Chicago XI, New York 0

Chicago XI, New York 0

ELEGANZA

Robert Duncan

We were sitting in the Bells of Hell, sucking on our beers, having a nice, quiet summer dodging Son of Sam and the FALN (the Puerto Rican Liberation Army), when all of a sudden Mick Jagger makes this inane snorting sound and the Fabulous Fall Season is off and running.

Out in the Hamptons, time stops. The Fuji racers are packed atop the BMWs and everybody troops back into the city in perfect pavlovian quickstep. Next time we turn around we can't find a seat at the bar for all the tans—the wickedly all-over tans—and gym shorts. As far as we can tell, Sam and the FALN didn't exist1, there was no blackout, and whoever heard of Elvis Presley.

What's on everybody's mind here at the Bells and up at Elaine's and over at New York, New York and Studio 54 and down at the neo-saloons of SoHo is the Fabulous Fall Season (yep, everything's still fabulous) and near as we can make out, that has something to do with Pele, who plays that fabulous new sport soccer; A1 Pacino, who's in that fabulous new movie; Anne Bancrofbxwho is fabulously playing Golda on Broadway; Pete Hamill, whose new book is about a fabulous boxer who fabulously fucks his mother, and the Rolling Stones—whom everybody refers to in the singular as Mick—who also have something new but who have transcended transitory fabulousness and have been installed in the New York scene as simply de rigueur. Oh, and the punks (tee-hee),

It's the Fabulous Fall Season. And here I sit, miles from the upper East Side in one direction and miles from SoHo in the other. Here I sit, stuck in my non-loft dwelling on 14th Street above the Gum Joy Chinese Restaurant, quaking at the sound of the moped menace in the avenue below, my skin pale to the point of bluishness, nary a gym short or an Adidas or even a pathetically ripped t-shirt in the closet. Here I sit, balding and un-svelte (and getting un-sve]ter) in my checkered Bermudas—and I'm years ahead of everybody once again!

And it's not that someday you'll all be either un-svelte or balding or sitting around in your old 75 dollar Bloomie's gym shorts (which by then will be as out of it as Bermudas appear to be today). It's not that right now I am where all of you are headed. It's not that / am learning to deal with it now, at my tender age, and that by the time you get there I will have mastered it, will be able to carry it off with consummate aplomb. No, it's not that. (Well, maybe that's part of it, but not a part I really considered.) I like to think that my stylishness, my chic, my—how you say?—eleganza is something that exists in the present, however undetected, however visionary it may ultimately prove to be.

You see, I'm not looking forward to the new Richard Hell album—that's just old. I don't care if Mick wears pajamas on thecover of his (their) new album— unless, of course, they are Dr. Denton's with ka-ka mushed around down in the toes. I used to enjoy Pete HamilPs column in the pre-Australia New York Post—but find it hard to get all lathered up about him since he took up with Jackie O. (Actually, I think it's a pretty good move in terms of a kid from t Brooklyn developing autobiographical material.) Furthermore, I haven't seen a play since my mother forced me to go see a revival of Wonderful Town when I turned nine (OK, OK she also forced me to go see Chorus Line on my birthday last year). Besides, I might casually add that I've been playing soccer for fifteen years.

No, I'll tell you what I see as hip/chic/stylish, what I, the visionary, am looking foward to in this Fabulous Fall Season:

I'm looking forward to the new Chicago album.

That's right: Chicago. Eight or nine dorky guys who wouldn't be able to eat at the fabulous Windows on the World because they probably wear leisure suits. Eight or nine dorky guys who probably think SoHo is the clinical term for fag and who are man enough to prove it, pal. Eight or nine dorky guys who have made ten or eleven preposterously popular albums and who could probably buy and sell Mick three times over and who have so little sense of style that, in a world that tries very, very hard, are absolutely, perfectly—hermetically, even—stylish.

Chicago, with the psychedelic logo. Chicago, with the the psychedelic logo on every album they've made. Chicago, whose only concession was changing their name from Chicago Transit Authority. Chicago, eight or nine dorky guys on speed at "25 or 6 to 4." Chicago, who knows what they look like? Chicago, I'm already running out of things to say about them. Chicago, hog butcher, land of the Cluett Shirt Garter and the hippest rock band in the world (if you don't count Golden Earring, whose ultrahip name is probably only the result of language difficulties). Chicago, the last bastion of rock without style (read: without pretension) (read: with style).

To be specific: Chicago, without whom this season's punks would have no raison d'etre. I mean, if there weren't these eight or nine dorky guys playing this very formal type rock and standing up for the status quo, there would be nothing for the Ramones or the Dead Boys or Hell or even the scared Sex Pistols to go up against. If there were no Chicago to juxtapose with the punks, we might just be spared all this talk about primitivism and minimalism and rock 'n' roll expressionism—all that arty bullshit—and the punk bands might, instead, just be bad (and not as in good bad). If Chicago didn't wear their shirt collars pulled out over the lapels of their jackets, Patti S.mith's ripped t-shirts might just look like neglect or impoverishment—instead of like the Holy Flag of American Rastafarianism. (I might note here that my only quarrel with Chicago is that they give punk an excuse. But life is a trade-off, I suppose.)

In other words, be cool this fall. While everybody discos out the window to the new Stones album in their Zandra Rhodes gym shorts with the tan on their mopeds by the Alfa Romeos through their pink hair and white sunglasses with the new Hamill book on Broadway by safety pins and A1 Pacino, dig Chicago (whatever they look like). Now that's style!