the late ‘70s and failed to adapt to the changing times.

But the idea of “the Loop” going religious isn’t the biggest abomination that could have occurred.

That, in my opinion, occurred many years ago when the one-time “Music Radio” WLS-AM that gave us Top 40 rock ‘n’ roll with its “Silver Dollar Surveys” of the top records decided to become a serious talk radio station.

The concept of Rush (as in Limbaugh, not Geddy Lee) filling the Chicago airwaves’ same frequency that once gave us Larry Lujack (and sidekick ‘Lil’ Tommy Edwards)? That’s more abhorrent than any programming change taking place now at “98 FM.”

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No more rock ‘n’ roll McDonalds? I think Chicago will overcome the loss

Chicago is going to lose something come year’s end that some people seem to regard as a semi-serious tourist attraction. Yet I can’t help but regard the news with nothing more than a yawn.

Soon to be history. But is it really a loss?

I’m referring to the rock ‘n’ roll McDonalds. As in the McDonalds franchise at Clark and Ontario Streets in the River North section of Chicago just north of the Chicago River.

I’M TALKING ABOUT a McDonalds that serves Big Macs and the rest of the junk food menu that one can find at any other McDonalds across the country, or in many parts of the world.

But what made this one different, and is the reason there are people who thought it important to stop off at the place while visiting Chicago, is the wide assortment of rock music memorabilia that was on display – along with other elements of our pop culture such as “pet rocks” (remember that fad), early cellular telephones the size of a brick and 8-track tape players.

Which I’m sure kids who think the world’s content is meant to be downloaded look upon as an aberration, and evidence that their grandparents consumed some seriously-strong illicit substances when they were young.

That particular McDonalds is going to be closed to the public as of Dec. 30 to undergo a significant remodeling as McDonalds turns the place into what they see as their restaurant of the future.

No more Beatles figures under glass

MORE LUXURIOUS SEATING. Kiosks that will allow people to place their own orders rather than talk to some senior citizen who’s supplementing their retirement income with the kind of job they thought they had left behind some five decades ago in life.

But no more of the rock ‘n’ roll décor. For now, the owner of the items plans to put the whole collection in storage. Which I suppose is a step up from the notion that it all belongs in a garbage dumpster somewhere.

In short, this McDonalds will become just a McDonalds – a place to stop off for a fast-food burger or McNuggets (or one of their salads, if you want to fool yourself into thinking fast food can be a nutritious meal). Nothing more to make it an “experience” more thrilling than any that Jimi Hendrix and his band ever gave to their fans.

More pseudo-nostalgia from Chicago's past

Yes, I realize some people who visited Chicago felt compelled to stop there. Perhaps they think there was something about a Quarter Pounder eaten there (other than the higher-than-typical prices charged there, which McDonalds justified on the grounds that it was expensive to maintain such a décor.

BUT I’LL BE honest. I never got the concept.

The rock ‘n’ roll McDonalds was remodeled in 2005, and I honestly have to admit I have yet to see it. I’ve never been there. Since I don’t anticipate the need to go to that particular McDonalds site before the end of December, it appears I’ll never see it.

There has been a rock ‘n’ roll McDonalds since 1983 (the year I graduated high school and was likely foolish enough to think something like this could be "cool"), and I think I once went to it. Seriously, all the displays just struck me as being tacky, and the Quarter Pounder I likely had there wasn’t any different from a McDonalds burger I’ve ever had anywhere.

Was city's namesake band Chicago's best, ...

For those individuals who think they saw something unique, I’d wonder if they also felt compelled to visit the Hard Rock café that used to be a few blocks away. Or the Ed Debevic’s restaurant that gave us a pseudo-50’s era diner experience.

ALMOST AS THOUGH actor Henry Winkler’s “Fonzie” character would come riding up on his motorcycle and tell you to “Sit on it” if you happened to annoy him that day.

Perhaps I’m overly cynical. I ultimately don’t think a McDonalds experience is unique. It’s the ultimate generic experience of Planet Earth. I’m not convinced the new futuristic McDonalds is going to be much better than the experience I’d get if I went to the McDonalds located about a mile from my current humble abode.

... or were Buckinghams better?

Now if you really wanted a dining experience that also fed off pop music, you should have went to the one-time Demon Dogs stand located by the DePaul University campus underneath the Fullerton Avenue “el” train platform. It was run by the one-time managers of the old rock band Chicago, and I always thought the location was appropo considering the band that gave us "25, or 6 to 4" was originally named for the Chicago Transit Authority..

Album covers, music awards and other memorabilia used to adorn the walls and could be enjoyed while munching on a ketchup-less hot dog. It’s certainly more intriguing than all the Elvis stuff that a true fan would rather travel to Graceland to see.

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EXTRA: Chuck Berry just as much a part of 2120 S. Michigan lore as the most hard-core of Chicago bluesmen

Chuck Berry died Saturday. At age 90, it shouldn’t be a shock.

And while he was a St. Louis native who towards the end of his life spent much of his time and talent at "Blueberry Hill," a Missouri nightclub he owned, the honest truth is that Berry is as significant a figure in the whole Chicago music scene’s history as anyone else.

FOR BERRY WAS amongst the musicians who recorded at the one-time Chess Records studios on South Michigan Avenue that is largely remembered because of the cast of hard-core blues musicians who made their bones there.

That record label’s catalogue is still out there, what with MCA continuing to release the old recordings of artists such as Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Howlin’ Wolf and the ladies such as Etta James and Koko Taylor.

But while Chess Records might well have had the blues of black America at its core of operations, the fact that the record label had a crossover such as Berry on its roster was a significant boost to the label’s bottom line.

You could argue that it was the presence of Chuck Berry that helped keep the record label alive as long as it lasted (into the mid-1970s), and that it might well be Berry’s affiliation with the bluesmen that helped enhance their own legacies.

CHESS AND THE many old bluesmen might well be long forgotten and 2120 S. Michigan Ave. might well be nothing more than an obscure reference used by the Rolling Stones to title an early instrumental number they performed on one of their first records.

The fact was that Berry was the showman who helped put the flash in early rock ‘n’ roll, which is why we remember him while other artists such as the Flamingoes and Jimmy Cavallo and the House Rockers (all of whom appeared in the 1959 film “Go, Johnny Go!”) are long forgotten.

And why pop culture references to Berry remain humorous.

Berry appeared as himself in cinema

Remember the old Cheech and Chong gag about how Berry was the true king of rock ‘n’ roll because he went to jail for it? Or how in the film "Back to the Future," character Marvin Berry supposedly called his cousin, Chuck, during that zany guitar performance by actor Michael J. Fox’s “Marty McFly” character – implying that Chuck Berry was taught his style by someone who was actually ripping him off!

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS enjoyed listening to Berry’s guitar playing and thought it a shame that his first “Number One” record was that silly and trivial “My Ding A Ling.” When his solo to “Johnny B. Goode” may well be the ultimate one that any aspiring guitar player tries to rip off for his own.

Personally, I still don’t have it down after all these years of strumming on guitars in my spare time.

And now, Berry is gone. Although the records he created in the Bronzeville neighborhood studios (an era recollected in the 2008 film “Cadillac Man” that even included Berry’s role in the record label’s success) are ones that will continue to live on.

Although the record industry may well be a pitiful shame. Because as it turns out, Berry had been working on a new record album of fresh material – his first new release of the 21^st Century.

Mos Def portrayed Berry in '08 film

IT WON’T MATTER how bad it will be; in fact, I’ll bet it probably will be mediocre. But it likely will sell well, and may well turn out to be one of his highest-selling records ever.

We’re good about paying tribute to people once they die and aren’t capable of appreciating or enjoying the praise. Just like the Chicago Cubs' Ron Santo getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame posthumously.

The conspiracy-theory part of my mind is almost warped enough to suggest that Berry somehow faked his death to help boost his record sales. Except that common sense tells me rock 'n' roll already has enough "Elvis is Still Alive" conspiracies that we don't need tales popping up of Chuck Berry sightings outside a White Castle on the Sout' Side.
 

And on a final note, I'll acknowledge a personal favorite when it comes to Chuck Berry's recordings. For me, one of the pleasures of the Christmas holiday is that I can shamelessly overplay “Merry Christmas, Baby,” one of the few holiday-themed songs that doesn’t become monotonous and that I can hear over and over and over each year.

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