Ephemeral Creation:
Music and Art in Chicago, 1978 - 1982                                 ← Part 7. →

by Ken Mierzwa

	The author with friends Halloween, 1981 Photo: Mark copyright © 2003-2006
Late Fall, 1981 Halloween 1981 was one of those amazing nights that just runs together into one big memory. One of the perks of my press role was that I got to know the mostly female bartenders at the clubs pretty well... Veronica, Kathleen, Rose, Elaine, Roseanne, a few others. Hugs, kisses, and free beer were readily available. On Halloween, Rose had a costume party. First though, we went to Exit to get warmed up. My first batch of photos of people in costume came from there, both on the sidewalk and near the back bar, with strangers posing freely. After a while I went over to the party at Rose's. The costumes were even better there. I was the only vampire, but we had spacemen, gorillas, a couple of androgenous creatures, men dressed as women, women dressed as men; I'd have to look at the proof sheets to remember all of the costumes. Finally, sometime very late, a few of us headed over to a party at the high rise apartment of Jim Nash, owner of Wax Trax. I shot a bunch of film over the course of the evening, negatives populated by every kind of bizarre creature. I have never seen a Halloween before or since with so many costumed people on the city streets. The evening of November 4 was warm for autumn. A little after dark, a line of thunderstorms passed through. I was about half done shaving when the power went out. Finishing the best I could in the dark, I grabbed my Nikon, two of my faster lenses, and shoved a few rolls of Tri-X in my jacket pocket. My flash was broken, so it was going to be an available light night. Siouxsie and the Banshees were to play at the Park West on Armitage Avenue, not exactly a venue known for booking punk bands. But Siouxsie was already better known in the states than a lot of her peers, so it made sense to play a larger venue. Park West was in an already gentrified neighborhood, and usually did more mainstream and upscale shows, complete with cocktail waitresses roving among the small tables on the floor. The down side of a show at an unfamiliar venue was that none of us knew the management. There was no guest list, at least not for anyone from the regular crowd. Pay at the door. The show was pretty good, though. As usual, I was pressed against the front of the stage grabbing photos. Siouxsie had been at this game a while, and she had an unusually strong stage presence... she was especially good at making eye contact with random individuals in the crowd. She was very much aware of the camera, and played to it on occasion. The crowd was surprisingly quiet and well behaved. Susan Ballion had grown up in the London suburbs. She was a fixture on the early London punk scene, already known for heavy make-up and bizarre dress... including a controversial tendency to appear at shows bare-breasted and wearing a swastika armband (contrary to popular belief, most punks and post-punks were strongly anti-nazi. I still have my "no nazi's" armband. A few people used the symbol for shock value, though. We harrassed them whenever we could). Siouxsie's musical career was born on September 20, 1976, when they played with almost no practice and using the Sex Pistol's equipment. Two years later, their first album was in the record shops. After the show, Craig tried to arrange an interview. First it was maybe, then it was on, then off, then on again. After quite a while, we were finally ushered backstage. The dressing room was plush relative to most of the other clubs, with soft chairs and tubs full of beer on ice. The band members seemed pretty relaxed, and right away Steve Severin urged us to help them drink the beer, because the club had given them too much. Siouxsie sat in the center of the room, and held court. She was already notorious for messing with the press. Craig was perhaps a bit too obviously infatuated with Siouxsie, and of course she then tormented him for the balance of the interview. She was friendly enough with the the rest of us, me and Karen snapping photos, and I forget who the fourth person was that night. The stage persona never really dropped until the very end, though. As we filed out toward the door, Craig said something like "maybe see you in Wisconsin next weekend" (the next show was in Madison, I think). Siouxsie retorted with something like "in your dreams." I laughed out loud, I couldn't help it... and Siouxsie looked me right in the eye, as she had so many other times that night; except this time, she flashed the only truly genuine smile of the evening, just for a few seconds, before pulling all outward emotion safely out of sight.
	Siouxsie Sioux backstage at Park West November 4, 1981 Photo by Ken Mierzwa, copyright © 2003-2006
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