A week or so ago I went to see The Dark Knight and subsequently found myself a little bit homesick for Chicago. The opening sequence includes numerous recognizable shots of iconic Loop buildings. Throughout the film, a knowing observer will notice some particularly “Chicago” details. The Berghoff pops up in a few scenes. The Gordons’ “front door” was actually a typical Chicago apartment back porch – it was strange to see callers knocking at the back door and being greeted with a view into a tiny apartment kitchen. I also found it disconcerting to see Marina City clearly through the windows of a Gotham City high rise.
Marina City on the Cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
The twin towers of Marina City are so distinctively Chicago-only landmarks that an attempt to fold them into the backdrop of a fictional New-York-styled crime-opolis feels weird. If anything, the Chicago-ness of The Dark Knight’s look and feel detracted a bit from the film. Sure many of the art deco buildings and details seem Gotham-ish, but the bright, clean streets that are hallmarks of Chicago in the second Daley era don’t exactly seem like the sorts of places that could accidentally lead you to “Crime Alley.” And the extras (in the interest of full disclosure, I was one) – being Chicagoans – radiate an affable midwesterness that seems at odds with life in what should rank as one of the worst cities in the world.
Unlike L.A. with its nightly helicopter-illuminated crime sprees or New York with its legendary toughness and occasional eruptions of outsized movie-grade horror and catastrophe, Chicago is – at least as portrayed in the mainstream media – fairly placid under the new Daley regime. Similarly, Chicago avoided sinking into the dank murk of rust belt squalor like its formerly-industrial sibling Detroit. Political corruption is still a major industry, of course. And gang violence and child murder are a source of constant tragedy. However, the face that Chicago currently presents to the world is mostly one of optimism and orderliness. Madness and horror aren’t really Chicago’s bag any longer. I assume things like the Days of Rage and the on-the-floor madness of the ’68 convention can tucker you out something fierce.
Which, of course, explains a lot about Chicago’s own (by way of Belleville, IL) Wilco – a band that is occasionally hailed as “America’s Radiohead.” Wilco more than any other “major” or “important” band of the last 15 years (that I can think of, at least) has gotten ahead by sheer hard work and overall affability. The documentary I am Trying to Break Your Heart, a public rehab stint, and several bandmate firings have gone a little way towards making Wilco main man Jeff Tweedy seem like a bit of a jag, but even these shenanigans are a far cry from typical naughty rockstar behavior. Wilco – like the town they call home – just doesn’t *do* crazy very well. Even their forays into the pop avant garde with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born are pretty much collections of singer-songwriter tunes appropriately screwed up so as to suggest the proper kinds of left-of-the-dial influences. In short, Wilco tries hard and usually puts together a decent record based on that effort.
Of course a lot of Wilco’s public persona has to with the band doing the “right thing” and working to stand up to the record industry – by purchasing their master tapes from Warner’s Reprise imprint, self-promoting the album via the web and touring, and eventually resigning to another Warner Bros. holding for the album’s official release. The impact of this record industry Rube-Golberg-esque album release schedule is that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot wound up being officially released in April 2002 instead of the originally planned date of September 11, 2001.
Here’s where Yankee Hotel Foxtrot gets weird for me. Initially, folks considered some song titles and lyrics to be seemingly obvious references to the death-from-above shock of 9/11 – especially the title “Ashes of American Flags” and the following lines from “Jesus, Etc.”
9/11 Portents in “Jesus, Etc.”?
Tall buildings shake
Voices escape singing sad, sad songs
…
Voices whine
Skyscrapers are scraping together
Your voice is smoking
Last cigarettes are all you can get
Turning your orbit around
Obviously, given the album’s original release plan, these “obvious” 9/11 references were coincidences written quite some time before the event. Heck, even “War on War” could be seen as an apt title for our country’s inevitable response to the attacks.
Sidebar >> In the post-9/11 madness, many attempts were made to connect everything everywhere to the attacks. Irony was declared dead. Politicians spoke of pre- and post-9/11 mindsets. And rock nerds tried to connect the dots using album art and lyrical references and bandnames – ultimately proving that lots of people were drawn to the idea of making the twin towers of the WTC burn.
The Coup’s Party Music – album art designed in June 2001 for a planned November 2001 release.
Dream Theater’s Live Scenes From New York – originally released on September 11, 2001.
I seem to remember connections made between the events of 9/11/2001 and Dylan’s Love and Theft which came out that same day. A number of my recollections of 9/11 are tied up with trying to find some way to pick up a copy of Love and Theft before everyone headed for the hills. Even in the midst of panic and fear, I had my priorities straight.
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Because of timing and because of prevailing trends in “smart” rock music, Wilco became kind of the house band for the end times – at least in the experience of this then Chicagoan. In many ways the album strikes the perfect tone – the lyrics are either a bit insincere (“I’m the man who loves you.” “I *sincerely* miss those heavy metal bands…) or imagistic, cut-and-paste doomsaying with a bit of whatever mixed in to lighten the mood. Musically, ambient skitterings and whoosings cut uneasily in and out of the mix – not so much to disorient the listener but to suggest uneasiness. Wilco made the sort of serious pop music that seemed appropriate for seemingly serious times.
Another reason why Wilco is so tied up in my memories of the beginning of this new horror is because the first out-in-public thing I had a chance to do after 9/11 was hitting the Abbey Pub on 9/15 for a show with Wilco acting as Scott McCaughey’s Minus 5. (Remember lots of things were cancelled right after 9/11, and many folks stayed in for days after the happening, watching and rewatching it on the endless cruelty loop of mandatory 24-hour news.) The McCaughey and Wilco showcased material they had recorded earlier that week for the Down with Wilco album.
Following the Minus 5’s set, Wilco came out as themselves to run through a blistering set that included the bulk of YHF. It was the beginning of Wilco’s exile on the road while their album languished without an official release. I think I saw Wilco three or four times between Fall 2001 and Fall 2002. They seemed to play Chicago constantly. During these shows they shed some of their bar room everyband-ness and took on some of the snoozy, arty airs that came to full flower with A Ghost is Born.
In a way, Wilco was the band that was there as I came to terms with the new weirdness that equals America in the aughts. Their Chicago-flavored normalness made sense to me as a normal Chicagoan. The Marina City towers on the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot provided a sense of place – specifically sense of a place where iconic towers still stood against the new normalcy of a somber beige sky.
The Dark Knight made me miss Chicago just because it beautifully showcased so many of the city’s most recognizable features. Still, given that Nolan’s new Batman films are obviously about fear, madness, vengeance, and escalation in the face of terrorism – even the Wall Street Journal thinks so (har!) – I’m not sure if Chicago is the right “Gotham” for these stories. While Washington strutted about as an imperial capital has to and New York crawled up inside of itself to mourn whilst reassuring itself that it was the center of everything, Chicago just kind of kept on choogling – sad and bemused and stunned. Terrorism made Chicago seem peripheral, not big enough to be a target. Pretty soon, terrorism simply became a convenient excuse for the same old political trickery. No great battles between order and madness played out in the streets – nothing as big as Batman v. Joker that’s for sure.
Chicago during the first days of the long, scary future – I remember it more like “hiding out in the big city blinking.”
