Any feedback? I got the email saying they're doing t shirt printing of famous concert posters, offering free 930 Club tattoos, rebuilding parts of the old 930 Club and doing tour of the backstage? This sounds so cool!
Even though I've been backstage a few times I'm stoked!!
My one thought was "how can you recreate the old club without the smell?"
well that's easy
we will make it smell
I can still remember the old Club smell vividly. That odor would cling to me for days, like the Seinfeld BO episode. It was like a cross between sweat, smoke, stale beer, and something incredibly acrid...maybe rat piss. And yet I'll never forget how excited I was coming from a city like Chicago to see bands on that tiny stage. The first time I saw the 9:30 stage I laughed. It was so low, the place was so intimate. But to see Helmet, Oasis, Urge Overkill, Lloyd Cole, Bob Mould, Teenage Fanclub, the Goo Goo Dolls, and Catherine Wheel in that tiny space was so fun, so amazing. In a few years I felt like I was there every week...it was like a second home. The musicians often had just as good a time as the audience. I'm bummed I wasn't living in DC when Iggy Pop played there. It was one of the first places I had ever been in where you could lock eyes with a musician and they'd sing to you, and that changed the way concerts felt to me. I cannot wait for tonight.
And yes, the rats really were that out of control. I went backstage when Bob Mould played in 1993 and was let out the back of the club and I had to walk around to F Street. It was like something out of Indiana Jones. There were dead rats littering the alley, but also dozens of live ones that I was running through and stepping on to try to get away from them. It's not an exaggeration.