Dreaming about Rock Clubs
I don’t often remember my dreams. But when I woke up (way too early) this morning, I vividly remembered dreaming about being in a live music club, watching a band I didn’t know, feeling right at home. The venue changed a couple of times (one version was mostly outdoors) but the band stayed the same and the crowd did as well.
I even spoke to the guy standing next to me in the dream about how it doesn’t matter where or when you are, most clubs look very much the same. There’s comfort in that, I think. The matte black walls, cheap paneling, smell of industrial disinfectant along with stale beer are almost ubiquitous. Thankfully the accompanying odor of stale cigarette smoke is not anymore.
I started going to the Cat's Cradle in the very early ‘80s when it was still behind Dips on Rosemary – a location that I was to become intimately familiar with. When Dave moved it to Franklin Street and Judy opened Rhythm Alley there, I hung out there too (and met Jeannette there and got married there and eventually bought it, but that’s a different story).
There are tons of iconic clubs that I never made it to, particularly the NYC-area stalwarts like CBGB’s, and Maxwell’s across the river, but I spent many nights in the old 9:30 Club in DC and I can’t imagine that the famed stench of the bathrooms at CBGB’s was any worse than that of that basement pisshole at 930 F Street.
Back before the Interwebs, J and I used to joke about how to find our way around an unfamiliar city. There was always a web of health food stores, vegetarian restaurants, independent record stores and music clubs, most of which would have bulletin boards with flyers for the others. So you only had to find one. That’s how we found 12th and Porter under the Interstate, next to a repo lot in Nashville a few decades ago.
Certainly not all clubs share that black-walled paneled-bar aesthetic. I stumbled across Zaphod Beeblebrox in By Ward Market in Ottawa many years ago (I think it closed a few years ago) and while I may be misremembering, it seemed like it had white walls, which was quite the novelty.
On the other hand, The Milestone in Charlotte has been an exemplary of a place you’d never step foot into if it wasn’t for the awesome bands you knew you’d hear and see. Bill Flowers bought the building and started booking music there in 1969, around the same time as Cat's Cradle opened its doors. It is astounding to me that both of them are still going after 55 years.
I don’t go nearly as often as I once did. The aches and pains of aging make it hard to stand around for hours anymore (that’s why at the Cat's Cradle Back Room, you’ll likely find me on a bar stool leaning against the back wall). But I’ll never stop going altogether.
“Clubs” are a good name for music venues like these – like the Brewery or Culture Club or Secret Garden were back in their day and like Local 506 and the Pour House and the rest of them are today. They’re like clubs for people that dig live music, but they’re not exclusive – I've never walked into a music club in any city in North America and felt like I was out of place.
Maybe that was the point of the dream – the shifting of the club but with the same folks and the same bands. There’s a comfort in knowing that there’s a network of places across the country (and I’m sure across the world) where folks like me can go and hear music and share it with friends that we haven’t yet met. It’s a good thing.
