As I first entered the building to see its first show on
quasi-penthouse-like 3rd floor, I never even knew that this loft was
a little bit like the secretive Homan Square site used by Chicago Police that
was a bit like a loft. But around 2009, when I got there---this now defunct
place known formerly as 2106 S. Kedzie—I did not see boys in blue, squad cars,
evidence of people being slapjacked or waterboarded, or cordoned-off
barbed-wire fences. I did see some
modern hipsters doing their dance thing, or punk rock thing, and even shooting
off some marijuana smoke in the process. In addition, I saw a tire swing, a
rather unkempt brown wooden floor, and a loose-knit stage focusing on a dark
atmosphere as strings of Christmas lights try to shine through this
semi-darkness. There was an outside terrace to the west of the area where
people converse and talk, while the main action was inside. It was basically a
nearly no-holds-barred place that might have rivaled other radical DIY music
places that had popped up and died in Pilsen, though this spot was at Douglas
Park. The vibe was nearly unbounded and
nearly unrestricted, almost like Josh Harris’ bunker depicted in “We Live in
Public”, in December 1999 in a nondescript loft in New York’s Manhattan, but without the non-private bunks or the
guns. Moreover, the third-floor concessions there were on the southeast corner
near the bathroom area, and it had a sort of multicolored theme paying homage
to the colors of ice cream trucks. It served beer and other non-alcoholic
essentials.The bathroom was unisex, and it had a window facing south toward the
railroad bridge that hugged the building, where the Metra Union Pacific-West
commuter trains, Amtrak trains, and freight trains, pass by. Sadly, this place
was not ADA-accessible and you have to walk 2 flights of stairs to get there,
but there is transportation accessability near the building—about 150 feet
north of it, the CTA Pink Line ran alongside the building from west to east,
but it did not run 24 hours a day, and when the train stopped running after
hours, you are at the mercy of finding other transportation means. Sure there
was the CTA #52 Kedzie that cut through just by the place but it was difficult
to get that bus especially during the weekends, so with options running (before
there was Uber or Lyft), you had to take a taxi to get yourself home from there.
Despite the transportation problems, I very profoundly believe that it was the
ultimate DIY utopian place in Chicago for a while before it had to go under—and
that name was Mortville.
Mortville, which was ran by Meg McCarville and Sara Heymann,
was not only utopia for me—it was utopia for hundreds of its spectators,
fans—as well as the scores of bands from Chicago and away from it that made it
their home for several years. Coming right straight directly from Sara, she
remembered that the first show ever by Mortville happened in September 2008,
and was an art show, which Sara states, “sold convenience store products by
artists made by artists for $5.” Then, as for the start of the music, Sara said
the first booked bands for its first music show were Percolator, Nothingheads,
and pisspisspissmoanmoanmoan (which would feature Nicole Miller on
theremin/effects and Alex Morales on drums; the band partially disbanded so
this band only features Alex as solo), but Sara said that those bands did not
even show up. The second show did have bands that showed up—Bitchin’ Bajas,
Charlie Slick, and the Dozal Brothers. I did not know in my first dates with Mortville that it was
a building formerly owned by Weiser and Sons., who used to make pianos at that
place. The whole loft had a total of 18,000 square feet of space, and the front
façade of windows in the 1st floor area featured 4 glass block
windows on the east side, each of them about 6 feet by 7 feet along the north
door on its right. The rest of the front windows were on the 2nd and
3rd floors, the second having 5 windows of about 10 feet by 10 feet,
and the third, about 6 feet by 10 feet. The side façade on the north side had
tan brick had only windows on the 3rd floor, while the front façade
had red brick.
And because it was a loft that used to be free to use, other
DIY people took the reins of the 1st and 2nd floors and
made up their other spaces under the third-floor Mortville—to make that 2106
address seem to be more than just a Mortville DIY music collective—it seemed
like a complete DIY loft venue collective. The 2nd floor housed what
was then called Treasure Town. I can
only speculate that because the noise of
the music would be absorbed by the first floor under it and the third
floor (Mortville) above it, the focus of Treasure Town was loud punk bands and
loud noise bands and other experimental noise acts. My rememberances of
Treasure Town was that it had a big colorful wall mural on the south part of
the building, which featured an orange string, a red door, and a brown
dilapidated fence, among lots of items, and the ceiling was not really
high—about 10 feet, with exposed electric wiring and piping in its dark
ceiling.
And just under Treasure Town, there was still
another house place on the 1st floor that was used mainly for
not-so-weird DIY music ensembles—mainly experimental and avant-garde, but not
terribly wild. That 1st floor place was known as Casa Donde, which was quite pitchy,
because it was near the Little Village (aka “La Villita”) neighborhood. It
simply meant—and roughly so—“House Where”, in Spanish, so it was a sort of
hyperbole to the Treasure Town/Mortville combination above it. If you can make
a word anagram from “House Where”—it would be “Where House”, which is
subliminally messaged as “Warehouse”—which also smacks of the heyday when DIY
industrial music was king in Chicago. Bands that came in to Casa Donde – mainly
likely were first-time DIY bands who wanted to really sell their merch, and
they showed their merch front-and-center—really!! I did not know who ran Casa
Donde, but I found out that the calvacade of past bands that embraced the place
included S.L.F.M., Truman and His Trophy, Animal City, Maren Celest, Katrina
Stonehart, Relatives, Karl Marks, New Diet, Meah!, and Meatwave. When I saw
Meah! at Casa, they were an ultra-crazy progressive punk ensemble that made me
wonder that this place might trump the regular Mortville abpve. The band did make some noise, but later on, I
realized that Mortville, with its variety of shows from music to performance
art, still came up on top on that 2106 address.
And I was keenly
aware about what happened during the post 9-11 area, and what happened when two
nightclubs – Chicago E2 nightclub and The Station nightclub in New England –
both had fatal disasters. These three factors caused a major excuse for
Chicago’s big wigs to target nearly any DIY venue that did not have a Personal
Place of Amusement license and was not places like The Empty Bottle, The
Whistler, or Cole’s (all of these 3 places did have PPAs and not house venues,
so basically most times the Chicago Police left them alone). And Chicago’s
bigwigs – including members of the Department of Buildings, Chicago Police, and
other municipal entities – started to wage war—and had won part of the battle.
But not only these bigwigs tried to silence Chicago DIY music from house venues
and independent cooperative-collectives. Anti-DIY neighbors and landlords also
joined in the fight to put an end to such venues like the Bakery in Pilsen, The
Mopery and Ronny’s at Logan Square, and MTV Studios in Pilsen.
Sara also told me
that the area around the place was quite heavily gang-laden—The Satan Disciples
were the main gang and probably the Latin Kings or Two-Sixers were also there,
but Sara said that the gangs did not look out at Mortville to create fear, or
do a “tumba” (stick-up), or worse, shoot down dead as many DIY fans or bands
they did not like at all if they perceived any of them as rival gangbangers..
The bangers, she said, “mainly left us alone.” But Meg and Sara were not going
to do a police-state type of security for this place—that would turn off a lot
of DIY fans. No metal detectors, no frisking, no bag checks for weapons, and no
impersonal security guards with tasers either—even though these two ladies
still had to be on the lookout for jerks who could cause trouble in that place.
But that is all that I can say for now. Marijuana was welcome in that
place—that was a thing that made me be just a little bit concerned.
Mortville—and
its two curators—were known for setting off some of the most outrageous and
most wacky shows and happenings at the place. It is something that people who
love the Burning Man events blush, but not too much……some exciting moments:
1. The place held Garbage
World for the first time on November 15, 2009 (just a little over 1 year
before Mopery had to close its doors with its last show on August 28, 2010),
with the help of its creator who used to live in Chicago, Eileen Lillian Doyle,
who was coined Gertie Garbage. It was a weekend featuring a calvacade of
performance artists, spoken word artists, and interdisciplinary performers
performing avant-garde, experimental, or anarchist-driven presentations. 3
other Garbage World events were held
there on February 20 and June 25—both of them in 2010, and another one on
November 18, also in 2010. The June 25 show I saw featured one of the
near-headliners, multidisciplinary artist now known as Here Heather Marie (or
“Here”), doing some type of experimental spoken word to a crowd of about
100-120 people on a summer Friday night.
2. When Chicago had its corporate entities embracing the
Pitchfork Music Festival around 2010 and 2011, the Mortville founders, through
the help of two unsung founders of a large DIY music festival that actually
started in 2009---solo act artist, Rotten Milk and the members the jamband,
Rotten Milk, realized that the event can be held at the 2106 address. From
these two bands, Meg and Sara realized that the rules at the Pitchfork music
event were too strict for them to do things like smoke marijuana or sell their
own DIY merchandise—both actions that can get you ejected from Pitchfork. So
with a hunch of me seeing Mortville a fair deal in its wide variety of shows,
Meg and Sara, with the help of radical graphic artist, Rand Sevillla (who
promoted two of these events through extremely bizarre promo videos of the
festival), to make an anarchist-driven apathy to the traditional Pitchfork
festival—at Mortville. There were thoughts about a pig with its ugly “oink”
sound, a dirty pig-pen, and mud for some type of logo regarding an
ultra-anarchist, ultra-crazy, ultra-wacky, ultra-outrageous music festival in
reaction to the regular Pitchfork festival, and they got it—and it was the Bitchpork Festival.
So with that,
I researched a website (which still exists), called Pigeons and Planes, and
found out that Mortville held two Bitchpork festivals—namely Bitchpork 3 and
Bitchpork no. 4.
According to
Daniel Margolis, who wrote an article about the history of Bitchpork,
Mortville’s Bitchpork no. 3 started really well on July 17 to July 19, 2009,
when Lightning Bolt on July 17th bolted out its very heavy, very loud at-you
ritual drumming to satisfy the very hungry crowd who came out of the Pitchfork
festival to get what they wanted—and they got it in return. Sara and Meg loved
it, I guessed it, from that first Bitchpork they curated in Mortville.
The calvacade
of DIY bands that appeared in Bitchpork 4 on July 15 to July 17th of
2011 (the second Bitchfork that Meg and Sara curated) ranged from the
ultra-radical, screaming-at-you, noise-driven, crowd-intruding bands and
projects (for instance, Forced into Feminity), all the way to DIY-driven modern
EDM-driven jamrock projects like Chandeliers---and Mahjohgg, another jamband
featuring the EDM wizardry of Hunter Husar (who made his stints mainly at the
Bridgeport areas of Chicago; Mahjohgg is now defunct), who rocked the place on
July 16th with a sort of Sound-Tribe-Sector-9 type of atmosphere
with spectacular green-colored moving lights, and hard-hitting, coming-at-you,
disco-driven drumbeats, permeating the
venue to attempt to make the whole place musically utopian. Specifically,
according to Margolis, when the radical Bad Drugs, a radical punk band, played
on Mortville’s roof outside, the crowd went as wild as what happened when the
disco record blow-up on July 12, 1979 at Sox Park caused a near-riot. Then
regrettably—you guessed it—Daniel stated that the 5-0 came in to almost bust
the Bitchpork party, and the band was told not to play anymore on the roof on
that Friday the 17th night, or
that rest of the whole night will be busted. So the band decided to play
inside on a very hot day and the fans had to deal with that—either that or they
had to go home—as well as the band.
In total, over 100
of Chicago’s DIY bands from a wide area of musical styles—from power-punk—to
prog rock—to noise project—to experimental glam—embraced that rumpus-driven
fest which was Bitchpork 3 and Bitchpork 4, and it was great especially for Meg
and Sara!
In the
1970s, the word “bitch” –said out or
written out, would have been edited or censored, but now, I am free to say it
without limitation. Sorry, Super Bowl
wardrobe malfunction!!!
3. May 13, 2011—was the memorable Mortville concert
featuring a sort of shoegaze-driven post-rock ensemble (actually a drone-pop
band) of 11 people which had a long title—Call
Me On the Allphone/Names Divine, but they called it Names Divine for short.
It was run by singer and droner Kendra Calhoun, and Jillian Musielak, a radical
designer, on tom-tom drums. It actually featured 11 musician-members at its
peak around 2010-2011, and some of its alumni included performance artist
Right-Eyed Rita. When I saw Names Divine at Mortville, I started to like
Jillian’s drumming, but Kendra’s wails were also enticing to me, because at
2011, I was starting to adore avant-garde and experimental music—not just
traditional classical music, and that is another reason why I loved to go to
Mortville. And a bonus—I was on the bill
on that May 13 performing as DIY music project Mr. Forefinger, so this gave me
a bit of a boost for me increasing my fanbase when I started that DIY music
project at Cal’s Bar in 2010. (This bar is now permanently closed down.)
4.. On August 26, 2011, with the success of holding Bitchpork
3 and Bitchpork 4 fests, Sara and Meg hosted The Ultimate Badass Band Contest. With DIY musician Davitt Terrell
as the curator of sorts, there were several judges which included Li’l Princess
(who was the stage name for Meg at that time), Rotten Milk, Ray Ellingsen (a
extremely strong Chicago DIY music superfan, who died in the fall of 2014), and
a man only identified as Paul. When I saw the event at least once, the rules
were simple: laptops and droning were prohibited, and you have to do your set
for no more than 5 minutes. The contestant musicians were on either of the
three stages, and the atmosphere for this wacky contest is that performers
needed to prepare to get things thrown upon—like bits of paper all the way to
probably something as wacky as stink bombs---to express disapproval. The
contest was a cross between The Gong Show
and Showtime at the Apollo, and the
winner of this bizarre concourse would win an earning of being crowned The
Ultimate Badass with a yellow crown with a tall spire of purple and white.
THE FACTORS THAT LED TO THE DEMISE OF THE FIRST MORTVILLE
But
you think Mortville would last forever? Sadly, according to Jessica Hopper’s
and Leor Galil’s article in The Reader,
dated June 27, 2012, called “Gossip Wolf—Burying Treasure Town”, carcass-cleaning
property sellers, taking advantage of the precipitous drop in property values
in the 2009 recession, started to target loft venues a few years after the recession—and
even though Mortville was not forced to permanently shut down by the police
even though the place did have dates with the cops in the past—these aggressive
sellers honed in on Mortville, and the landlord (who remains unnamed) told Sara
and Meg somewhere on June 2012—IT’S TIME TO GO! I did not know how these two
ladies felt directly – but directly myself, I was extremely hurt that Mortville
had to go—but I was also glad that I will not have to worry about going into a
sort of dangerous place in Chicago which made this DIY venue its home. Treasure
Town had to leave also with Mortville, and its last show there was on June 29,
2012, when I saw Vimeo footage of a band that I did not know that featured Ben
Billington the drummer—but I found out that the band was a cover band called
Naked Island. (Don’t find that band anywhere today on the WWW—it broke up after
a short while.) But I did not see it
because it was so sad for me to go to see the last show. Meanwhile, Casa Donde—the
lowest strata in the Mortville collective, also had to go too, and right now,
the ReverbNation website for Casa Donde—literally dead-on-arrival, no more
shows. The Oh My Rockness website for Treasure Town – also gone. No more shows
there either. So sad, and so painful for me as a DIY music lover—AND performer!!!
Even worse, Mayor Rahm Emanuel sealed the
deathblow on the Mortville/Treasure Town/Casa Donde collective---with new
ordinances that were backlashes to the struck-down 2008 Chicago Promoters’
Ordinance that would have destroyed almost anything DIY in Chicago anywhere if
that decree was passed, and even worse, the G8 summit was going to happen in Chicago
in August 2012, and that meant an extremely high-profile Department of Homeland
Security event. With that, pre-G8 raids on some Chicago DIY venues including
the Mortville collective happened—practically any venue that had even a hint of being flagged as an anarchist
site was marked for being targeted, and Mortville was very highly—and very
openly---anarchist.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
THE OLD MORTVILLE WAS FORCED TO SAY GOOD-BYE?
The loft building
that made up the famous DIY venue collective that made up the first Mortville
is now off the market so regrettably, Meg and Sara—the primary founders—are not
allowed for a long time to go back to that building for any renaissance of its
wild and willy actions that made Mortville “Mortville” for at least several
years.
But I can tell
you a bit of what happened after Mortville came to an end—its founders, and a
few of its regulars….
Jillian Musielak,
one of the Call Me On The Allphone alumna who embraced Mortville, went on to do some DIY music work under the
name Sick Cakez, with several stints around the Pilsen area, and in one
nondescript event, she almost teamed up with a radical Butoh artist, Rose
Hernandez. She was also a fan of the defunct house venue, MTV Studios in west
Pilsen, which was run by Joseph Blanski.
Meg McCarville,
one of the Mortville co-founders, went on to be a quick fan of the Bijou
theater in Chicago and she invited me to do a collaborative performance with me
before Bijou closed down a few years prior. My hunch is that the worsening
crackdowns on Chicago’s DIY world—the crackdowns that eventually did in the
first Mortville--made her want to leave Chi-town, and she did, and she moved to
New Orleans, living in a ultra-radical trailer home where she can freely
express Mortville-related attitudes without even a bit of restraint.
Kendra Calhoun,
another Call Me On The Allphone alumna who performed at Mortville, moved out of
Chicago and currently released her new solo album, “Crazy For You” in 2015,
which was a compilation of her original numbers.
Sara Heymann, the
other founder of Mortville, had a deep passion for art and painting afterwards
(since her joys of being with the defunct Land Line DIY newspaper), and created
a house venue just south of Douglas Park called a second Mortville, but for
obvious reasons, I am unable to tell you exactly where due to the Trump frenzy.
I can tell you that a few years prior, Sara coined a new venue that lasted a
few more years around 2015 to 2016, called “The Egg”, in a garage or in the
backyard, or even in a slightly bigger loft behind the house. Performance
artists and even some punk bands embraced the place, especially on summer days
and nights. I was there for almost half of the approximately 50 or more events.
Regrettably, Sara had to close down “The Egg” in late 2016 not because of the
fears that the place may not have had a PPA permit or fears of cops busting
down the place, but because she wants to focus full time passion of being a
visual artist.
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