Larry Ribs’s guitar is a work of art. The Fender Jazzmaster was new when he bought it in 1965, but after three years of abuse in south-side juke joints and Rush Street bars it was already beat to hell. A girlfriend took him to a theatrical-supply store on State Street, where he bought a bag of white rhinestones, and using seashell glue he pasted them all over the front of the guitar. Toward the bottom, where he’d run out of rhinestones, he later glued a chrome naked-chick silhouette that had fallen off a truck’s mud flap into the street outside his home. The last piece, added years later, was a hat pin of the word “Chicago” in art deco lettering, which he fastened to the headstock.
Six hours is a lot of time to kill, and when they’re playing to a near empty room–which is often–Larry, Raul, and Gilbert can sound as bored as they are, walking through tunes they’ve played literally hundreds of times. But they can play just about anything–blues, R & B, country and western, classic rock, big-band and jazz standards, Latin ballads, Italian crooners, on and on–and when they get an audience, the energy comes rushing back. Larry, a Polish man in his mid-50s who wears a Greek fisherman’s cap to cover his bald pate, is the main attraction; when he steps out for one of his delicate, jazzy solos, you might think you’re a couple blocks south, at the Green Mill. Raul, a squat Mexican with long graying hair, is the mike man, the band’s singer, comedian, philosopher, and all-around bullshit artist. Gilbert, whose lined face is topped by a startling Mohawk, is the wild card. At the beginning of the night his drumming can sound pretty rusty, but after a while he’ll fall into the groove–and when that happens Nightwatch is the best bar band on the planet.
“If you leave it up to your wonderful mayor he’s gonna turn us into a desert,” says Larry. “This is one of the greatest cities in the world, but now, since the year 2000 is coming, he’s trying to wipe the slate clean. He don’t want none of this Al Capone shit, and all that.”
I started going to the Lakeview Lounge about four years ago. An old friend of mine had discovered the place during his drinking days, and every few months we’d drop in for a few beers. When I started working for the Reader my friend said, “Whatever you do, don’t write about the lounge. Every asshole hipster in town will be in there making the scene.” But the word’s already out: the last time we went there together, an entourage of handsome young people in black leather coats filed in until, about a dozen strong, they had taken the place over, soaking up the ambience and requesting their favorite oldies. “This place is over,” my friend declared. “I mean, I’m glad for these guys. They deserve it. But I’m never coming back here again.”
He bought a Silvertone electric guitar from the Sears catalog and formed a band with his brother, playing house parties and backyard barbecues. Then an uncle offered him a set of Ludwig drums that someone had abandoned at his house–a bass drum, snare drum, and tom. Raul got one of his cousins, a sheet-metal worker, to cut him a crude cymbal, and he draped a chain over it to kill the ringing. When he was 16, he was invited to join a rock ‘n’ roll band that sometimes played at the Mary McDowell Settlement House, a community center near 47th and Ashland built half a century earlier by reformers from the University of Chicago. The Polish-Catholic parishes had been suspicious of McDowell’s progressive and Protestant leanings, and during the 30s and 40s the settlement house had become a haven for the growing population of Mexicans in Back of the Yards, providing sports, after-school activities, and naturalization classes. Yet the band Raul joined was led by a Polish kid, Larry Rybakowski–Larry Ribs.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It’s 9:30 on a Thursday night, and though the band doesn’t go on until 10, Raul is already at the bar, having a bottle of Rolling Rock and a smoke with Caroline, a blond woman in torn blue jeans, a brown raincoat, and a backward baseball cap. Caroline used to tend bar at the Lakeview, but lately she’s been working at the Wooden Nickel, near Wilson and Racine. She has a toy, a tiny microphone that plays back whatever you say into it, and as she points it at me Raul’s voice hisses from the scratchy speaker: “I don’t see nothing, I don’t hear nothing, I don’t say nothing!” Caroline unleashes a raucous laugh and plays it again: “I don’t see nothing, I don’t hear nothing, I don’t say nothing!” A pair of handcuffs dangles from one of her belt loops.
“Hey, we have Caroline,” Raul says over the PA. “Hey, Larry, she brought her cuffs, but she forgot her whip. You’re gonna cuff us up and beat the hell out of all of us, and we’re gonna love it. We’re gonna scream in ecstasy.” They play B.B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Patricia” by Cuban mambo king Perez Prado. On the Doobie Brothers’ “Long Train Runnin’” Larry abandons his usual clean sound for a screaming fuzz-toned solo. They sail into the first verse of “Me and Bobby McGee,” and Raul coaxes Caroline up to the bandstand; she delivers a passable Janis Joplin impersonation, a cigarette and a bottle of Bud dangling from one hand.
