The Gene Pool Show

Episode 7: Keith Lipinski

In this episode Gene talks to longtime Simon's Tavern jukebox curator Keith Lipinski. A native of Berwyn, Keith moved to Chicago in 1997 and started working the door at Simon's two years later. Having first been drawn to Simon's by its jukebox, he says he got a musical education from the bar's then head bartender. "When he left," Keith says, "it all the sudden came upon these shoulders to take care of the jukebox." He tells Gene that he felt a little overwhelmed by the job at first, but after a few weeks things "smoothed out" when patrons recognized that he knew what he was doing. In time, that recognition would come from the Chicago Reader's Best of Chicago poll, which has given Simon's best jukebox honors four times. Keith says he was always a big music fan, remembering that "in college times, when friends of mine were going on dates or doing drugs, I was just listening to a lot of great music and hanging out at a lot of great record stores in Chicago, picking up as much music as possible." Going back further, he says MTV raised him, "and that also helped my musical education and pedigree." Keith talks about his approach to stocking Simon's CD jukebox with "a little bit of everything" and how he thinks of it as his third kid. "And I had the juke before I had either of the kids, so they should know the pecking order," he jokes. He now works at the bar only about once a month but is still drawn to the "Simon's room.” “It's hard to describe,” he says, “but it's almost like magic to me, where if you have the perfect song going on at the perfect time, it's really, really good."

Episode 6: Marc Kelly Smith

On Episode 6 Gene talks to Marc Kelly Smith, founder of the world-famous Uptown Poetry Slam. Smith talks about the event's humble beginnings at the now-defunct Get Me High Lounge in Wicker Park. At that time, poetry readings were sparsely attended. "If you had 10 people, you were successful," Smith recalls. But there was another problem: "They were all so very self-indulgent, snobbish, cliquish. Here's this passionate art form and everybody is presenting it very boring, like a professor in class." Inventing the event as he went along, Smith looked for poets "with a natural flair for performing," though, at the time, he says, "poets did not take performance seriously." Smith believes that pairing poetry with performance "created a higher art form." In the summer of 1986, Smith's event moved to its current home, the Green Mill, when the historic Uptown tavern was reopened by Dave Jemilo. There Smith transferred everything he had learned at the Get Me High and watched the poetry slam grow from five people showing up to "nights with 80 people in the audience." In time, the slam became not only a beloved Chicago institution but a worldwide phenomenon, playing to audiences of hundreds in Europe and Asia. Despite having always kept his "private life pretty private," Smith opens up to Gene, relating stories of his "extreme love-hate relationship with the stage" and struggles he’s had with stage fright. He also touches on his time growing up on Chicago's "blue-collar" Southeast Side, where he discovered his "knack for writing" -- despite not having attempted to read a book until the seventh grade. That book, recommended to him by a teacher, changed his life.

Episode 5: The Gene Pool Story (Part 3)

Episode 5 finds Gene in a more ruminative place, talking to Studio C's Andy Miles about his mental health struggles, specifically his coming to terms with a bipolar disorder diagnosis after spending a week in a Brooklyn psych ward. That helped motivate his decision to "get the hell out of Brooklyn" and settle for a time in an Ohio farm house. He started writing poems as a way to recover from those tumultuous times and has never stopped writing; at last count he has penned about 2,000 poems, several of which he reads in the episode. "The land my mind lives in is treacherous but friendly," he says in one of them. Gene also tells the story of his bottle cap, zebra and Mr. Nice Guy suits and performs one of his all-time favorite songs, calling it a "flawless work of art."

Episode 4: The Gene Pool Story (Part 2)

In this fourth episode of The Gene Pool Show, Gene tells (another part of) his life story to Studio C's Andy Miles, and performs one of his songs. He talks about moving to Chicago in 1983, and to "desolate" Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1989, at a time when "you could not pay someone to come to a party from Manhattan." While living there, Charles Mingus' daughter connected him to Rolling Stone cover photographer Mark Seliger. Gene colorfully reminisces about the work he did assisting Seliger on photo shoots of Seinfeld's Michael Richards, the singer Beck, and actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Drew Barrymore. Later Gene had a role riding his unicycle as a bald clown in the Seliger-directed Natalie Merchant video "Kind and Generous." He tells the story of how he learned to ride the unicycle he found in the garbage and how he came to be known as the can man, wearing a suit made of beer cans to promote the cause of curbside recycling in New York City. The can suit brought him local fame, landing him in the pages of New York magazines and, once, in police custody; late in the episode, he tells that story.

Episode 3: Ty Hanson (Part 2)

Episode 3 features Gene’s second interview with Ty Hanson, a drummer and trombonist who played with Frank Sinatra, The Jackson 5, James Brown, and many more. In this conversation (see Episode 1 for Part 1), Ty reminisces about backing Little Richard, whom he calls "nice enough" but a "hard pill to swallow," contrasting the rock 'n' roll legend's difficult-to-please demeanor with the graciousness of New Orleans legend Dr. John. He relates the story of Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis arguing one night over who was the better rock 'n' roller, taking their heated dispute out to the alley (Hanson declines to say who prevailed). He remembers James Brown's penchant for fining the musicians in his band, reducing their night's pay for on-stage infractions, and how the Godfather of Soul was all "about the business," maintaining a social distance from members of his band. Hanson also reveals the one thing that made him lose respect for Ike Turner. Late in the interview, Gene asks Ty about his decision to retire from the business; music put years on you, Hanson says, until you become "like an old leather jacket."