When The Babies go on tour, they don’t mess around. They don’t do off days to see the sights or to split up the long trips between cities.
Wednesday night’s Chicago gig followed a show the night before in Toronto. The night before that was Montreal. That’s 900 miles in a van over two days. Throw in some snow and a bit of a hassle crossing the border back into the states and you wonder how The Babies manage to perform with such great energy.
My brother Tim and I were part of the near-capacity crowd assembled at Schuba’s Wednesday night. It was Tim’s first Babies show. The band went on at 11:13 PM. The front bar sold ice cold sixteen-ounce Old Style cans. Tasty.
Chicago is known for healthy support of indie rock bands and this audience was a good one. Respectful. Somebody near the back shouted out for Moonlight Mile about halfway through the 53-minute performance. “In due time,” said Cassie Ramone. Before that was a creative and intense prelude to Ramone’s great tune “Baby.”
The other highlight came when Kevin Morby wheeled out “On My Team.” It sounded great. Justin Sullivan’s fusillade of aggressive snare hits into Morby’s “Oh burn, burn, burn, burn” line is followed by a dramatic guitar sequence and finally an awesome display of Ramone/Morby harmonizing. It’s a wonderful song and the band nailed it live.
Late in the set, two women jumped on stage and danced for a tune. The band acted as if they didn’t even notice the pair. That aspect of it made it entertaining. I’ve always found it interesting to watch how performers react to these types of unpredictable situations. After the women returned to their rightful position on the floor, both Ramone and Morby complimented the pair for the sideshow.
The band’s current mini-tour precedes a month’s worth of European dates that will commence after the Primavera Sound Fest in late May.
Before the show, my brother and I had a couple cold ones at Fireside Bowl on Fullerton. The legendary venue appears to be alive and well as does the Fireside’s personable proprietor Jimmy Lapinski.
Flooding from a big rainstorm in Chicago last week was evident from the sight of ruined carpeting, bedding and other furnishings discarded as refuse and set out on curbs for pickup by sanitation. As of 5 PM Wednesday, the rain gauge at O’Hare airport measured 8.58 inches of rain for the month of April. That’s the biggest April rainfall total in the city’s history. All but a couple of inches of that rain came in one shot last week.
It was raining when I arrived at O’Hare Tuesday afternoon. I took the CTA blue line train to Cumberland and transferred to a 290 Pace bus for the short ride to my brother’s place in Park Ridge. It was the first time riding public transit in Chicago since a fare increase went into effect January 14, 2013. While the base fare remains $2.25 system wide, the CTA is now charging riders originating at O’Hare five bucks to get on the train. I’ve seen other cities implement this type of premium charge on airport service to extract extra revenue from tourists. Given its attractiveness as a reliably quick ride to downtown, I can understand the CTA’s rationale. Airport workers who ride the blue line to and from the airport aren’t happy but the CTA has promised a fix that will “exempt employees working on O’Hare International Airport property” from the additional charge.
Both of my flights in and out of Chicago were delayed an hour or so because of FAA staffing problems created by implementation of automatic federal spending cuts. Air traffic controllers are being forced to take occasional unpaid days off to save money cut from the FAA budget by sequestration. The manpower shortages in control centers and towers are causing bad delays in New York and Los Angeles regardless of weather. It’s unclear whether the modest staffing cuts present real operational problems or if the FAA is imposing delays for the show of it in an attempt to curry public sympathy. The airline I work for is asking employees who interact with passengers to make sure the cause of the delays is discussed bluntly. A coalition of US-based air carriers and airline worker unions is on record saying the FAA could avoid the delays by finding reductions from “non-essential” portions of its budget. Said the group Airlines for America: “The FAA’s unnecessary and reckless action will disrupt air travel for millions of Americans, cost jobs and threatens to ground the US economy to a halt. It doesn’t have to be that way.”