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Someone Else's Chicago
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Los Globos looks like it will be going strong straight through to closing time, but the Polkaholics are playing a gig at a North Side rock club, the Bottom Lounge. When I arrive, the band is holding forth in front of an enthusiastic crowd of 100 or so, most of them at least semi-hip, younger than the Club 505 crowd, and older than the dancers at Los Globos. Some polka expertly, some inexpertly; others just do your basic rock-club nod-and-bop; most of them are smiling. Hedeker produces an impressive roar from his guitar by rubbing the strings on the head of a fan who has approached the stage for that purpose. A lot of beer has been spilled on the floor.
The Polkaholics, sweating like stevedores, are in fine ironic form, decked out in white shoes, black pants, white ruffled shirts and stunning leopard-print vests with matching oversize bow ties. All wear thick-framed glasses, and anyone standing anywhere near the stage can smell the torrent of Old Spice with which they douse themselves, Method actor-style, before a show. They do not play polka versions of rock tunes, an ill-advised crossover strategy that has produced far too many bizarre novelty songs by polka bands. Rather, they play original songs and well-chosen polka covers that make use of rock sensibilities, winkingly sampled classic-rock phrases, and bursts of the jet-engine guitar whine common to certain forms of punk and heavy metal -- all undergirded by drums and bass playing straight-ahead, hurry-up polka rhythms. Hedeker handles the vocals with cheerful inattention to niceties of pitch; the other Polkaholics occasionally join in for a chorus in heroic beer hall unison. The hits keep coming: "Wild and Crazy Polka Fans," "She's Too Smart for Me," the thunderous "Kiss My Polka" ("I wanna polka all night and eat kishka e-ver-y day!"), "Stopped for a Beer," "Cleveland, the Polka Town." The finale, "Polka Can't Die," is both a heartfelt plea and a sendup of a formula especially widespread in country music and rap: the anthem in defense of its own genre.
At one point Hedeker harangues the crowd about guitars and accordions. He explains that Frankie Yankovic popularized the notion that polka means accordions. "The Cleveland style often requires two accordions," he says, a gigantic mock sneer spreading across his face and voice, "and that's two too many. You don't need an accordion to polka!" Then he throws a fist in the air and launches into the signature riff of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla," which serves as the opening of a catchy little polka titled "Gamera of Gladstone Park."
I am back in guitar-land. My night on the town, my accordion-seeking weekend in somebody else's Chicago, has ended in a no-accordion zone. And I have returned lakeward, toward the circuit of neighborhoods and music venues that constitute the path of least resistance within Chicago's musical nightlife. But coming the long way around to get here, through parts of the city and musical scenes utterly new to me, seems to have refreshingly reversed my musical polarity: The Polkaholics' hokiest blues-rock riffs and guitar-hero moves now strike me as beguilingly strange in this context, while my 36 hours in polka-land have made their Frankie Yankovic covers and waltzes feel reassuringly familiar. In the city's thrift shops and its inland neighborhoods, where Eastern European and Mexican traditions sustain old forms and produce new ones, Hedeker found his blues. He believes that polka can be flexible and fertile roots music in the way that Chicago blues used to be, generating new styles and not just preserving familiar formulas. There may be no accordion onstage at the Bottom Lounge, but Hedeker and his bandmates had to make a long journey through multiple Chicagos echoing with accordion music in order to get here. Me, too, and that's a weekend well spent.
Sunday morning, driving out to O'Hare just as polka people are waking up and beginning to ready themselves for their big day of partying, I pick out the Eastern European-language stations and Spanish-language stations on the AM dial, crowded among the usual news, talk and sports stations. I have to depart from the radio's preset buttons and fiddle with the tuner to find voices speaking Polish or Spanish, and often I can't tell what they are talking about, but every once in a while I hear an accordion in 2/4 time making the music of somebody else's Chicago.
If You Go
It's not always easy to find out about polka events in Chicago. There is no complete, reliable listing (although one is in the works: www.chicagopolka.com). Your best bet is to call likely venues. Start with the
Carlo Rotella last wrote for the Magazine about Linwood Taylor and the Year of the Blues. His most recent book is Cut Time: An Education at the Fights.
