Music Space And Place

[Mirtha Shikles]

MusicSpace and Place examines the urban and rural spaces in which music is experienced, produced and consumed. The editors of this collection have brought together new and exciting perspectives by international researchers and scholars working in the field of popular music studies. Underpinning all of the contributions is the recognition that musical processes take place within a particular space and place, where these processes are shaped both by specific musical practices and by the pressures and dynamics of political and economic circumstances. Important discourses are explored concerning national culture and identity, as well as how identity is constructed through the exchanges that occur between displaced peoples of the world's many diasporas. Music helps to articulate a shared sense of community among these dispersed people, carving out spaces of freedom which are integral to personal and group consciousness. A specific focal point is the rap and hip hop music that has contributed towards a particular sense of identity as indigenous resistance vernaculars for otherwise socially marginalized minorities in Cuba, France, Italy, New Zealand and South Africa. New research is also presented on the authorial presence in production within the domain of the commercially driven Anglo-American music industry. The issue of authorship and creativity is tackled alongside matters relating to the production of musical texts themselves, and demonstrates the gender politics in pop. Underlying Music, Space and Place, is the question of how the disciplines informing popular music studies - sociology, musicology, cultural studies, media studies and feminism - have developed within a changing intellectual climate. The book therefore covers a wide range of subject matter in relation to space and place, including community and identity, gender, race, 'vernaculars', power, performance and production.

Jump forward to 1991, and the Civic was getting a tune-up before becoming the official home of the Cabrillo Music Festival! From 1963-1988 the Festival was held in a variety of locations, but after the occurrence of the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the city engaged in efforts to improve downtown facilities and it became important to incorporate the Festival in these efforts by centering it downtown and giving it a permanent space.

Now, in 2019, the Civic Auditorium continues to transform. The Friends of the Civic Auditorium are advocating for a renovation of the facility, so as to bring modern systems, new safety measures and a higher level of comfort to the historic building. It makes sense that as the performances that occur inside the Civic change with the times, so should the building itself.

Cabrillo Festival takes place on the unceded territory of the Awaswas-speaking Uypi Tribe. Comprised of the descendants of indigenous people taken to missions Santa Cruz and San Juan Bautista during Spanish colonization of the Central Coast, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band is currently working to restore traditional stewardship practices on these lands and to heal from historical trauma.

Space Place was a popular punk venue from 1979 to 1983. It was located on 955 W. Fulton - 3 blks. west of Halsted, just north of Lake St. They played all-ages shows every Saturday, which was $3 for three bands and BYOB. It was also a place where bands could rehearse, record or rent out equipment. Space Place was a total community effort and was officially a non-profit organization. The biggest names to play Space Place were Bauhaus and Black Flag.

Space Place was located at 955 W. Fulton Market at Morgan on the Fulton fish market. Down the street, one of the meat packers had a warning sign over the sidewalk 'Watch Out For Swinging Beef'. We appropriated that both as a warning and a motto.

The joint was primarily organized by Rachael Cain (Screamin' Rachel of Screamin' Rachel & Remote) and my brother Mike Harrington who were dating at the time. Mike primarily handled booking the bands and shows. I lived in the joint to provide 24 hour security and 24 hour load in/out and ran the day to day operations. I also was the stage manager and ran sound for bands who didn't have their own sound man. John Connors, the guitarist for the Problem Dogs, was officially the Treasurer and also ran the lights. Of course, that only touches the tip of the surface as there were about a hundred people who had a major hand in, not counting the bands. I'll try to run a full name check in another post. Space Place became one of those fabulously synergistic things where everybody was working together to create something bigger than the parts could generate by themselves. Personally, I think the Space Place influence was felt far beyond the joint itself, and maybe it's just hubris but I think that that concentration of MADNESS & ENERGY (to quote Mark Mayer) was the driving force behind the explosion of the whole Chicago scene in 79 to 82.

Part of the building had been an old cold storage warehouse, some with foot thick insulated walls. We partitioned off a lot of the rooms so you could have 20 bands rehearsing at the same time without disturbing each other. Most bands rented private rooms by the month and could set them up the way they wanted and have their friends and fans hang out as needed. We also had a day room for spot rehearsals and bands could rent the show room to work out full blown staging with lights and PA and all.

Eventually, we started doing shows - usually on Saturday nights. We weren't in the liquor distribution business, so all shows were all ages. We had an excellent entertainment lawyer - Jay 'Sue The Bastards' Ross, and he got us legally organized as a 501c3 not-for profit corporation and private club. As a private club, members of legal age could bring their own refreshments. We may have sold pops or something. But basically we were able to do all ages shows and people could still get ripped if they needed to. In order to attend the show, you first had to become a member of the private club, which is why we issued the Membership card that MKB has posted elsewhere on this fabulous site. If you were over 21, we marked your card and you could bring liquor in. If you weren't, basically you found somebody else to bring it in for you (which is how it actually worked out).

We suffered a couple of minor busts, and then one huge one by the Department of Criminal Housing (they were expecting some sort of gang headquarters) that basically shut down the show room and forced us to start doing shows at 112 N. Green. All in all, and looking back from a more mature and responsible viewpoint, it was notihing short of a miracle that we didn't have a E2-type disaster at one of the shows. The concert room was on the third floor of the joint, accessible only by a single narrow winding stairway, and the fire escapes were working buit hideously out of repair. The freight elevator had previously been dismantled by scavengers and was stuck on the third flloor, so bands had to heft the gear up to the showroom and back. There were only 2 toilets in the joint, and we had to constantly patrol to make sure that they didn't revert to primitiveness. We reserved the nicer one on the first floor for the ladies.

When we had a particularly great show, you could feel the floor of the concert room start bouncing up and down - the joint was literally rocking. For the Bauhaus show, the place was hidously oversold and when they busted into 'Telegram Sam' I was sure that we were all going to wind up in a pile of bricks in the basement...

Probably the most well-remembered shows we did were the Bauhaus show (3/7/81) and two Black Flag shows. We were punk in the sense that the whole thing was DIY and tended to be louder faster, but we featured all kinds of music at the shows. We had a lotta lotta punk shows, but we also had heavy metal, new wave, soul, blues, and plain crazy shit like ST2W or the Guyettes who had everybody dancing with an 'electric purse', or a wack band called 'Huh?' from Madison or Racine who came out dressed like cavemen (and cavelady) and did their first song just beating beating beating on big rocks. I don't know. We put on a 'New-wave musical,' Starstruck, and we hosted shows by Mike Flores and the Psychotronic Film society. Our normal presentation was to have a known, usually local opening act at 10, either one of the bigger local acts or a national act if we could book somebody interesting for the mainliner and then a closing act either a Space Place band (one of the bands that rehearsed there) or another band doing their first show or whatever to close out. Usually the shows would go to 3 am or so but many the times I remember rocking till dawn. Early raves if you will.

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