From the last time Chuck Berry played Chicago. Five, six years ago. . . .
When Chuck Berry, 84, collapsed from unknown causes on stage Saturday night in Chicago, the concert venue was not some glitzy down town tourist trap.
Berry slumped over his keyboards at the Congress Theater. A 2,900 seat, faded architectural gem originally built in the 1920’s as a golden movie palace. The Congress sits on Milwaukee Avenue. Twenty-one blocks northwest of the center of Chicago. Once an unpaved Indian Trail from Chicago to Milwaukee, along which all sorts of flim flam fast buck artists plied their trade alongside hard working people who got up before dark most mornings and did their jobs.
Not all that long ago, there were more Polish people clustered on and around Milwaukee Avenue than there were in most Polish cities. The potential next Mayor of Chicago lives in a condo off Milwaukee Avenue while he waits for his rented house to be empty. And the outposts of the arts, galleries, places where people read poetry dot the urban landscape in tiny storefronts with rhymes of what’s edgy, new and the next big thing.
So the place where the great rock and roller put his head down is a vibrant, alive avenue where people live close to each other, where they go to work, make art and dream big. A place with a history.
Berry was checked out in an ambulance. They he came back on stage and tried again.
He came back on stage and tried again.
The crowd had mostly emptied out, but Chuck Berry came back on stage and tried again.
And just as he did that, somewhere, hurling out in the farthest regions of space, way beyond any known galaxy—the well known story goes—the space capsule sent from our planet out to the heavens in about 1960; that space capsule reached its destination.
The people of that faraway planet opened it up, saw everything we had stuffed inside. The holy texts of the world’s great religions, some equations scribbled by Einstein, a Picasso, a volume of Romeo and Juliet, a Bach Cantata, a Vonnegut book, Keith Jarrett and Duke Ellington recorded, penicillin and the polio vaccine.
There was more. There were items that showcased us at our best.
But the last item was a plastic disc. An old 45 rpm record. Our brothers and sisters, being way beyond us, immediately knew how to make sound come from this “45.” It was a Chuck Berry record.
And those people from that faraway planet listened. Then they wrote a 4 word reply. Stuffed it in the capsule and sent it hurtling out to find us.
It should be here any moment.
What was their four-word response?
Send more Chuck Berry.