NO DICK TATERS.
Some of the protest signs are scruffy, last-minute scribblings on cardboard. A lot of NO FAUX KING WAY. One that stands out is NO DICK TATERS.
FAUX KING EARTH, WIND, & WE ARE ON FIRE BY BEN UMAYAM 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE ISSUE 133
I am used to protests. I remember in the 70s pulling into a rest stop in Maryland, buses full of queer folk running in to pee. Act UP, Dignity, Dykes on Bikes attending a protest, gay bowling league after, drinks at The Boots and Saddle late.
At the Denver No Kings, the 70s people are a group of “Are You Experienced” folks, with their canes, walkers, ski poles. Friend Barb says the young ’uns find out from the oldies what to do at these things.
We come to the big city Denver, big protest rally. Other reason, we have tickets to Earth, Wind & Fire at Fiddler’s Green.
No Kings. It is organized. Yet disorganized. We approach the Colorado State Capitol, walking down 16th. It used to be the 16th Street Mall. After four years of renovation, torn-up streets, they now call it 16th Street. Just that. Even though it really is like a mall now. It is one big walkway.
We are fashionably late, you know gays. People are already walking away, signs pointing down.
There are no scheduled speakers, just some impromptu music under a tent. No Band. No Dylan. No Neil Young. A local bluegrass group sings about the mountains.
A big bear bearded guy wears a blue grass skirt, a long one, he sticks out in front of the audience. When he sways, his coconuts threaten to stick out as well. The gays, again, long experienced with this.
We catch this when we arrive. Aha, I conclude hence the early exodus of people.
The numbers are in and about 250 thousand. Like Arlo said, “That’s a quarter million people man. You guys have closed the NY Thruway.” Sixty years ago, in this case, the NY Thruway is the RTD, the Regional Transportation District. Downtown Denver closed due to the events happening today. So says the guy on the PA system. Sixty years ago, “such a long, strange trip it’s been”.
Some of the protest signs are scruffy, last-minute scribblings on cardboard. A lot of NO FAUX KING WAY. One that stands out is NO DICK TATERS.
We do a lot of walking, more so than on our summer trip thru the ruins of Pompeii. We have walked to and from the Union Station. Our steps app proves it. 16 thousand steps down 16th Street, no longer the mall.
We hear reports from the birthday parade, updates on the big screen at the Noodles R Us. We watch the organized/disorganized shuffle of the armed forces. Not the stylized choreography of North Korea or the Russians. Someone yells over their pad thai, “Well what do you want, these guys are trained to fight, to defend our country, not to march in birthday parades.” Next to us a gal yells out with a mouthful of bolognese, “Not to prance like tin soldiers in some Nutcracker fantasy.”Later they are saying, “Let’s give him a show by not giving a show.”
No Kings has shut Denver’s transit system downtown. “Yas queens,” we shout boarding the delayed E that will take us to the F that will takes us to the K and G. Takes an hour, normally a 25-minute trip.
The concert. It is hot, radiant at Fiddler’s Green and although we arrive an hour early, the line at security is long, long, long. In our seats the setting sun is a hot one. It is a wait for E, W & F to take the stage.
I think about this music, the 70s post-innocence after the summer of love Woodstock, the burning of LA. The Motown music that bridged between black and white gives way to two divisions on the Billboard charts, black music versus white music, the line drawn thicker as the decade ages. Earth, Wind & Fire are formulaic, a sound that recording conglomerate Columbia pushed and defined, a 70s R&B music for everyone. It defied the trend with music that united the divide between black and white in America. This audience at Fiddler’s Green, like Colorado, is mostly white.
Philip Bailey, a native of Denver, his falsetto soars above it all, him at age 74. Google says he has a four-octave range. A bold beautiful black Julie Andrews, rising to the sky like Mary Poppins, thrilling the crowd. A different time, a different age, the 70s. A symphony of tight three-part horns, intertwined with a trio of funky bass and two rhythm guitars, that wail like solid rock, and with the trio of harmonies topped with Bailey falsettos, all held together by the Maurice White arrangements, long-gone Maurice White, a genius like the other recently departed Brian Wilson. Poetry in audio this throwback to a past age.
And this Denver day all takes place on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the escalator ride down the tower on 5th to the music of Neil Young, Rockin’ in the Free World. Young threatens this first presidential campaign never to use his music again.
The Earth, Wind & Fire encore is the iconic song September, the defining Filipino line dance.
The line dance, arguably, was invented by Filipinos, a sort of Electric Slide version of The Hustle danced by not two people, a couple, but by a group, a line of people. Go to a Filipino wedding and the whole room will literally line dance to September. Perhaps it is the catchiness of the tune that Filipinos like me relate to.
More likely it is the irony. The song line goes, “Do you remember, the 21st of September.” September 22 is the date when the first Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines. The song is not about this eve. Filipinos have appropriated the date, a celebration of the innocence of the Philippines before its darkest day.
On this eve of the 10th anniversary of the escalator ride, I wonder if this encore, is the celebration, the jubilant calm before the faux king declares martial law on trumped-up charges of insurrection.