Mar 19, 2020
Written by
Steve Miller
(Former member of The FIX) from the Turn It Down Blog
2012
When I came home one afternoon, I realized that being part of a
nascent music scene meant some great perks.
Other than the loud noise you could inflict on strangers, the
Bad
Brains would roll you joints in your living room, play your
entire Pablo Moses collection with the bass turned up the right way
and cook spinach noodles with spicy peanut sauce for
lunch.
In the ‘80s, the music may not have been any better than
today, but it was easier to find because it stuck out more. In
Lansing, it sometimes came to my door.
As a member of a Lansing-based hardcore outfit called
the Fix, the only
such unit in town, I was also part of the network of hospitable
places to stay for bands touring the U.S. I had used the network
and it was only fair to give back.
The latter were also guests at the Beulah house. They outdrank us –
no easy feat – like the proud Canadians they were. One morning
D.O.A. bassist Randy Rampage was walking out to the van looking
rock as could be, with bleached do’ flying high and wallet chains
dangling hipside. Some kids came up and asked him if he was in a
band. “Yes, I’m in KISS,” Rampage told them.
Most of the local venues were at first tenuous and often one-time
only shots. There was a Hobie’s downtown, where the rich realtors
are now building their so-called “lofts” off Washington, that was
used on at least one occasion. That would be the night Ron Wood of
The Dogs
let off a fire extinguisher toward the end of a Fix set in the
jammed back room of the eatery, choking every drunk soul in the
place.
The
Lansing Civic
Players hall also worked a couple of times –
Minor Threat on
one packed bill. That place ended in acrimony when someone uptight
noticed that local heroes the Crucifucks were on a bill that was to
include Boston hardcore band
SS Decontrol who
were big for five minutes.
It wasn’t that the
Crucifucks were
on the bill, but the flyer. “The Civic Players found out about it
and I got like thirty calls in the middle of the night,” said
Meatmen
honcho
Tesco Vee, who was
putting the show together. “I put my phone number on that flier,
and some guy started calling, “What the hell is this Crucifucks
shit?” Vee, of course, also co-founded the legendary
Touch & Go zine in Lansing along with Dave Stimson.
Madison had Merlins, Ann Arbor had the Second Chance; what was
taking E.L. so long to establish a full-time venue for our music?
What is now
Harper's
in downtown East Lansing was Dooley’s at the time. It was good to
go just one night a week, the usually dead Mondays. The
Stranglers played
there twice, as did the
Ramones,
X, even
U2.
Johnny
Thunders and Gang War came and
Thunders spent
the night in the East Lansing jail. “The dumb fuck robbed the bar
and left a trail of coins out to the van,” says Ron Cooke, Gang War
bassist.
When
Flat, Black & Circular owners Dave Bernath and Dick Rosemont
opened a small café in East Lansing, a lot of folks thought that
the college town was catching up.
Bunches
Continental Café served sandwiches with sprouts on them, then
at night opened its glass tabletops and Cali-copped wooden booths
to music. Not some weak jazz or blues that was wasting everyone’s
time in the area, but real music with a backbone.
Gun
Club played two sets one night in March 1982 to almost nobody.
Jeffrey Lee
Pierce’s plastic cowboy boots hurt his credibility. It was the
Ward Dotson/Rob Ritter version touring the
Fire of
Love LP.
R.E.M. wheeled in around the same time and was listless and
standoffish to the few curious locals there. Southern-fried hicks
trying to play some bastardized
Byrds. ‘They’ll
never amount to much,’ we sniffed. The band got $300 that night.
The Bad Brains showed up a couple weeks later and showed everyone
how it’s done. Two nights of mayhem that came off with nary a
blemish to the plants, the old-school glass pie display and other
very enticing breakables.
The Boners from Detroit played Bunches, and singer Jerry Vile
couldn’t keep it together around the pastries. “Towards the door
there was one of those rotating things with pies in it,” recalls
Paul Zimmerman, who put out the White Noise fanzine with Vile in
the early '80s. “Jerry was eying that thing. Next thing I know, I’m
turned around talking to someone and sure enough he hit me with a
pie.”
The owners could have been mad, but nothing was busted. In fact,
“None of those glass tables ever got broken,” Bernath marvels
today. He was booking the good stuff with little regard to what
made him dough; MX-80 Sound
played to a dozen people. Eugene Chadbourne
came in. The
Flesheaters, the Panther
Burns. When the place closed in November 1982, Bernath was in talks to
bring NYC legends Suicide to
town.
Lansing didn’t have a Mr. Brown’s (Columbus) or a Seventh Street
Entry (Minneapolis). It did have a moving host of little
places, though, that could bring the national, now legendary,
noise.