The Bars Of Our Youth: The Chance (Poughkeepsie, NY)

During the '90s, I was a local superstar bartender at a pretty popular bar in Poughkeepsie and it was during that time that I would occasionally bop around town to check out what was happening, especially if we were quiet and especially if The Chance Theater had a cool show happening.

The Chance started out as a movie theater in the 1920s and continues as a live music venue to this day, small enough for an intimate feel yet big enough to have acts like U2, The Rolling Stones, and Guns N' Roses. Of course, none of these are the bands I saw perform there because apparently I am a shut-in. To tell you the truth, I can't really remember who was playing on the few occasions that I was able to stop in, but what I do remember is the feeling of history that you get when you walk in the building. How could you not hear and feel the ghosts of past performers. Even if they are still alive and kickin' today, they have left their mark at The Chance.

I tried to get in to take few photos last Monday, but the email response to my inquiry stated, "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." For me, the negative side was getting that email too late and not being able to make my reunion with The Chance happen.

Who knows, though. I often have to get out that way so maybe there will be a follow up in the new year. --A Vapid Blonde

The Bars Of Our Youth: CBGB (New York City, NY)

CREDIT: Adam Di Carlo/Wikipedia

If you're searching for a definitive image of what a hardscrabble cutting edge rock club might have been, then look no further than the preserved images of the now extinct but once mighty CBGB.

Truth be told, I never considered myself worthy enough to pass through its doors but when I finally did summon the courage and cash to catch a few shows there in the late '80s, it was with much reverence and awe that I stepped through those doors.

I remember being floored by its rock n' roll pedigree and humbled by the names that had graced its stage before I was even walking well on my own (due of course to youth, not intoxication). Also etched deep in my gray matter is the revolting recollection of what may have been THE most vomit-inducing bathroom I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Still, I wish now that I had managed enough foresight to snap some photos or take a souvenir off the filthy walls in remembrance of a hallowed cave of pure raw rock energy.

Hot, sweaty, and loud, it embodied everything you wanted in a club and then some.

Agnostic Front, Sonic Youth (two that I actually saw), The Ramones, The Police, Blondie, Talking Heads, the list goes on and on and had it not been for the rantings of the Bowery Residents committee, who said a huge amount of back rent was owed, and the death of Hilly Kristal it may have lived on in some form or another.

As it was, the club closed its doors after birthing the careers of some of the world's most beloved acts and hosting nearly 50,000 bands on its grimy stage.

For the record, I remained ignorant up until THIS YEAR about the meaning of the name. CBGB & OMFUG means Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers. And yes, I had to look up the meaning of gormandizers. --Dufmanno

The Bars Of Our Youth: The Rathskeller (Boston, MA)

I consider myself lucky, nay, blessed to have lived in the Boston area in the '80s. There were so many great venues to see bands, but one stands out as the granddaddy of them all. The dive di tutti dives. A live venue second only to CBGB on the East Coast as a must play.

The Rathskeller. Or, as it was more affectionately known, The Rat.

I've been taking a walk down Memory Lane as I spark 20+ year-old memories about the bands I saw and the places I had the opportunity to hear them. The Rat was Boston's punk home in Kenmore Square. For the uninitiated, if you've ever seen a Red Sox game on TV and saw the ginormous CITGO sign over the Green Monster - that's Kenmore Square. Anyway, upstairs was a bar and a restaurant, but the happenins took place in the basement, the cellar. Dingy. Dimly lit. It was perfect. Long before I was able to walk through its doors it hosted bands like The Cars, Talking Heads, The Ramones, Mission of Burma - a veritable who's who of the punk and new wave scene. If you were up and coming, you played The Rat.

By the time I was able to go to all ages shows (18 and under at the time) or pony up a fake ID or go all legal like, I had the chance to see The Smithereens, Sonic Youth, local ska favorites, Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Bim Skala Bim, and a horrible show by one of my faves early on in their stellar career, The Pixies. I heard local punk stars, Gang Green, cover 'Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry" (1985?) and I saw Dropkick Murphys there about a year before The Rat closed its doors for good. I know there were others - lots of local bands - but the memory is not what it once was.

The Rat is now a restaurant - Eastern Standard Kitchen and Drinks - which is so not punk rock. Of course there were/are other places to see great live music, to see up-and-coming acts or those high profile ones that love the small venues, but there aren't many left like The Rat. Gone is gritty, dingy, dark, and beer-soaked. I'm happy I was able to drink it all in. --Mr. Big Dubya

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The Bars Of Our Youth: Cat's Cradle (Carrboro, NC)

When I turned eighteen, a whole new world opened up to me: I was no longer imprisoned by all-ages shows. I could see damn near any band I wanted at nearly any bar I chose. So I spent most weekends for the next ten to fifteen years at various bars in North Carolina. The bar I frequented most often was the Cat's Cradle, North Carolina's premiere spot for alternative bands.

CREDIT: Last.fm

Located in a strip mall (no, really!) in Carrboro*, NC, the Cradle only holds about six hundred people or so. The place is dark and smells of stale beer. There is no food. It is a bar in every sense of the word. It is also the halfway point between Atlanta and D.C., so every not-quite-huge alternative act stops by on their way through town. Who? Since September, Charlatans UK, Corinne Bailey Rae, Shooter Jennings, Billy Bragg, Jenny & Johnny, The Vaselines, Guided By Voices, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes, Blonde Redhead, and Ra Ra Riot have all graced the Cradle's stage.

While my friends and I caught a lot of local acts like Snatches Of Pink, Ben Folds Five, Superchunk, Sex Police, Southern Culture On The Skids, and Dillon Fence at the Cradle on a regular basis, it was the national acts that got us all excited. Over the years, we saw countless bands at the Cradle-- so many, in fact, that due to my failing memory and my inability to keep and cherish tokens of my life (like concert tickets), I cannot sit down and begin to list all the bands I have seen there. But here are four shows that I dearly remember:

My Top 4 Moments At The Cradle

4. Oasis (February 17, 1995)
Liam Gallagher stood onstage the whole evening, sneering, hands clenched behind his back, and, other than singing, attempted almost no interaction with the crowd. I fell in love with that snotty jerk.

3. The Cramps (February 14, 1992)
What better way to spend a lonely Valentine's Day than with Lux Interior and The Cramps? Highlight of the evening: Lux, who had been drinking bottles of wine all evening, uncorked one of the bottles with his teeth and spit it into the crowd. I still have the cork.

2. Nirvana (October 4, 1991)
College radio had been spinning "Smells Like Teen Spirit" nonstop for a solid month. Nevermind was released ten days before the concert. Never before (or since) had I seen a concert with so much hype surrounding it.

1. Johnny Quest w/ A Very Special Surprise Guest (July 26, 1991)
My friends and I were at the Cradle that night to see one of our favorite local funk bands, Johnny Quest, probably best known for the breakup song "The Heisman" and a frantic cover of Motorhead's "Ace Of Spades." About halfway through the set, Johnny Quest's lead singer said something along the lines of, "We have a very special guest for you tonight."

And out walked Susanna Hoffs.

Ms. Hoffs was performing in Raleigh earlier that evening, opening for Don Henley. I think her manager was the same dude that managed Johnny Quest or something like that. Anyway, like most young men who came of age in the '80s, I had the major hots for The Bangles and, specifically, Susanna Hoffs. So I was more than eager to see her perform. I pushed my way through the crowd and got about three rows from the stage.

She sang two songs. Both were covers. "Hazy Shade Of Winter" and "Feel Like Makin' Love."

And everyone thinks I'm crazy when I tell this story, but the entire time she was singing "Feel Like Makin' Love," she was singing to me. Staring at me. Undressing me with her eyes. All that.

No one ever believes this story.

But I didn't do anything about it. I was twenty-one and at that point in time had never been with a celebrity, so I scurried off to join my friends at the bar. Not that I have any regrets or anything.

*It still feels kind of weird writing Carrboro instead of Chapel Hill, but it's been 17 years since the club's moved, so I really should be over it by now.

The Bars Of Our Youth: Roseland Ballroom (New York City, NY)

Roseland Ballroom, New York City
CREDIT: Wikipedia

I might have been a little more circumspect if I had known just what sort of situation I was permitting myself to become embroiled in by standing right in what my more worldly friends were calling "the mosh pit" during the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert at the Roseland Ballroom, but in my frighteningly naïve rush to be close to the front, I had made a grave mistake.

Looking back, I would most certainly have given it a lot more thought when the droves of large lurching inebriates started pushing their way through the crowd and right up next to me.

It was only a matter of time, of course, and sure enough I was caught up in a frightening mix of concert frenzy and out of control body slamming that gave my buddies and I quite a run for our money.

This was back when most of the Chili Peppers used to perform without much clothing and were considered "cutting age," so that gives you a pretty good idea of exactly how old I am.

Roseland Ballroom, at the time, was considered a run down old dance hall with great acoustics and a large enough space to accommodate a band with a considerable following who weren’t quite ready to start playing the more prestigious halls or stadiums in the area. I remember getting to the ladies room as one of the most difficult personal quests I have ever made in an emergency situation and the dark corridors leading to it as some of the most frightening I have seen. This could have been due in large part to any number of substances flowing through my bloodstream at the time.

Not too long ago I went through old envelopes of ticket stubs and found more from Roseland than I had ever remembered: Love & Rockets, Red Hot Chili Peppers TWICE, Dave Edmunds, etc. And believe it or not, I have a difficult time remembering most of these.

Like the Beacon, it’s still alive and kicking with shows like Them Crooked Vultures, Social Distortion, and Del Mar and in a way, there is a strange beauty in knowing it will be around for years to come.

The Bars Of Our Youth: 9 Lansdowne (Boston, MA)

Living Colour
CREDIT: Seattle Weekly

In the late eighties during my college years, my roommate and I had the goal to hit a dance club every night of the week. I know, lofty aspirations. Forget about becoming a doctor or something meaningful. I needed to dance. My hair needed an outlet to express itself. Luckily for us, going to a school in Boston and living in the heart of the Back Bay left us with plenty of opportunity to hit up the night clubs throughout the city.

A favorite place was to check Lansdowne Street by Fenway. There was about a block or so that was littered with night club after night club. You could find any kind of music to suit your needs: house, punk, you name it. While I went more for house music for my clubbing needs, I did manage to experience other scenes.

Leaning more to the musical stylings of Madonna, I found myself a little in shock that I loved something as "heavy" as Living Colour. They were completely different to me: loud and hard, yet oddly danceable. I totally fell in love with them, well at least with "The Cult Of Personality." You can imagine how excited I was to find out that they were going to perform live at 9 Lansdowne, a club I frequented far too often. I must have used an entire bottle of Paul Mitchell Freeze and Shine to get my hair at an acceptable height and probably spent all my money on neon bicycle shorts or the properly torn acid wash jeans with which to bang my head at this show. Reserving just enough money to pay the cover and have about three Cape Codders, I may or may not have been a little under the drinking age, but no matter: my friend met the door man at summer camp. Yes, that's right. Summer camp. Of course, we were ushered in ahead of the line because obviously we had the right combination of high hair, spandex, and camp connections. Living Colour's performance met every expectation and more. The sound, their spandex, the entire vibe of the night was too cool. Just a big dance floor with a stage at one end and what seemed like a sea of people rockin' out in unison and little ole pasty white me trying to fit in the best I could.

I scoured the internet for information on that particular show and the only thing I could find was a Facebook listing of someone's top 5 or so live shows they saw in the '80s in Boston mentioning Living Colour at The Nine in 1989 which would be exactly when my hair was reaching stellar heights. --A Vapid Blonde

The Bars Of Our Youth: Beacon Theater (New York City, NY)

This is another stop on The Bars Of Our Youth, a twelve-part look at some of the clubs and bars the Culture Brats frequented in their younger days. Today, Dufmanno takes a look back at her nights at the Beacon Theater in New York City, New York.

The Beacon Theater
CREDIT: Wikipedia

You know that feeling you get when you are young and so seemingly indestructible that you could just go to show after show after show with no ill effects? Those, of course, were the days of endless concert going and weekend drinking where you and your group of similarly minded miscreant buddies were up for any number of treks into the city to see what bars would accept your frightfully inadequately altered New York driver's licenses.

You hit more than you missed and after a few cold ones it was time for whatever music you were there to hear.

More often than not, back in those days, we just got lucky. And it was exactly that kind of good fortune that had us standing less than ten feet from the stage watching people like The Replacements (summer 1987) and the Alarm at one of the best places to catch a concert: the Beacon Theater.

It was small enough to be considered intimate and large enough to feel like a resounding success for the band.

It had a grandiose golden interior that was reminiscent of all Old World theaters and was in need of a few repairs back when I was a regular (it has since undergone a well deserved 15 million dollar restoration) but it had style and the sound was out of this world.

I still have the three playing cards that The Alarm's Mike Peters threw into the front rows during a gig in December 1987 where I got my first kiss from my high school boyfriend right in the corridor under the huge chandelier after the last song. This was unfortunately witnessed by the entire class, including another potential suitor I was keeping on the back burner in case choice number one didn’t pan out, who had also made it into the city that night to catch the show.

Ahhh, memories. --Dufmanno

The Bars Of Our Youth: Hammerjacks (Baltimore, MD)

This is The Bars Of Our Youth, a twelve-part look at some of the clubs and bars the Culture Brats frequented in their younger days. Today, Dave takes a look back at the now defunct Hammerjacks in Baltimore, MD.

SOURCE: Hammerjacks Online

I was never much of a nightclub guy. In my high school and early college days in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland, I did go to a couple of places fairly regularly: a dance club called Maxwells and a bar/restaurant called Pappy's. There were two primary reasons I frequented those places: (1) the people I worked with at the time (most of whom were older than me) went there almost every week and (2) neither place was too particular about checking ID at the door. I missed the "grandfather" clause that allowed people under 21 to drink by a couple of years.

When I was finally old enough to (legally) get into any club or bar, I gotta be honest--most of the time my friends and I hit the strip clubs. (In Baltimore County, that meant bikini bars, but we thought they were pretty awesome.) I'm not sure how it first came about, but at some point, I'm guessing it was around 1989 or 1990, my buddies and I finally made a trek to the nightclub that was the subject of Baltimore legend. A place called Hammerjacks.

Hammerjacks went through three incarnations in its lifetime. It started its life in 1977 as a small tavern in a converted row house on Charles Street. It died quietly 29 years later as a two-story dance club that wasn't even a ghost of the memory of the phenomenal venue that the name still evokes in those of us who grew up in Baltimore during the 80s and 90s.

It's the "middle" Hammerjacks that I experienced, and it was a truly amazing place. Situated under Interstate 395 on South Howard Street, the second Hammerjacks was THE place to go for concerts starting in 1982. Built in an old beer warehouse, it was big enough to hold 2,500 people, and it had probably half a dozen bars scattered across the ground floor and a balcony level that ringed the "concert side." (The other section was known as the "club side.") It was big enough to attract name acts, but small enough to make the concert experience seem more intimate than a civic center or a stadium. Not that anybody who ever frequented Hammerjacks at the time would ever use the word "intimate" to describe it. The place was so famous (or infamous) that people outside of Baltimore had heard of it. A friend of mine once saw a Hammerjacks bumper sticker on a tank at an army base in Germany!

Hammerjacks was a big draw for '80s glam and metal bands. At one time or another, Faster Pussycat, Child's Play, Kix, Ratt, Skid Row, Extreme, and Poison all graced the stage. It was apparently one of Bret Michaels's favorite Baltimore hangouts. Guns N' Roses made their Baltimore debut on Hammerjacks' stage, and solo acts from famous bands like Brian May from Queen and Slash from Guns N' Roses often showed up. And local favorites Crack The Sky played there regularly.

But, like I said, my friends and I were more interested in strip clubs at the time. That's how we ended up as regulars at Hammerjacks. Every Tuesday night, there was a contest sponsored by local radio station WGRX. It rotated between "naughty negligee," "bikini," and "wet t-shirt." It was also 50-cent draft night. The combination of cheap beer and semi-naked women was too much for college guys to resist. The contest always started at around midnight, but the place was packed hours earlier. To get a spot right by the stage, we'd always arrive at around 9 PM. We'd take turns getting rounds of beer so we wouldn't lose our prime space. It was this ritual that taught me how many beers one person can carry. (Ten, provided nobody minds if your fingers are in the cups.)

I did manage to take in one concert at Hammerjacks: The Ramones. That was a truly amazing show. If you never got to see The Ramones live, you really missed out. It was like having a syringe full of pure adrenaline injected into your brain. I swear they played all of their songs that night in a little over an hour. They accomplished this by playing them at about 1.5 times their normal (already fast) speed, with only a quick, "1234!" separating one song from the next. What a rush! And we were really close to the stage, almost right above it, looking down from the upper level.

It was weird that I spent so much time at Hammerjacks. It was definitely not my normal vibe. It was dimly-lit, the walls were black and exposed brick, the bathrooms were bio-hazards where the floor was covered in questionable liquids and broken beer bottles (and, not infrequently, vomit), and the clientele were the typical '80s punk, hard-rock, and biker types that I normally avoided. But you know what? I loved every minute of it.

The second incarnation of Hammerjacks closed its doors in 1997, when it was torn down to create a parking lot when the Baltimore Ravens' new stadium was built. On that day, Baltimore mourned. That place will always be alive in our memories, though... and on the Internet as well. When I was poking around the Web recently, I found out that you can still buy t-shirts and bumper stickers with the Hammerjacks logo on them. (There's also an awesome vintage video mini-documentary about Hammerjacks on the site. Check it out!)

If you aren't a Baltimore native, it might be tough to understand the allure of the place. But for us, Hammerjacks rocked! --Dave