Where the Scene Was At In NYC

As a rock & roll-obsessed New Yorker, I’ve long wished that somebody would write a detailed book on the many places where the music happened in my hometown. When such a book still wasn’t written by 2005, I started blogging about NYC’s lost rock & roll landmarks in my spare time—mainly to satisfy my own curiosity about these joints and the fine folks who performed and partied at them. Five years later, I’m no closer to being an authority on this vast subject than I was before, but I have learned a lot…so when Wolfgang’s Vault asked me to write a brief rundown on some key historical venues and clubs, I felt quite honored, and readily complied.

I haven’t yet delved as deeply into NYC’s ‘50s scene as I would like, simply because I’d be hard-pressed to track down so many untold and undocumented streetcorners, record hops, and uptown R&B bars. But the music’s earliest mass meetings were definitely Alan Freed’s colossal package shows. Most were held at the Brooklyn Paramount and the New York Paramount, though several other movie palaces and halls were also used. WWRL DJ Tommy “Dr. Jive” Smalls presented his own multi-act revues at the beyond-legendary Apollo Theater during the same period.

The Night Owl

Freed’s career may have been in scandalous ruins by the ‘60s, but venue possibilities expanded and exploded throughout the decade. Old movie theaters continued to be granted a second adolescence: Clay Cole’s and Soupy Sales’ package shows and even the Beatles at the NY Paramount; Sid Bernstein’s early British Invasion shows at the Academy of Music; and Murray the K’s twice-yearly revues at the Brooklyn Fox. The Village Theater (formerly Loew’s Commodore) showcased many an up-and-coming underground act and hip happening before “Wolfgang” took over and renamed it the Fillmore East—as did the nearby Anderson Theater. But the rock & roll nightclub also came into full fruition at this time, offering a more intimate, energetic, and audience-participatory experience. Naturally the Village boasted a ton of them—Gerde’s Folk City, the Gaslight Café, Café Wha? (that David Lee Roth’s uncle ran that joint is even more remarkable to me than its most famous discovery), Café au Go-Go, Trude Heller’s, the Night Owl, and Generation to name a few…not to mention the mind-melting Dom/Balloon Farm/Electric Circus crosstown on St. Marks.

There was the Peppermint Lounge, the Cheetah, Ungano’s, and the incredible Steve Paul’s the Scene on the West Side, and swank East Side discotheques like Arthur, the Phone Booth, Ondine, and L’Interdit. Numerous teen clubs sprouted throughout the boroughs and Long Island, most notably the Action House. And outdoor venues also proliferated—not only the Schaefer Music Festival at Wollman Rink in Central Park (co-founded by Ron Delsener and future CBGBs honcho Hilly Kristal), but also further-afield places like Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island, Gaelic Park in the Bronx, and even the grounds of Staten Island’s Daytop drug rehab center. The section of north-central Queens where I grew up was quite the hotbed of open-air action in particular—and we’re not just talking about the Beatles at Shea here. When I see old lineup schedules for the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the N.Y. Pavilion, and the Singer Bowl (footage from the Doors’ show/riot there wound up in the recent Doors documentary When You’re Strange), I imagine that my hipper-than-moi predecessors hardly had to schlep to Manhttan at all for kicks during those late-‘60s summers.

The Singer Bowl

The Fox.

The Cheetah

Peppermint Lounge

While Madison Square Garden and the Felt Forum hosted the hugest touring acts of the ‘70s, the Academy of Music (later rechristened the Palladium) and the Beacon Theatre still flew the flag for theater-scaled presentation, and the Bottom Line held up its end with a more cabaret-style setting. The go-go discotheque scene had sadly quieted, but there were still some in-crowd hangouts like Nobody’s and Harold C. Black’s 210 Loft.

The Paramount

A common theme running through most punk rock history books states that there were absolutely no clubs offering original live music in town before CBGB came along. However, with places like the upper floor of Max’s Kansas City, the Oscar Wilde Room at the Mercer Arts Center, the Hotel Diplomat, Club 82, Mother’s, and the Coventry in existence, this could not have been entirely true. CBs did eventually rule the roost, and Hilly Kristal even attempted to open a bigger satellite venue in the Anderson Theater; it didn’t last, but it did set a precedent for more successful large clubs like Hurrah, Bond’s Casino, Irving Plaza, and the Ritz. Other punk and post-punk places I wish I could have experienced include Great Gildersleeves, the Mudd Club, Club 57, the “new” Peppermint Lounge, the Pyramid, Danceteria, and the Dive.

My own time is actually not my favorite musical era, so I have not yet done as much research into ‘80s and ‘90s venues. I also moved to a whole other country at the turn of this century, and have just barely kept up with NYC’s changing live scene since then—which has shifted much of its current focus toward Brooklyn. Still, praise must be given to joints like the second Ritz (relocated to the old Studio 54 space), the Academy, Roseland, Tramps, the Lone Star, Maxwell’s (in the “sixth borough” that is Hoboken, N.J.), the old Knitting Factory on Houston, the Mercury Lounge, the Bowery Ballroom, Brownie’s, the Continental, Coney Island High (these last two never bothered to dismantle their sites, bless them), and numerous others too lost in time to mention. All stomping grounds of my generation’s formative years, and major waystations on the hopefully continuing trajectory of New York City rock & roll.

- Deena Canale (a.k.a. D.C.)

Guest writer, Deena Canale, is a New Yorker now based in Toronto. She blogs about old NYC rock & roll landmarks at http://streetsyoucrossed.blogspot.com. She also co-hosts the Real Cool Time radio show with her husband Rocky on CIUT-FM.

(http://www.ciut.fm)

(http://realcooltimeradio.blogspot.com)