Dizz Knee Land

Whenever I hear this song again on a mix CD I have, I feel like posting about it. The song was recorded in 1992 by a band named dada and has lines like I just robbed a grocery story/I'm goin' to Disneyland/I just took out President George/I'm going to Disneyland. It's one of those songs that people dance to, and the first time I heard it I was sitting in Phyllis's Musical Inn at Division & Hermitage, eating a bowl of lemon rice soup and writing in my notebook. I had just started writing "Faded Dreams on Division Street" for Penthouse's Nightlife section, and I had been asked to contribute something and wanted to make it hit on all cylinders. 1992 was my most profitable year as I writer, thanks to my gigs at Penthouse at a buck a word, and I still believe that my article on Phyllis's, Rainbo Room, and The Bop Shop is me at my best talking about the neighborhood I grew up in, and this was years before my bitterness set in as everything turned upscale. I don't have a photo to go with it, but a few years later, I had just gotten some anti-inflammatory shots (which I'm due to get on Monday, and I cannot wait), and I was feeling as good as I can ever feel, even if its only for a few days. I was at the corner of 63rd and Kedzie, across from where the old Marquette Theater stood. The bus stop was in front of one of those nameless electronic shops with stuff piled everywhere in the windows, and all of a sudden I hear "Dizz Knee Land" playing from somewhere in the store. I let one bus go by just so I could hear the song play out. Its below zero again tonight, one of those Sprinsteen song nights I've written about, and whereas I appreciate the song being on the mix CD with the Ides of March and Blues Image and Mason Williams' "Classical Gas," I would much rather hear it the way I would Springsteen as I walked a bitter street. Hear it come out of a nameless storefront or hearing it inside an old polka bar as I sat close enough to the open door to hear the traffic on a late spring evening...