Hyde Park Spring

Reflections upon the Ohio Players, and also matters Proustian.

However in the holy HELL did I miss this? My fave funkateers, broadcast from my one and only alma mater, the University of Chicago. Online entertainment these days is not supposed to be about finding needles in haystacks. The algo is supposed to serve us. And when a cat like me who (1) hoovers up live music on YouTube for hours at a time, at least a little almost every day; (2) worships at the shrine of the Godfather, the Sacred J to the B and reveres the work of His disciples, like Larry Graham, the SOS Band, Morris Day and the Time, and especially the Ohio Players (I probably don’t go a twelvemonth without something of theirs somewhere on social media, and aren’t these platforms, you know, in cahoots?); (3) the concert took place at the University of Chicago, my alma mater, with which I maintain passionate love-hate feelings that only a member of a family can, and have probably watched a ton of YouTube videos on, too—if this video couldn’t find me for ten whole months, the Singularity will never be here.

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I need to know the backstory. Maybe there are clues within the vid, which I haven’t listened through yet (tho’ I can attest to what I witnessed as simply glorious); the situation is just so strange that I was compelled to interrupt tha’ funk type through my astonishment instead.

The Midnight Special, hosted by the one and only Wolfman Jack (wtf was that about? try to explain his celebrity to the kids, not to mention the world of “border blaster” pirate radio he came out of), was a very hip live weekly concert broadcast, competing with Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. (A little before my time, when bliss it must have been to be young and musically alive. But that’s what YouTube is for. We can Tardis back into it on our own, at will.)

And the University of Chicago is…well.

To that subject we shall soon return in depth, because, for this and the next five weeks, I’m staying at a friend’s apartment in the U of C’s neighborhood, Hyde Park, a classic kind of U of C people apartment, finding my experience bursting at the scenes to write about. But, for our present purposes, long story short: the University of Chicago is a cerebral place. My friends’ apartment has, roughly, 5,000 books. A famous t-shirt available for sale in my college days read, “The University of Chicago: Where Fun Goes to Die.” Another: “Hell Does Freeze Over. Not exactly a “party school.” Not exactly shake your booty kind of school.

So what genius decided this was the place to film live concert TV?

Except: the university’s uniquely melodramatic town/gown story suggests an angle on the mystery. Here is a university neighborhood bordered by two other neighborhoods that because of the particular virulence with which the City of Chicago practiced America’s native form of apartheid are entirely poor and Black; and with an administration that has run the university’s neighborhood in a manner intended keep these outsiders at bay with a ruthless that could at times resemble the Kremlin’s, including in its economic planning. (Yes: the “Chicago School of Economics” was invented in a neighorbood with nearly a Soviet-style planned economy. Only while living in the place protected from the risks of of actual economic liberty, could they build their comic-book fantasies about “freedom” with straight faces.)

So I wonder: maybe there was some Prague Spring–like moment of Greenwood Avenue Glasnost, a brief shining moment during the Ford Administration when the Commisars Lords of Ellis Avenue suddenly decided to offer a truce, to let their hair down and let in of Hyde Park, all of it; and also Woodlawn, Kenwood, and points south and west as well, all the way unto the Wild Hundreds, and even Austin and Engelwood!—let them all inside the sacred gates to stomp it out to the funkiest band ever to funk on planet earth, THE OHIO FRICKIN’ PLAYERS?!?!?!?

(if you know, you know.)

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Maybe I should wrangle an assignment from alumni magazine to track down the story. Meanwhile, put on your jammies, roll up the rug, and get get ready for a seventy-seven minute shot of best possible anti-fascist medicine available. Sugarfoot is especially on point. (Adding that alert readers will note this is the second double-neck guitar reference of this publication’s nine-day history.)