I suspect that only Mavis Staples could close out the 29th Annual Chicago Blues Festival and turn it into a celebration of hope, faith and spiritual awakening. The blues—along with country, jazz and soul—is one of the only pure art forms in the United States and Chicago is, without a doubt, its northern capital.
Steeped in suffering, despair, abuses of every variety, hard times and heartbreak, the music has always been synonymous with mundane living but with a commonality that anyone can relate to. This isn't to say that it's all a "pretty big downer," as Rocky Horror once said. The blues are also about celebrating, which is exactly where Staples found her groove while infusing this SRO crowd with a solid common man's perspective. Roy Rogers Sr. would have been proud.
In my review of Bobby Conn's Macaroni CD last week, I wrote that Conn is fighting the "good fight" for common decency; Staples is doing the same in her own way. After a round-robin performance by four of Chicago's premier blues women (Melvia "Chick" Rodgers, Jackie Scott, Deitra Farr and Nora Jean Brusco) in homage to the late KoKo Taylor, Staples casually strolled on stage and dug into Jeff Tweedy's "You Are Not Alone," as lilting and engrossing as any recent blues song has a right to be. Then the formality went out the window.
Nodding to Taylor's memory with a ragged and relaxed "Wang Dang Doodle," Staples joked about how Taylor always called her "Mabel," which she could forgive—barely. Reaching back to Pops Staples' "Why Am I Treated So Bad?"—a song the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. insisted the Staples perform during the terrifying early days of the civil-rights movement—allowed Staples to open her arms and embrace all causes. "We got people runnin' around criticizing our president sayin,' 'We're taking the country back," she exhorted. "Back to where? The '50s? The '60s? I'm never going to the back of the bus again..."—which was a statement that everyone could own.
Maybe she referenced the civil-rights movement as a starting point but she embraced all civil-rights causes by pointedly staying unspecific. Staples didn't name-check the LGBT community and she didn't have to; given the recent and ongoing breakthroughs with LGBT rights, "going to the back of the bus" or going back in the closet are no longer options.
At this point it's difficult to get a fix on Jonathan Richman without laughing. Credited as the creator of punk rock with his band, The Modern Lovers, through its debut album and its single, "Roadrunner," Richman watched two members of that band (Jerry Harrison with Talking Heads and David Robinson with The Cars) go onto huge success while he remained a cult figure. Oddly enough, obscurity didn't happen even with the lack of radio play, huge album sales and media recognition. So many artists have name-checked him as their mentor for so long (Joan Jett, Iggy Pop, John Cale, Weezer, Alex White and Brandon Flowers among them) that his name couldn't be forgotten while The Modern Lovers is still recognized as one of the only bands that matter.
"Roadrunner" is still recognized as the recording that took rock 'n' roll out of the hands of corporations and into the clutches of hundreds of garage bands in hundreds of garages in hundreds of cities. The real twist came with the Farrelly Brothers surprise hit movie There's Something About Mary (1998), which not only made Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller stars but did the same for Richman—by presenting him as an off-kilter Greek chorus who kept popping up throughout the movie. (The final joke had him being assassinated.) It's a funny history insofar as rock stars go, but one that is absolutely fitting.
Now at the spry age of 60, Richman hardly seems like a punker but quite the opposite; a sweet puppy dog of a charmer graced with buoyancy, joy and a slightly snarky humor. The man and his cracked vibrato are so sincere that he left no doubt that he would not leave the stage of the Pritzker Pavilion until every single audience member was entertained.
Yes, there were songs of such aching emotional honesty that they nearly brought this crowd to tears ("I Should Have Been Kinder"), and there were songs that were just plain goofy ("Keith Richards") as well as rambling, highly entertaining introductions of songs that gave them far more heft. ("When I was in high school I was such a brat/I should have been bullied more than I was" was the lead-in to "Bohemia.") And, yes, Richman would spontaneously put down his guitar mid-song and break into a dance like a lazy puppet. Also, he did close the show with "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar," which yanked half the audience out of their seats and had them dancing madly in the aisle—much to the frustration of security. Lastly, he gave two encores and made it clear that he loved giving joy just as much as his audience enjoyed receiving it.
After these two shows presented by the City of Chicago I have to hand it to some of the people behind the scenes; Mary May, Bruce Kellner, Cindy Gatziolis and Alex McIntire. The mayor may have received a mixed reaction when he took the stage at the Blues Festival but there's no question that the crew working behind the scenes knows how to throw a swell summer party.
