It was the summer of 1987 in Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side. Hyde Park smelled like oil and musty bricks and evaporating plants, as only Hyde Park could smell. The day before the midnight boat gig, I steered my ratty bike into the alley behind our 57th Street

Our first show would be an all-ages punk cruise with No Empathy and Rights of the Accused. A tour boat would leave Navy Pier at midnight and dock at 7 a.m. Then, hours later we would play at Navy Pier itself for a giant bash called “Halfway to Saint

‌Tiny magnetized chromium oxide particles had been shuffled, twisted and pushed around into a big mess. They needed to get back on a smooth track to pass their rates of vibration onto the magnetic tape head, and release the sounds recorded by some stranger to be a token of his

Later, as  we drove our band gear-filled station wagon north on Lake Shore Drive, I tipped the cassette into the player on the seat between us. “OK, wait, you have to listen to this. This is important,” I told Mary, my tampon earrings bumped against my neck like pendulums. But

When we arrived at the restricted parking area near the pier, Tina was waiting near a streetlight. Her t-shirt said “ROTA,” and she was hopping back and forth in her high tops and ripped jeans with drumsticks in the back pocket. Beside her was Tina’s amazing CTA traveling drum

We rolled our amps and carried guitars across a gangplank into the hull of the Spirit of Chicago. We followed a tiled hallway to a red carpeted lounge, set up with duct tape on the carpet to delineate the “stage.” There were only two mic stands, which meant we had

At 7 a.m., the boat chugged back into the dock where whitefaced and sick looking kids stumbled over the gangplank and dispersed, shakily, into the hazy summer morning. But we still had another gig! It was halfway to St. Patrick’s Day on Navy Pier, as vinyl signs dotted