Various Artists Whodunit: Chicago Knows Who (No Cigar)
They had a good thing going, with their own sound, lighting, and technical crew, not to mention all the freshman girls they could wish for. But Durante wanted to play punk–in fact, he’d recruited the like-minded Lescher hoping to force the issue with the rest of the band. Eventually Lescher and Durante quit to form the Next Big Thing, which soldiered on until 1983 but never really found an audience. “Chicago was really a difficult place to start, because there wasn’t anything going on as far as punk went,” says Lescher. “It was a handful of seamy, underside people and two or three clubs. No record stores were really up on it; Wax Trax would be the only one that was even close.” After five years he still hadn’t finished his degree, and decided that to concentrate on school he needed to drop out of music.
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Ziegler was an immediate convert. “Because we were all into dancing,” he explains. “That was the whole point, instead of going to parties and getting drunk and that was about it–life in the suburbs. We were enthralled with the city, and doing things that were a little more constructive.” Callahan and Ziegler studied magazine pieces about the LA mod scene and the book Mods, a photojournalist’s document of the British movement. “We used to get our suits mail order from Carnaby Street. They were the cheapest things you’d ever see: they were 90 bucks. You’d open it up and it was the worst-fitting thing. I’d take it to a tailor and he’s like, ‘There’s nothing I can do with this.’ But you’d wear it anyway, because what are you going to do, send it back?”
One of the kids who made that initial pilgrimage to Hemenway was John Manion, a high school senior from Calumet City who’d seen a poster with a target on it and decided to check out the Slugs. He arrived just as the band was packing up, but Ziegler welcomed him and the two hit it off immediately. While Ziegler was more interested in the social dimension, Manion was a mod for the music. He’d been working in a record store for three years, exploring punk, new wave, and especially ska. “Anytime something came in that looked interesting or different, I would pick it up,” Manion remembers. Liner notes to ska records frequently included thanks to other bands; Manion followed the thread from the Specials to Selecter to the English Beat to Madness. “It’s sort of strange,” he says. “I went through listening to that and never realizing that there was any kind of correlation between ska music and mods.”
The Slugs, propelled by Halston’s driving beat and Dag Juhlin’s raw pop tunes, became the mods’ favorite. Like the Who, the Slugs never considered themselves mods, but they nonetheless covered the Who’s “Substitute,” the Clash’s “Police on My Back,” the Kinks’ “David Watts,” and the Specials’ “Rat Race.” Sixties psychedelia hit the target as well: Ashes of Them featured Baird Figi, who went on to play guitar for Eleventh Dream Day, and Saint Paul’s the Dig was fronted by Ed Ackerson, who now fronts Polara. From Champaign came the Outnumbered, whose paisley-clad, mop-topped guitarist Jon Ginoli later leapt out of the closet with Pansy Division. Rude Guest and Mark Callahan’s band the Ska-Tones were the resident syncopators. Reaction Formation played campy power pop, 007 served up Ventures-style instrumentals, and Ricky and the Croatians added a dash of rockabilly. But after the Slugs, the two most popular bands were Jeff Lescher’s new project, Green, and the elaborate soul revue I Spy.
Meanwhile, Ziegler’s ambition was growing. He finagled an appointment with Joe Shanahan, owner of the Metro, then showed up at the club with an entourage of suited mods. Figuring he had nothing to lose, Shanahan gave Ziegler a Sunday night. “I think they knew Sue Miller, knew what we were doing,” says Ziegler. “And I think they really liked the mod scene. It wasn’t a bunch of guys in leather jackets kicking and punching each other. These were guys in suits coming to talk to you, with ties on. How can you say no? They must know what they’re doing–they’re dressed for success! But our suits were 20 years old.”
John Manion took Ziegler’s defection personally. A series of petty arguments drove the friends apart, and as the north and south factions separated, the mod scene began to disintegrate. After not seeing Ziegler for about five months, Manion ran into him at a bar. “He was wearing a Polo sweater and boat shoes. I was wearing a leather jacket, wearing all black like this band the Music Machine. Black turtleneck, black pants, black Beatle boots, black leather jacket, and one black leather glove. He probably thought, ‘What a freak!’ And I thought, ‘What a freak!’”
