That toddlin' town

“I spent about nine months in Chicago – that’s the city, not the band! Among the umpteen songs written about Chicago, one of them describes it as The Windy City. This, I learned, has nothing to do with the winds that blow through the streets, but is more likely to have resulted from the boasting and the blustering of the city’s politicians. Just like our own! Singers like Frank Sinatra sing about “Chicago, Chicago, that toddlin’ town” but I never quite knew what that meant. If it’s anything to do with walking then I certainly did a lot of toddlin’ around Chicago, as I genuinely believe that in order to really experience a city you have to walk around it.

I got to really like the feel of the place and I lived in a very central area called Logan Square. Maybe 8 or 10 years prior to that it had been a rough area where Mexican-Chicagoans lived, but it seemed to have been recently gentrified. I was there with my girlfriend who had lived in Chicago for a long time and wanted to tie up a few loose ends. But I regularly came home to renew my visa, and while I was back in Dublin I’d do a few gigs.
There was little I didn’t like about Chicago, although America can be a very unforgiving place. No matter where you go there is always a hint of racism and segregation, and Chicago is a very divided city. I attended the rally in Chicago when Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, and it was the most inspirational event I’ve ever been at. It brought all the communities in Chicago together, and he’s even more charismatic in person than you might imagine from watching him on television. It was like watching a pop star, not a politician. I can’t imagine Brian Cowen handling an audience so well.
Lots of the bars had great jukeboxes. I’d never really heard of Cheap Trick until I went to Chicago. They’re from Illinois and they were on nearly every jukebox I saw. The owner of Club Foot on West Augusta Boulevard is a big music fan and the walls were littered with music memorabilia, photographs and stuff cut from magazines. You could spend all day looking at them. It’s almost a shrine to Cheap Trick.
But although there was a lot of blues in some of the old rustic clubs and bars around the town, I never felt I got right to the heart of the Chicago music scene. It was a bit like arriving in Dublin and going to see a traditional band in Temple Bar and not being quite sure if you’re getting the authentic stuff or a watered-down version. Naturally they get all the top visiting acts, as we do in Dublin. Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters both played in Chicago while I was in town, but they put a lot of music on in these big amphitheatres which are quite soulless. I saw the Black Lips once. That was amazing, a great mix of rock and soul. There was a venue near where we lived called The Logan Square Auditorium and it was a good place for music.
Most of the music I heard on the radio was from big '70s stadium rock bands. I found it great when I was in the car, driving along to Led Zeppelin, U2, Pink Floyd, all that stuff. But I did a lot of writing and recording while I was there, and that meant I didn’t have all that much time to check the scene out as much as I’d have liked. I never got to visit Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio, for example. Despite his big reputation he’s supposed to be a very approachable guy and I have to admit that I’ve ended up paying more to unknown guys in Dublin for recordings they did for me than Steve would have charged. But then, Chicago is generally much cheaper than Ireland anyway. The one thing I noticed about America is that bad food is really cheap and that goes a long way to explaining the outcry over obesity. Very good food is expensive, so it’s often cheaper to eat out well than to eat well at home.
I didn’t come across any specific local dishes that were any different to what I’ve generally found in the US, but there were nice Persian and Thai restaurants I used to frequent. I have to admit that I often used to go out of my way to go to a cheesy Irish bar to get a really nice fry-up to remind me of home!”