And so we get to the venues, the clubs, the places where i went to see the music i loved, the music i grew up on, some of these places have been gone for years, one just changed it's name, stopped serving booze and became a kiddie dance club that still hosts shows you just can't get any booze there (See the Public Image Ltd. post), all of these places were within a few miles of all my apts/houses, in North Oakland and the Strip and downtown Oakland, now they're gone...
The Graffiti- i used to live a half a block from this place and the when i moved again i lived all of two blocks from this place, a great venue that mabye held 500 people tops, i'm not sure, i never found out, all i know is that it wasn't that big and it had a balcony and held some of the best shows of my life, i knew alot of guys in local ska bands and every know and then i'd be in the dressing room of this place getting people stoned and i used to like to look at the wall, there was one particular scribble by some guy named Kurt that stuck out among alot of other scribbles but it was in this joint that i saw Superchunk (at least twice, my nights here and at all the other places got real fuzzy), Dinosaur Jr., Mudhoney, Ween (which was fucking a brilliant 3 and half hours long or something, i just remember smoking copious amounts of weed) and a certain band known as Guided By Voices...
Rosebud- This place was connected to another venue on this list but outlasted that other venue by a few years i believe, another good small place to see a show, once again i'm guessing it held 5 or 600 but once again i have no fucking idea, i saw J. Mascis do an absolutely stellar solo set there, Camper Van Beethoven, The Black Keys, My Morning Jacket, Luna (at least twice i think), Calexico, The Dirty Three (who to this day i thank my lucky stars for seeing, there might have been 50 people at this show and i remember being fucking loaded and gushing to Warren Ellis about how much i loved the band) and Built to Spill on September 13th 2001, two days after the attack, a show where it seemed no one really knew how to act with all the shit going on in the world, a great show when i think back on it but i think the greatest thing about that night was when the band walked out and busted into the strains of Freebird for their encore, i mean America had just taken one on the chin and here was this American Indie Rock band playing a truly fucking American song and they tore it to fucking shreds, it clocked in at over 12 minutes long and for those 12 minutes the place maybe didn't forget but we remembered why we kicked ass, and this is from a bunch of dirty hipster kids who probably on the whole weren't all that patriotic to begin with but man did the place fucking erupt, people dancing and hugging and screaming the lyrics and beer flying and man did it feel good to have a release, easily one of the best moments i've ever experienced at any show...
Metropol- it was mainly a dance club for bad house music and techno, the site lines sucked and the sound could be muddy but it held a bit more people than the other places and was next door to the Rosebud, needless to say i developed a man crush on Jack White one night at this place watching the White Stripes, i also saw the pre-dad rock Wilco there a few times including a show with the late Jay Bennett, also say Son Volt there a couple times, a beautiful evening with the Cowboy Junkies, a kick ass show by the Flaming Lips and a couple of shows by Morphine, that last of which has been immortalized on this site and was one of the last shows the great Mark Sandman ever played before collapsing on stage in Rome, a great front man for a great band and another band i was honored to see play live...
Club Laga- was in the heart of Oakland near the university of Pittsburgh, a place i saw the least amount of shows in but a place that i saw a couple of doozies, i saw Jay Farrar solo here as well as a great show by Grandaddy but easily the best show i saw at Laga was Spiritualized, there is no need to profess my love for J. Spaceman and the gang, it has been well documented but on this night, with a seven piece band and J. sitting in a chair the whole time, the club called off the under age rules and let you drink wherever you wanted, as everyone filed out of the bar and towards the stage i got a spot right in the middle of the bar with a perfect view of the stage, i had a pocket full of sweeties that i began eating and had a couple of beers to wash them down with, needless to say i felt like i was levitating i was so high and the band was the perfect soundtrack to my warm and numb existence, absolutely mind blowingly good... of course Laga is also the place i saw the worst show ever, a not yet sober Chan Marshall mumble her way through a Cat Power gig, fucking awful...
Of course now Laga is the home to upscale condos or some such shit, Graffiti is the home of a high end car dealership, Rosebud is an empty space that has been about ten different things with nothing making it and Metropol is now that under 21 kiddie dance club, so if you happen to have a drink in your hand, raise a toast to the music of the Wilderness Years and hum along with me...
5 comments:
Built to Spill? The guys who did "Twin Falls" doing "Freebird"? you are, indeed, a fortunate man..
I most definitely raise a glass and a joint and a pill or two to you, Kono.
Also, I need to get out soon.
Nice post. Made me think of all my old haunts in Clevo. When I was a young whipper-snapper I saw Duran Duran do "Girls on Film" at Pirate's Cove in the flats. Not as hip as your examples but that's what we had to work with. Christ, I'm old.
"Cure for Pain" is an unheralded masterpiece.
That show around Sept 11 sounds amazing. I remember so well people not knowing how to act, feeling like celebrating anything was wrong.
In high school my friends were in bands, and only one of those bands "made it" and now they look back with smug adult understanding. Adam had a song in a Pepsi commercial and another in a Disney movie and lived off the royalties for ten years, and then when money ran out he started up a new band with a slew of songs that he'd been writing for years.
They're okay.
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