CHICAGO, IL – I grab a cab on Michigan avenue and head south
to some place called Reggie’s Rock Club. I heard good things about it but I
never been there. It’s around 10 pm and I have no clue where this place is. The
cab driver assures me he’s been there before as he drives to the South Side of
Chicago. I don’t know how south we are but I am concerned. A lot of bad stuff
happens down there but it’s a Sunday night so I give myself a pretty good shot
that I’ll turn out okay. We get to the place and I trust the guy so I pay him
and hop out of the cab and I find out he took me to the wrong freaking place. I
walked into a Hip Hop club but the girls who run the joint are nice and tell me
that it is actually one block over.
The neighborhood is a little rough looking but I try not to
let it bother me. I see a bunch of rough
looking punks in the doorway and I know I am in good company. I am not looking
too scrappy tonight but if you line us all up you can tell I belong with them.
I reach in my pocket to pull out my ticket and hand it to the head door guy and
he is waiting for it. But before I can complete the action of handing over my
ticket the front door blows open and I see this hippie guy throwing his arms
and legs around being pushed out by a bouncer. The unruly guest is shoved and
is airborne and lands on the sidewalk and I hear, “GOODNIGHT !!”. That’s the Chicago I remember. I try not to let it bother me but in the back of my mind I’m
thinking, “I gotta walk in there?”.
I hand off my ticket and I am back in the rock and roll fast
lane once again. I’ve gotta say that it’s a rush. Tonight we are going to be
witnessing one of the first UK punk bands from 1976 hit the stage. This is
Manchester’s own, Slaughter and the Dogs. I collected a lot of their early work
on vinyl and have been listening to them for years. They don’t really tour very
often if at all. If they do tour I have never really heard about it so I am
glad I made the trek all the way from Detroit just to see them play.
The name Slaughter and the Dogs barely raises more than a
few eyebrows to most people. They existed in a very tiny but influential window
of pop music. Slaughter was part of the original UK punk movement and came from
the scene that brought us Joy Division, John C Clarke, The Buzzcocks, Magazine
and The Fall. During those wild and crazy days they even opened for the Sex
Pistols.
I discovered them on a little known vinyl pressing called, “Live
at the Roxy WC2” that I picked up at Wazoo Records in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That
was a curious album that captured the hot acts at that time including Slaughter
and the Dogs, Eater, Buzzcocks, Wire, and others. It was so obscure that I didn’t
even think anyone else had ever heard of it. Lead singer Wayne Barrett made a
reference to it during the performance.
The crowd danced spasmodically to, “Boston Babies”, “Where
Have All The Boot Boy Gone?”, and “Bitch”. People continued to fight with the
bouncers and even with one another. I stood off to the side not looking to get
bounced around or bounced out. It was one of those moments where I was just
glad to be in the same room. This band could really work the crowd and they
were incredibly ferocious. They put on a much better show than I expected.
Wayne Barrett came out on stage wearing sunglasses and a pork pie hat like he
was Jake Blues, (John Belushi) from the Blues Brothers. He jumped around fast
on stage and sang like an off duty police captain. Above his head were sound
guys or light techs or something in steel metal cages over the stage. It kind
of looked like a prison and reminded me of the final scene in the, “Blues
Brothers” movie when the cast rocked out to Jailhouse Rock. I was trying to put
two and two together while drinking an IPA Ska beer called, Skamodo. That’s
when it suddenly came to me that the lead singer here could be making fun of us
Chicago guys or maybe he was just getting into the spirit of the town – who knows?
I like to think it was the later because at the end there was a drunken sing-a-long
to, “Cranked Up Really High”.
The club is fairly new. Reggie’s Rock Club has been around
since 2007. I was walking around the place and noticed metal staircases leading
up to the loft where I found recliners and couches. You could catch the entire
show from up there and see everything. That’s when it struck me that this place
used to be a garage or some kind of auto business. When I later checked into it
I found out this place used to be an auto bumper repair shop.
To the right of me I could see this giant green tapestry
with Wesley Willis’s face on it. He is the patron saint of insanity in Chicago and he used to live down the street from me pushing a shopping cart screaming
at the top of his lungs. He’s passed on now. To the left of me I could make out
a giant Bob Marley tapestry and he balanced out Wesley’s banner with common
sense of humanity. Ying and yang.
There is a Tshirt shop too downstairs which was closed when
I was there but it looked pretty impressive. There was even one shirt that
read, “I got thrown out of Reggie’s” which I found pretty fitting.
One last note Slaughter and the Dogs even did an homage to
the Velvet Underground during the show. Everyone is doing that now. I am
running into a lot of bands who are doing live Velvet Underground songs during
their sets and I’m not complaining because I find them very compelling.
Okay, there is no official set list on the web so I am going
to post one from a previous show. If you see something out of line here let me
know so I can fix it. This is what the show was like from the best I can
recall.
- I Got Your
Number
- Who Are the
Mystery Girls? (New York
Dolls cover)
- The Bitch
- You're a
Bore
- Hell in New
York
- We Don't
Care
- Victims of
the Vampire
- Boston
Babies
- Dame to
Blame
- I'm Waiting
for the Man (Lou Reed cover)
- I'm Mad
- Situations
- Quick Joey
Small (Run Joey Run) (Kasenetz-Katz
Super Circus cover)
- Where Have
All the Boot Boys Gone
15.
Encore:
- White
Light/White Heat (Lou Reed cover)
- Cranked Up
Really High
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