- [Voiceover] Okay, that's Even Worse.
Downloaded from YTS.MX
We're gonna take just about a ten minute break
and bring up Millions of Dead Cops
we're running late.
We're also gonna show the movie right now.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
It's gonna be on the wall.
If you're looking at the stage it'll be
on the left on the wall.
Stage left. (laughter)
Give it a second.
(hardcore music starting up)
- [Lou] This is where this shit started.
On the inside of my first album there's
a photograph of the wall of death taken here
in 1987 at the Superbowl.
This is where it started.
Ladies and gentlemen on the floor and in
the balcony, Craig side.
Make some noise!
(cheering)
When the music starts I need you to go that way.
Can you do it?
Ladies and gentlemen on the floor,
and in the balcony on Pete's Side.
Make some noise!
(cheering)
When the music starts I need you to go that way.
Can you do it?
(cheering)
(screaming)
Craig side are you ready?
(cheering)
Pete side are you ready?
(cheering)
Is everybody ready?
Shhh, now nobody sue us if you get hurt alright?
- [voiceover] Counter Attack, the show that tries
to expose the alternative point of view.
This week's topic, Alternative Music.
With our special guest promoter, Randy Now.
And now, here's your host, Tom Schweck.
- Hello and welcome to another edition
of Counter Attack.
Our special guest this week is promoter,
Mr. Randy Now.
Hi, Randy thanks for being here.
- Tom, how are you tonight?
- I'm alright. - [Randy] Great.
- Randy, for the people that don't know,
could you explain exactly what a promoter does?
- Okay, a promoter is the person who
will call the agency in New York or Los Angeles
that represents the band that you may want
that you know who's coming over from England
or wherever they're from.
And you set up the show, you set up the
guarantee, you make your promise of what
you can pay the band, and you see to it that
everything is fulfilled that's per their contract.
You make sure that the band has the right sound,
the right riders, right advertising,
and you just hope that you can get enough
people to pay the admission to pay the band
and all the other expenses.
- Could you explain like, the type of music
that you book at the shows you do?
- [Randy] Okay a lot of people like to call the
music that I book "alternative music",
mostly 'cause it's only played
on college radio stations.
Bands that I book you won't hear on the
50,000 watt stations, the WMMR's or
the WPST's, it's alternative music.
It's also, we do hardcore, or reggae,
or new wave, all aspects of the underground
movement is covered with our booking policy.
- Why do you feel it's ("Furniture" by FUGAZI)
important to book this type of band?
- To rid ourselves of dinosaur rock
like Led Zeppelin.
A lot of people, you can't believe how many people,
17-year-old kids that still think Led Zeppelin
rules and the first album came out and
they were three years old.
Ya know, it's kinda like me listening
to 50's music and saying like you know,
"Yeah, yeah, yeah that's the real music."
- Do you feel that promoting is
a good business to get into?
- Not at all, nope.
Not at all, not one bit.
I don't know why I do it.
🎜 Fugazi - 'Furniture' music plays 🎜
I must be insane.
🎜 Nobody can hear the missing 🎜
🎜 They just look at my mouth and look in my mouth 🎜
🎜 and look in my mouth and say hey man 🎜
🎜 I know where you're comin' from 🎜
🎜 Yeah bullshit 🎜
- One thing's interesting about my world
is that with a lot of the venues,
because I was in the band and we would load
in early, I actually never went to the front door.
I never went through the lobby if there was one.
I just don't know it, I only would know...
I know most venues by the backdoor.
Usually we'd get there at say, one o'clock
in the afternoon, front doors are locked.
So, my relationship with most clubs has not...
I don't have any idea of, you know,
what their popcorn stand looks like
if they even have popcorn stand.
What I think about is just like,
the dressing room, and the stage area.
And as I remember, and I could be wrong,
I seem to think, was the dressing floor was on
the second floor, was there a second floor
for the dressing room?
It was a really filthy club.
- One night we were playing and the drummer,
we go out to put the drums in the car to leave
at like two o'clock in the morning,
and his car was stolen.
That was like, devastating to me but that was
not uncommon in that environment,
and I know plenty of bands that got
their equipment stolen out of that parking lot.
But you know, that was the environment.
That's what it...(laughs)
That's what it was.
In fact, we were real proactive that night
we all jumped in my other guitar player's car
and we drove around until we found the guy.
We actually saw him driving up Calhoun Street
in my friend's Galaxy that he had gotten stolen,
and he was some kind of a druggie that had like,
hemorrhoids or piles or something.
He had all these diapers in the car.
He didn't really want that car back.
- So at one point there was probably maybe
400 people in the place, and I would say
at least 75 to 100 are involved in this fight
where everyone is basically throwing chairs.
And they had these little plastic chairs that
you would almost see in grade schools.
Like, the little plastic chairs and chairs
were flying everywhere.
The band is playing for about 45 seconds still,
while we're all running around grabbing
people and throwin' 'em out.
Then they just stopped and watched.
So it was...
- [Director's voice] The band did?
- The band did, yeah.
- I know who the fuck you are!
You're the guy who fuckin' showed up
eight hours late, and didn't fuckin' call
'cause you were too busy doing coke
in New York last night after your fuckin' show,
and you're also the fuckin' guy who's gonna get
the fuck of my stage so that I can get the
opening band on, get all your stupid fans in here,
and get this fuckin' show over with.
- What was the band, The Exploited
we were talking about, the guy came out.
You know, they were maybe band two
out of five one night.
Song starts, grabs his mic of the stand,
sings the first verse, "blah blah blah blah
blah", guitar interlude
he swings his mic around on the stand and
smacks it in the I-beam, pulls it down
it doesn't work.
Grabs this mic over here,
second verse.
Swings the mic into the I-beam,
that one doesn't work.
There's third mic over here, he grabs that one.
Same thing, swings that in the I-beam
that one breaks.
I have to run back to the office,
"Hey Tut, I need to get some more mics
"I need to get under the stage to unlock
"the thing to get more mics out",
'cause we would set up for five bands
and you'd set up two guitars, bass, drum,
three vocals across the front,
maybe a drummer vocal, that's it lock
everything else up 'cause you don't know
what's going on backstage with bands
coming on and off.
"Tut, I need to get more mics out,
"the band just broke."
"Why what happened?"
"The band just broke three vocal mics."
- Every time that we played City Gardens,
that was a time when my stage fright,
which I carried everywhere we went,
was at it's most intense.
And I don't think there was a single time
that we played there that I didn't throw up
right before going on stage.
Just out of sheer nervousness.
The funny thing is that, the crowds there were
probably more into what we doing than
any place else we ever played.
I think maybe it just came down to
the people who came to City Gardens
were people that you really wanted to please,
because they were so
willing to take a chance on a band.
They just loved the idea that someone was
gonna go up on that stage and try to
give them a good time.
("Old School" by The Bouncing Souls)
- [Randy] How's everybody doing tonight?
(cheering)
(guitar strum) (applause)
Now welcome to the Record Collector,
and happy Fez Day.
I need to say a couple things before
we get rollin' here.
Tomorrow night, Raymond the Amish Comic
will be here in the house. (applause and cheering)
Listen to that applause for
Raymond the Amish Comic.
He's damn funny, let me tell ya.
If you're not doin' anything tomorrow night,
he'll be delivering his Good Friday sermon.
Tomorrow night, Raymond the Amish Comic.
No cameras, please, no cameras
for Raymond the Amish Comic.
Nobody gets that joke.
I had an uncle who's passed now
he said, back in like '63, '64 we had the old
RCA Victor 45 RPM player,
you only played 45's you'd stack 'em.
He says I'd have a stack of 45's and I could
just like, pick by the label.
Maybe even at younger than '63, to the age where
I wasn't even old enough to read,
and I was just pickin', you know, this red label
meant that it was you know whatever, Johnny Cash
or Buddy Holly, and I would put 'em on this
record player and play the records.
We had a comedy record, it was kind of like
a real risque double entendre record,
and they were called "Cornbread and Biscuits".
And my brother and I would reenact this routine
it was called The Great...
What was it called?
I forget what it was called.
I have a copy of it, The Great Bartender
or something, but the two guys speaking
were Cornbread and Biscuits,
and once again, we mimicked this whole...
You know, back and forth in a bar of these
two guys, never realizing they were talking
about sticking needles in their arms
and smokin' pot.
And I also remember probably in my
early teens, sponsoring a bike race.
Behind our house was a blacktop and a park,
and the blacktop had a couple basketball courts.
It was just a rim and none of the string
was ever left, everybody stole it all the time.
But we would have bicycle races this one summer,
and we started just innocently, you know,
have four or five kids on their Schwinn Stingray
bikes at that time.
Kids on bikes would just collide into each other
and really wreck their bikes and their spokes,
and broken arms and broken necks.
I can remember ambulances coming down through
our yard actually pickin' up kids and takin'
'em away and you know if we were to do
that now we'd probably get arrested,
and sewed, but I was only about 12 years old.
I guess that's probably one of my earliest
promotion things other than having cool-aid stands.
This was probably around 1988.
Course a lot of punk bands started stealing
the Converse Chuck Taylor logo,
but I betcha I was the first to do that.
This is the coolest one here.
This is my company Other Side Productions,
'84 to '88, and then on the back of the shirt
I had all the bands listed on here that
played in '84 to '88.
- [Tom] How I met Randy was
quite by accident.
A friend of mine from school told me that there
was this guy, DJ'ing at this club way out
in New Egypt, New Jersey which is completely
rural and not a rock and roll destination
by any stretch.
Me and like, two other friends we went out there
probably for three months, I think it was
Thursday nights that he was doin' it,
and the bar was called The Central House.
- And it was just like blue collar, rednecks,
the guys from the New Egypt Speedway would
come out there and drink their beers and stuff.
And we're out there playing like,
Ian Dury and the Blockheads,
Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll,
and Graham Parker, Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello
and maybe even throw in like a Dirty Water
by the Standells.
And they hated us.
I had bought these Klipsch speakers by then,
these huge, monster, La Scala speakers.
I was probably the greatest sounding DJ
playing to them, the shittiest music in the world,
but to me it was the greatest music in the world.
- He also DJ'ed at other places,
he would be a guest DJ at Emerald City.
He DJ'ed for Alice Cooper.
Emerald City was a beautiful club, beautiful.
It was the old Latin casino.
(🎜 music plays 🎜)
- [Tom] Not only was he playin' all this
current stuff, but he was also playin' a lot
of British invasion, some soul like Shirley Ellis.
- [Trish] He'd be up there flippin'
through 'em as fast as possible, just thinkin'
like, you know, I don't know how he thought
about it, but he'd be able to pick
the right songs.
- [Tom] All these different records but it was,
all makin' sense, like it all worked.
- [Randy] There was a kid in Trenton named
Tony Nini, he was like a disco DJ.
Of course he played all the hits and
he was popular, and he actually invited me
to a dance on his turf or territory.
I went in there and I, once again I'm breakin'
out my Plastic Bertrand, Ca Plane Pour Moi,
or The Stranglers.
The Dead Kennedys at that time,
and I got spit on I remember being spit on
by some kid, "You suck [SPIT]".
- He said, "Hey I got this new gig,
"it's at this place in Trenton.
"Do you wanna go?"
- [Randy] I finally saw an ad for this
bar in Trenton, and it was called City Gardens,
it was called King Tut's City Gardens,
got the number called them up, "Hey, how ya
"doin', my name's Randy", and I was still
Randy Ellis not Randy Now yet at that point.
And I said, "I'm a new wave DJ", and he said,
"A new what?"
- And we went to this place, City Gardens,
and I was never to Trenton before and it was
kind of a culture shock.
- We had a blast even though it was on
Calhoun Street in Trenton.
It was an area I'd probably never even been
to before.
- And that was the very first night
of City Gardens.
(🎜 House of Others - "Memento Mori" plays 🎜)
- [Johnny] It was very modest in the beginning,
there was just Randy, a handful of people.
The venue City Gardens was this enormous
commercial space, but they were only using
a very small portion of it in the back.
- [Randy] On top was a US One Motors neon,
was still up there, but it was so old
and hadn't been used for years it was just
fallin' off, when the wind blew pieces of it
were fallin' off and they were fallin'
right down where the doors were right below you.
- [Trish] City Gardens had two rooms.
One at the back bar, and the front bar.
In the beginning, the front bar was not open
it was just the back bar.
- It's like this, this big empty space here,
there was just a big empty space,
and the club was in the back.
- [Randy] And when I started DJ'ing there
on that Sunday, that was probably pretty much
when I said, "Hey you know, I got a couple of
"friends that are in bands. Let me see
"if I can bring a couple of bands in here",
that did original music, not the whole
cover thing.
(cheering)
Tonight we have two bands,
we have Plainfield Slim & The Groundhogs,
and we have from Germany,
their first night performing in America
right here at the Record Collector.
Please welcome Space Rangers.
From Germany. (applause and cheering)
(🎜 Space Rangers - 'Cold Blooded' music plays 🎜)
- [Jack & George] So, hi I'm Jack and...
- I'm Gorgeous George Messina.
- From The Shades.
We started at City Gardens in 1979.
We think we're the first rock band to play there,
and Randy brought us over from a little club
called "Brothers" in Mercerville
where we were packin' the house twice a week.
- [Johnny] Brothers was this suburban
very safe, Top 40 Disco Room.
And on the weekends they would have some
national acts and they would have all their
A-List bands, and they gave all of us the
off nights, they would give us
Wednesdays, Thursdays.
One of the bands I worked with, The Shades,
had a lot of original material and they had
bigger plans, they wanted to open for people
and they wanted to tour.
Randy Ellis, Randy Now, was a drummer in
a band called Rock Slide, and he also played
there, but he also was DJ'ing.
- When we got started there were no clubs.
There's was nothing, it was the beginning
of that sort of new wave thing.
And then after about a year or so,
clubs started opening up.
- Yeah at first we were just playing private
parties, trying to play something at
- the university. - Right.
- [Johnny] And then he opened up this room
in the city limits, in the city of Trenton
on Calhoun Street, this placed called
King Tut's City Gardens.
- [Jack] And we jumped at it,
I think Scott went there first, our bass player.
Took a look at the room, and it wasn't the
room that it ended up being it was
the room on a left.
Smaller stage, and I can't even remember if
we brought our own sound system
in, we probably - I think we did.
- brought our own sound system.
- And somewhere in the midst of that,
- Yeah. - Clubs started opening
in New Jersey and City Gardens was one of them,
and they were like, "Oh man, this is great,
there's actually something right in our backyard
and it's big and it's good
- and all that sort of stuff. - Because there was also the
issue of the New Jersey scene was filled
with clubs but they were all cover
- band clubs. - Right.
- We had a sound company in Trenton
Joe's Sound & Salami Company,
City Gardens approached us to help them with
their sound, and we good at helping people
get the most sound out of their dollar
and not getting ripped off really by showing
people how to buy top notch pro gear
on the used market and stuff.
So they had a world class sound system
that they basically picked up at a bargain.
So around '82 I went in there.
My first show I think was Thompson Twins.
Or The Members for USA Hotspots.
- [Female Voice] Good evening, and welcome
to USA Hot Spots.
Tonight we take you to one of the larger
clubs we've been to so far.
City Garden in Trenton, New Jersey.
Two four six eight - 🎜 N.Y. Citizens 'Rude Girls' - music plays 🎜
- [Johnny] Once we started going over to City Gardens
and Randy you know, he built it up with the DJ
thing and then he started booking his friends
over there, it was different.
Calhoun street, for those who don't know,
Calhoun Street, Trenton was an incredibly
dangerous place, not unlike CBGB's in the Bowery.
It was not some place that you went out
of your way to go to.
- If you've never been to the club,
going there your first time...
You get lost.
- [Milo] Gah, I just remember it being
hard to get in Trenton too. (laughs)
I don't know if was they way the turnpike
was laid out then or anything like that,
but we'd get lost a few times just getting
in to Trenton.
- [Karl] It was probably about an hour
from our house once we actually learned
how to get there the right way.
- It's confusing, it's a hard place to find
if you don't know where you're going.
- [Harley] Every gig outside of New York
was usually just a van ride in to some ghetto,
somewhere, because hardcore shows for the
most part were always in shitty neighborhoods
or run down areas, so it was never like...
You were never pulling up to some nice you know,
up to a good neighborhood and a nice club
with a good PA and nice monitors (laughs),
and friendly fuckin', "Hey, alright!"
- [Rob] It was really nothing that
showed you what it was except for the little
tag with City Gardens up on the upper corner
of the building.
Wasn't any big murals or any giant music
notes or anything like, "Hey, check out
"our cool fancy club."
It was just a big, giant, crazy warehouse
surrounded by a soccer field and woods.
- [Jon Stewart] You know, it was surrounded by
like, half a chain link fence.
There was like, there'd be two panels, then there'd
be like a break, be a couple more panels
and a break, and a hole, and another panel.
I think if you went there and you drank
and danced long enough, they just assumed
you worked there.
- The club had the nickname of Shitty Gardens,
but to us, it wasn't a club.
That was the area around it.
I don't know how it really was, but we were
driving through there, "Man this place is such a shithole".
(laughter)
- [Rob] And once you went inside it had
the checkerboard floor, a big bar,
and these weird little statues hanging
from the walls and stuff, and you're like,
"Okay. I'm in a club."
- In some ways it was kind of a unique culture
experience, New Jersey compared to New York
and The Big Apple and whatnot.
It was a big ole warehouse.
Big kind of barn painted black inside.
Punk, and rock 'n' roller proof.
- [Ian] I kind remember like,
the stage being covered with pieces of tape.
It never got cleaned.
Probably was a bathroom in the backstage area,
which I think deeply,
actually I know was deeply appreciated.
There's nothing worse than having to go
to the bathroom in the general bathroom.
Especially if you have to take a shit
and people are talkin' to you and they're like,
"Oh my God, dude I love your band." Great.
(laughter)
- [Henry] And then if you walked off stage left,
along the venue there was another dressing room
up a flight of stairs, way down the venue.
That's the one I was always in.
- I'm short and those,
couple of the urinals when you first stepped
in were kinda high up and it was like,
I don't want my junk to touch that urinal,
so you kinda had to arc it,
and stand back, and it was just not
good for me at all, that bathroom.
It was disgusting any way, but it was really bad.
- I'd never seen so many Trans Ams.
- The shape it was in was like the shape
that would survive.
- The first time I actually went to the club
I was in high school, and it was only
the back room, the front room wasn't open at all.
There was a band called Bricks Mortar
playing there I think.
And then I guess I came back in high school
when they had moved the stage to
the front, sorta the building, it was like
long ways facing across the room.
And that was 999.
- I brought in 999 from England.
What happened was, they were supposed to play
a club in Passaic called Hitsville,
which was doin' 999, they were doin'
Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Squeeze,
and probably even Elvis Costello very early
like '79 or so.
And they closed down, so there was 999 sittin'
lookin' for a gig somewhere.
So I found out who to call.
It was an agency called Frontier Booking, FBI,
and was run by Ian Copeland.
- That was Randy's big achievement that he
booked this band, and it was packed.
- [Randy] We probably paid $2,000 for 999,
we probably paid too much but we didn't know
a thing, we didn't know how much, who was what.
They said, "We need $2,000", and we said, "OK."
And 999 played to probably 600 people,
it was probably a $5 door.
It was 18 years old to drink back then,
and believe me that mean that you were
15 in there drinking.
Ya know, it just didn't matter back then.
- [Tom] Probably five to 600 people,
and that's when it was like, "Oh man we
"can really do this. We can really actually
"pull this off."
- [George] We always had this feeling,
I liken it to The Little Rascals, our gang
putting on the show with the...
He had this vision of what he wanted
and how the show should run,
and he emceed it, and ran it well.
🎜 Kevin Seconds - 'City Gardens Bound' music plays 🎜
🎜 Pittsburgh and Delaware 🎜
- [Randy] After the success of 999 through
Ian Copeland, he gave me Wall of Voodoo,
and Joan Jett, and REM was another one.
I remember paying REM $500,
and I remember the contract rider was
a 6-pack of beer, and four towels.
- [Jack] To me, City Gardens was the
immediate vanguard of what began in the 80's.
Things we just getting going.
The thing about New York is they had
a history already.
They had the Velvet Underground
obviously in the 60's.
The Stooges, and the MC5 came to New York often
and played at Max's Kansas City
and some of the other venues,
and had done famous things here like
when Iggy Pop tore up his chest at
Max's Kansas City I think in 1973.
The New York Dolls.
They were extremely popular throughout
the mid 70's.
So by the time the CBGB scene began
circa 1974, it wasn't completely
out of the blue.
All it needed was a regular venue
and the right guy running it who could
tolerate all kinds of weirdness happening.
And once you had Patty Smith and
The Talking Heads, and The Ramones,
and Richard Hell and all those people.
Television.
It became like this great dumping ground for
people from everywhere to come to New York
and become part of that 'cause that's
the scene they were looking for.
For us to come from places like Cleveland and
play there was just how we ended up with
The Dead Boys moving to New York.
By the time you get to the 80's now there
are scenes pretty much in about 20 cities.
This little touring scene that starts up
becomes an actual way for independent rock bands
to make a very small go of it.
- What do you feel is the high point
of your career as a promoter?
- After this interview with you, Tom,
well there's a lot of things.
A lot of bands I really take pride in that I booked.
The Thompson Twins first show in America,
Flock of Seagulls, even stuff like Billy Idol,
Dead Kennedys, I'm the only person to have
booked them seven times in the last six years
every year and not get closed down by the police
doing a Dead Kennedys show.
Lot of bands, lot of things.
Mostly I guess the British bands, The Public Images,
The Thompson Twins, the Billy Idols,
the Duran Durans even, booked them
and nobody wanted 'em.
- [Jello] People who take the underground,
and punk, and Indie rock scenes for
granted today sometimes have no idea
what it took to build those scenes.
When punk started it was a very
visceral reaction against the sheer
stupidity of the 70's, you know.
We didn't want adult rock, soft rock, Eagles,
Hotel California, let alone disco.
And punk brought back the spirit of rock and roll
in a way that was a really good way to shock
people we wanted to make uncomfortable.
- The farther the top 40 bands moved in
that kind of a dance direction and everything
getting thinner, and losing any kind of a
root of rock and roll, the farther we
moved in the other direction.
- [Randy] So this is downtown Cranberry.
This used to be like maybe three businesses
and an old deli up the street there.
But now there's a pizza place,
the other's a shoe repair.
This is actually a little weepy here
because I worked here.
I guess about ten years, nine, ten years.
(🎜 Luscious Jackson - "Did you forget me?" music plays 🎜)
All those years of bands and DJ'ing
in clubs 'til two in the morning,
I was a mailman.
- [Amy] It did shock me that Randy was
a mailman because I thought, "Well where
"does he have the time. I thought he was
"at City Gardens all the time.
"How is he delivering mail and doing
"this at the same time?"
And I was shocked that he didn't make enough
money to live on doing what he did at City Gardens
that he had to also have a regular day job.
I remember kind of being really sad for him
that that wasn't, that he was doing the coolest
job in the world and still it wasn't enough to
sustain him, he had to have a real job.
- So he was like the living embodiment of
Bukowski, who needed a day job, but what
he really lived for was his art.
- [Randy] It's funny, if I'd never quit
the Post Office I could probably be retiring
now with what, 30 years in?
I'd probably be happy in that regard,
like, "Oh I have a pension".
But I never woulda been able to have kept
doin' what I was doin'.
I did leave the Post Office.
And actually I'll tell you the story right here.
I was just down the street and it was a
snowy February day and I just had a successful
show with, I seem to think
it was a Dead Kennedys show,
and it was Monday morning, I was walking
in the snow and it was bitter cold,
five, six degrees.
And it was so cold, and was so tired
'cause I had walked about, who knows,
three, four, five miles with mail on my back.
And it was so windy and it was snow,
but I was just like, "Why am I doing this?
"Why am I getting up at six or 6:15
"and be here at 6:30, seven in the morning?"
I was just probably out 'til one, two, three
in the morning, I just had a successful show.
I was making enough money there where I could
live off that money, and I was like,
"Why am I doing this?"
All my friends are like, in the music business
are home, you know, Jello Biafra
and the Dead Kennedys just left town
they went to New York or Philly or DC, wherever.
Why am I getting up and doing this?
I just said that's it.
And I thought about it for
probably not even more than a few days
and I betcha that Monday I probably
said on Friday or Saturday to my Postmaster here,
"I'm resigning in two weeks, I'm gonna
"pursue the club."
Funny thing, that's when I had the Motorhead show,
and Motorhead canceled.
- So we're just hangin' out in line drinkin' beers,
and Randy gets on top of this car hood
with a little portable PA, and I had my
tape recorder, and I used to tape shows back then,
I used to trade tapes all over the world.
And I told my friend Brian I said, "What,
"I'll turn on my recorder. See what he's
"probably gonna announce some upcoming shows."
- [Randy] Okay. (people talking)
Please, can you listen for a second?
Motorhead has decided not to play.
(audience fussing and booing)
- We're sorry... - [Male Voice] Holy shit.
- [Randy] We've done everything for 'em.
They've decided not to play.
- [Male Voice] Fuckin' ripoff!
(booing)
- Oh my God, I just quit a career in the
Post Office to do this punk rock music DJ
bullshit, and the first show I do is Motorhead
and they cancel on me.
And I can remember saying at the show,
"But don't worry, next week (mumbles)
"is gonna be here", and everybody's like,
"You suck", and "Fuck you".
Aw man in my head I'm just like,
what did I do?
I just lost a career, my benefits,
my retirement.
It was pretty scary to do that.
- The mailman, the other job his nine to five
wasn't ever who I thought of him as.
- A mailman?
But then he was still bookin' all these shows.
You know, I'm a nice guy.
Like, doin' business with me is generally
pretty pleasant, I can't imagine what he
was up against with some of the people
because there are a lot of fuckers
on the road, man.
There are a lot of people who are not cool at all.
A lot of band management people are just
not nice at all.
- [Al Jourgensen] It's funny, like, we have a
nickname for Randy, we used to call him
"Goofy Grape".
Because he had this like,
big ole smile on his face while the owner
was always yelling at him,
and Randy was having to deal with like,
so many egos.
That sort of roster like, just one week that
you printed Circle Jerks, Black Flag,
and all that, I can't even imagine.
(laughs) He was in over his head.
(🎜 Bigger Thomas - "Super Moon" music plays 🎜)
- Hey everybody, 91.3 FM WTSR,
Trenton, New Jersey.
Randy Now's Capitol Garage Radio Program.
Oh, yeah, ah!
- [Mickey] I moved up to New Hope,
Pennsylvania from Yardley, Pennsylvania
in, I wanna say 1982 or '80...
It was about '82, '83.
It also coincided with the same period
I was really getting into music.
I was getting into weird music too,
I started with my parents' record collection
like most people.
I met Scott Lowe, was one of the first guys
I met in like, sixth grade.
And he had like,
The Never Mind the Bollocks Sex Pistols record,
and I had some Devo records,
and we were both into The Beatles.
- I've known Mickey since elementary school and,
we got into a lot of the same music together.
A lot of the same kind of underground music
of the day.
Everything from Adam and the Ants,
to the Dead Kennedys.
- [Mickey] Which wasn't normal sixth graders
and seventh graders, most kids were into
like, BMX bikes and stuff like that.
Then started
listening to the radio.
- [Radio Announcer] And now for more of today's
top hits, it's Randy Now!
- [Randy] Music from Toxic Reasons.
Once again they're gonna be coming to City Gardens
sometime in late May, probably on a Wednesday
night, the song is called Power Craze from
their new LP called "Killed by Remote
"Control" I think.
Who cares? Anyway, before that GD Job and
Color Me Impressed, live music from
The Replacements, recorded live at City Gardens.
And we heard about 80 or 90 songs from
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles first LP,
and I'm not even gonna name the songs
'cause I didn't have a chance to write 'em
down and I don't even care.
You know what I mean?
- Randy had a show called, "The Other Side".
The beautiful thing about it was that it was comedy.
It was like, punk rock and comedy.
- [Randy] I am the Riot Reverend Right on Brown
here, yes, that's right.
You might know my brother.
He's the godfather of soul, James Brown.
That's my brother, super.
Everybody say "amen". (people saying "amen")
Say "yeah", hah!
- [Jeff] Randy absolutely believed at this time
that Howard Stern totally stole his show.
- You know, when I was like 17 years old,
my friend and I used to go down when he was
on the air, and we would hang out in the lobby
and just listen to the show.
- [Randy] Okay, Flipper's on the east coast,
you're playing tonight at City Gardens,
WTSR party.
This is your third time to City Gardens.
- [Male Voice] Yep.
- [Randy] You like the room or not?
- [Male Voice] The first time Ted got smashed,
the second time the truck got smashed.
- We knew that he was affiliated with the club,
so we imagined that he was the ambassador
of all this music that we were just discovering,
and getting really interested in.
So we would just hang out in the lobby
and listen to whatever he was playing.
- [Mickey] So we started tapin' music of their
shows, started calling in to like, Randy's show.
And I think he thought it was really funny that
these little 12, 13 year olds with high,
squeaky voices were callin' in,
and he asked where we're from.
- [Randy] Hi, you're on the air.
(dial tone) No you're not.
Hi.
- [Mickey] Hi, Randy?
- [Randy] Hi, how ya doin'?
- [Mickey] Hi, this is Mickey.
- [Randy] Mickey, how you doin'?
- [Mickey] I'm fine.
- [Randy] Mickey the Dickie.
- [Mickey] That's me.
- One day, this little kid who I don't know,
maybe he was like 13 starts showin' up,
and his name is Mickey the Dickie.
He's this kid who is obsessed with punk rock,
and he loved my radio show and just starts
hangin' out, ends up on the air with me
all the time and he's spinnin' records with me.
And the reason he's Mickey the Dickie is
because he's obsessed with the band The Dickies.
And who could blame him?
And I remember one day, he shows up and he's like,
"I started a band and here's my first cassette.
"We're called 🎜Ween🎜".
- He'd make a recording of himself playing drums,
and then bass, with all these boom boxes
he would make these really crude recordings,
and then he'd play guitar on top of that
and record it and have his friend sing.
- [Scott] Those first couple of performances
were with tape.
They had bass and drums on a tape,
and then Mick would have a guitar live,
and then Aaron would just be singing.
He wasn't playing guitar yet.
- [Jonathan] They'd put out one cassette after
another cassette, I had piles of cassettes.
And I wouldn't even listen to it I was like,
this is the most horrible crap garbage.
And just was like, this guy's such a weirdo.
I liked him but I thought he was a real weirdo.
- [Simeon] I mean, Ween had this ability to fill
a room as an opening act, mind you, of people
who absolutely hated them, but three years
later were buying their record.
I mean, they were really brave. (laughs)
- We opened for The Ramones.
Randy put us on the bill with Foghat.
We played with Butthole Surfers,
played with Mojo Nixon, we played with
7 Seconds, we played with Fugazi.
- I think Randy had a lot of guilty pleasures
when it came to music, and there's a lot of music
like myself being a hardcore kid,
there's things I don't want people to
know I listen to.
I think Randy had that.
- The film Yoko made called Erection,
they showed a part of on the Mike Douglas show.
(laughs) No, good guess though good try.
No, it was a building being constructed.
It was just a film like, they shot three
seconds a day over the course of a year,
and you see this building being erected.
But once again, they didn't censor
him and her when they...
- [Lon] Well they couldn't because
it was about a building.
- Exactly, and remember John performed
"Woman is the Nigger of the World".
- and Mike Douglas... - That was 19...
before 1980 right?
- [Randy] Oh my gosh, it better have been.
- I would say like '69, '70. - Late 70's?
No, it was when he was solo,
so it wasn't that early.
- [Randy] You talk and I can look it up.
- Why don't you talk and I'll look it up?
(Randy laughs)
- He's the original iPod Shuffle, ya know.
(laughs) He just did it with actual bands.
- (laughs) It's hot in here, damn it!
- [Henry] In 1986, I'm forgetting the
exact month, maybe April.
April or May of 1986, Black Flag was
doing it's last ever tour.
We didn't know that we were breaking up yet.
That was to happen a few months later,
but we were on the east coast and I think
we were circulating around the Hoboken,
Jersey area, and we got a call from Randy
and he said, "I see on your itinerary
"you guys have a day off coming up",
and we said, "Yeah", and he said,
"Well, how would you like to make some money?"
"Well, what are you proposing?"
- I really needed a lot of sound rental,
and Black Flag was on the road with this
absolutely amazing, freakin' wall of
you know, power.
- [Henry] "So it will be Overkill, Black Flag,
"Venom. We'll pay you to play,
"and we'll pay you for your PA."
Which is so much better than a day off for us.
You know, we need to pay for that PA,
the truck, et cetera.
So, we ended up spontaneously going to
City Gardens in this middle band slot.
- So I had a chance to put together this
Venom, and Black Flag together.
Venom was just, they were so full of themselves.
The typical heavy metal.
You know, Black Flag and Henry was the vocalist
and walked around, "Hey man how ya doin'?",
Cronos and Venom, they were in a dressing room
and I had to have a security guard
walk 'em to the stage.
- We played and I remember asking the audience
"Is Satan here tonight?
"Did Satan show up? Anyone.
"Satan. No one, Satan? Okay."
- These guys took it so so seriously,
and you know they're like trying to actually
be this ultra Satanic kind of like, entity.
At the end of the day, they're these
European guys wearing leg warmers
and red boots and stuff, who just kinda
just didn't get it.
- Well Henry, drew with a magic marker on
his hand the Satanic pentagram, I guess it's
called, and he would hold it up.
Well he would walk up to you like this,
he'd go, and I don't know if he did the Spock
thing or not like that, but he'd go,
"Hail Satan". (laughs)
- Venom, in 1981 releasing Welcome to Hell,
did something so extreme that no one else
had ever even come close to doing,
they went as far into the corner with
the Satanic stuff as possible.
- Combining Black Flag with Overkill
and Venom, I mean that just complete insanity.
- Venom gets on stage and you know their doing
their thing, and the crowd is completely into it.
Jersey metal maniacs are just die hard!
- And they screamed and hollered at me,
"I walked through the crowd and I didn't
"have a security guard with me". (laughs)
Like, fuck you.
- And they sucked!
They sucked really really bad,
they couldn't play, the didn't know what
to say in between songs.
(laughs) And it was just horrible.
Our sound man, Dave, Rat of Rat's Sound
put a cassette in to the board we had,
we had a cassette deck and the board to
make recordings.
- [Randy] Dave Rat recorded every Black Flag show,
so he's doin' the sound for Venom,
so he records the whole show.
- And we played the tape later,
and it became legendary to us.
- The tape was duped, and given to other bands.
One of them we made a copy for Thurston Moore,
of Sonic Youth.
He immediately made...
He edited all the raps from the between song
banter of Cronus and made a seven inch.
- They cut out all the actual music and
just put out a seven inch of all the banter.
It's crazy because to listen to that,
I would never think I would get to hear that
stuff ever again.
To hear it again and just laugh at it,
and people to really be like, "You were
"there for that?", and I'm like, "Yeah I was."
- [Randy] From that show, a lot of metal heads
were there for Venom were like, "Holy shit,
"this Black Flag band is fuckin' powerful."
And I kept yackin' on the microphone,
"Hey, Black Flag's back here in two weeks."
Maybe we started the whole mixing of the metal
and punk right there at that show.
(phone ringing)
- [Female Recording] Hey, you've reached
King Tut's City Gardens, leave a message for
Frank or Randy after the beep. (beep)
- [Jeff] Listen, my name's Jeff.
The Bad Brains are playing there I see,
and listen, you don't have to pay us.
I said, "I'll pay you to let us play".
Please, please get back to me.
Randy called me back in like, an hour and half
two hours later and was like, "Yeah.
"You guys want it?"
- Another GWAR legend, the walk of shame.
This is the first time I ever heard
the phrase walk of shame, now later it went to
become the walk of shame is obviously
when you're walking home from your boyfriend's
apartment or whatever, and you couldn't find
one of your shoes.
But for us it was a show we played.
We'd been playing at City Gardens a lot,
probably too much, and we played a show.
The turnout wasn't all that great, and it was
a show where we hadn't really rehearsed very well,
and for some reason I was trying a new mask
out that night, and just for some reason
we came off as really flat and the performance
just didn't have any pizzazz to it.
- [Bob] And it was New Year's Eve.
- [Dave] And it was like New Year's Eve
as well to make it even worse.
And then so after the show was over with
we had to walk back to the dressing room for
that one it was like...
Usually we were up above the stage in
that weird little cubby hole,
but for some reason it was way at the back
of the club this time.
So we had to like, walk after this show
all the way back through the crowd.
And I remember people saying stuff to me like,
"Yeah, not very good this time."
(laughter)
"Didn't do a very good job this time."
- We were cleaning up the stage,
Ween was supposed to open for us that night,
and they were already over us and they
had a party at their house, - [Dave] Yeah!
- [Bob] and people went to their house for free
and didn't come to see us.
We were cleaning up the stage, - Thanks, Ween.
- We were cleaning up the stage and I remember
a couple of guy at the front row were standing
there against the barricade and they were
thinkin' there was gonna be something else.
They were like, "That's it?"
And we were like, "Oh, damn."
- [Chuck] Randy put on reggae shows,
he put on ska shows,
he put on funk shows, and anybody that
would come in and play, Living Color played
some of their first shows there.
Talking about ground breaking bands that
went on to do something outside of punk rock.
- We opened up for Henry Rollins there
in like, '92 or '93.
I guess later someone told
us he had written about us in one of
- his books. - Randy told us.
- I think it was '91 or two '92. - Yeah, Randy told us.
- And like he wrote...
Whatever like, November eighth, 1991.
City Gardens, opening band was so bad
that it inspired me to like, really rock,
really, really hard.
- He kinda dissed us in it. - Yeah.
- But, we were kinda dicks though too.
- We were little pricks that day.
- Little snot nosed kids.
-🎜 Bigger Thomas - 'Telling Time' music plays 🎜
- You guys owe me ten minutes alright.
Randy was like the dad, he'd tell you,
"Hey, that was okay", or "That set was okay,
"here's what I would change",
and he really wanted you to get better.
So I felt like it was gonna fun,
it'd be a lot of people, we're gonna have to
bring our A game, and Randy, whatever Randy
didn't like, Randy's gonna tell us.
But not in a way like, "You guys suck",
but like, "Next time you might wanna think about
"doing this and doing that."
City Gardens was, that was my
performing arts school.
(🎜 Bing Satellites - 'Motif Four' music plays 🎜)
- [Randy] This is where I lived in
I guess the mid-late '80's.
And we were paying like only, $100 a month.
And this is where a lot of bands stayed
and where I made a lot of friends with bands.
Mojo Nixon stayed here, he stayed here quite
a few times and he had these
little firecrackers he tied to the two
drawers of my desk drawer, so if I opened
one or the other one they snapped.
Right in my freakin' hand.
(clucking)
(🎜 gentle music plays 🎜)
This was here when I was here.
George made this refrigerator and so I guess
there's a keg probably inside,
and that was the tap and all the
bands would drink.
Well it's not hooked up anymore.
There's still a lot of beer in here though.
This is probably a 250 year old house,
300 year old house.
I remember The Dickies staying overnight.
Leonard had some girl with him and they
were up on the third floor.
Did you see from the outside?
This is the way it was, no steps here.
- [Peter] He loved the music so much,
he wanted to spread word around,
he wanted to help out kids who were making music,
he wanted to help out bands that were coming
through, and he thought, well the only way
he could do this is if he just takes it on
and does it himself.
- This is the desk I did all my
calls, ya know, on it and did all my work.
This is the desk that booked a million shows.
- And to have someone who was so clearly
enthusiastic and so clearly compassionate to
these kids, who otherwise wouldn't have
had a chance.
People were just...
Their minds were blown by that.
(🎜 gentle music plays 🎜)
- Hey, it was really cool livin' here,
and just workin' with all the bands and stuff.
That's one of those things that nobody really
even knows about, the bands used to stay
at my house instead of a band going
to a hotel for whatever, 40 bucks a night.
You know, two rooms or three rooms.
They would stay here.
It was all free for the bands.
(horn honking)
Bye.
The farmhouse was so big I could accommodate
GWAR, 14 people, and you know, Dag Nasty
stayed over, and Suicidal.
And when I moved to New Hope, Fugazi stayed
over a couple of nights.
Fugazi, when they came over I don't even know
how I got into it, I just started showin' 'em
Ernie Kovacs videos, who I don't think they
were familiar with, and then we started showing
Spike Jones videos.
(drum beating)
They'd never heard of this guy before.
- I'd never heard of Spike Jones.
You have musician, but then you have a guy who
just played like shooting a gun in the air.
Just like very, jacked up and
strangely punk in it's own way.
I really, really appreciated him.
We just watched, we couldn't believe it.
We were watching it, and then he just gave me...
I have the video tape still, he just gave
me a Spike Jones video tape.
- He had a fascination with things,
everything musical, but he had a fascination
with things outside of music too.
And he was always so willing to share.
Unfortunately for me, one of the things that
he shared was the video tape that
he had managed to procure from I guess
a friend who worked at a TV station.
- [Peter] He gave me my first experience of
watching someone die on TV.
- [Randy] But I remember like The Mentors,
El Duce was like, "Oh fuck man, I got a video
"of a guy sticking his head in an
"elephant asshole, I'll let you have that
"if you let me have a copy of Budd Dwyer",
I was like, "What?" (laughs)
I was not a collector, believe me,
I wasn't a collector, I just happened
to have it.
Have you ever seen it?
- [Jello] Some of the promoters were clearly
clinically insane, and if they didn't start
out that way, the stress of trying to put
punk shows on would make them that way.
Some how Randy never got quite that far,
but he had to have a few screws loose
or he wouldn't be doing this in the first place.
Especially not year after year after year,
and inviting the likes of Dead Kennedys
back into his club again and again.
- We might have like had three motel
rooms in our nine year career or something,
while we were on tour we like slept on floors
next to like, dirty cat litter boxes.
And when we were in Europe we stayed in
squats that had no heat and hot water,
and we were just freezing in the middle
of Europe in the middle of winter.
The warmest thing in there was like a dog
that you're like wrapped around the dog,
like, "Pass the dog".
- City Gardens really for me, you know,
at that point define Trenton.
But I don't know the city that well.
Or at all really.
We'd show up at the club and then here we
are in Trenton, and didn't really have any
feeling and need to go out and
see the city or anything like that.
Part of it's what you hear cause you roll
into town and...
Someone would get some crazy wild hair
up their ass to go and have dinner somewhere
and I don't know if it was Randy,
but someone would always be like,
"I don't know about that.
"We can just give you some food here.
"We'll give you the food, you don't need to
"go out and get it."
So it gives you this feeling of
"Just stay here!" (laughs)
- [Doug] When you grow up in the
suburbs around Trenton, there are a couple
of stories about Trenton that you hear.
One is the story that you hear when you
go on the capitol tour
as a fourth grader and they show you
the Governor's offices and the big gold dome.
A lot of state workers work in Trenton,
that's one story.
But then there's this story that you hear
from relatives and older people who've
lived in the area a long time.
And that's a sadder story.
And that story goes along the lines of,
Trenton used to be this great town.
Trenton used to be this wonderful place,
and now it's not.
That you were taking a risk by going there.
Now, granted when you say that to an
adolescent, that makes it attractive.
(laughs) That makes it adventurous.
- Trenton was one of those towns that was
founded by a Philadelphia man.
William Trent was a well known merchant,
business man in Philadelphia,
who basically came here to summer.
He had purchased the land from the original
founders of the area, they were Quakers who
had come here in the late 1600's.
Trenton started to grow as Trent took over.
He started laying out streets,
he named the place Trent's Town,
but as the country began to grow so did the city.
And when the American Revolution takes off
the powder keg, or really the defining moment
occurs right here in the city of Trenton.
(musket shots)
There's two battles that are fought here
within a week of each other.
The first battle of Trenton is the first
victory for American troops at that point.
They've been going through defeat after
defeat after defeat, and prior to the battle
of Trenton that summer is when the
Declaration of Independence is signed,
the book Common Sense comes out.
People are starting to rally behind the whole idea,
and Washington's troops make their way through
New Jersey from upstate New York and other places,
and then it's Washington's crossing,
the famous crossing of the Delaware River.
And then the surprise attack on the
Hessian troops here on Christmas of 1776.
The city hasn't changed much since William Trent
laid out the streets here.
It's a convergence of a lot of major
arteries that work their way from Pennsylvania,
New Jersey that all converge on Trenton.
Most of those streets are US and state highways
that bring you into the city,
and along those streets and along those roads
started to settle specific groups.
Early on it was religious types,
it was Quakers in one neighborhood,
Presbyterians in another, the Catholics,
the Jews, all settled in certain areas.
In fact, one of the Jewish neighborhoods
was actually called Jew Town.
That's what they referred to it because
it was all Jewish, that's where the synagogue
was that's where the kosher meat market was.
It wasn't that people were bigoted or
prejudice, it was they just simply
surrounded themselves by people the knew
and understood.
There was a language barrier even in Trenton,
so when you settled in Trenton,
you settled in a neighborhood with people
from the same area that you came from.
Literally anything and everything you could
think of had some root in Trenton.
Whether it was the wire that was holding up the
Brooklyn Bridge or the wire that was going
into building the Golden Gate Bridge later on,
or some little porcelain insulator that was
going into an electrical motor or..
It didn't really matter, something had
something to do with Trenton, and pretty
much anything and everything that was being
made and distributed around the world.
- [Voiceover] Trenton, New Jersey.
The state capitol where government is
big business, but far from the only one.
Like most cities in this wondrous area,
Trenton is proud of it's past,
but prouder yet, of it's future.
- [Charles] Most people think of the
United States as going on a boom,
after World War II.
And the boom did occur around the country,
but World War II sort of is a defining moment
in Trenton, when we start to see the decline.
Decline in the city's population,
in the city's industry, people were starting
to move out of the city into the suburbs,
people were starting to move out of the state
into other places.
Most of the industry that was in Trenton,
was sort of mom and pop places.
Mr. and Mrs. Scammell owned Scammell Pottery.
Mr. and Mrs. Roebling and the brothers
and the sons and everybody else ran
the Roebling company.
After World War II we started creating these
big corporations that turned into
these huge conglomerates.
These companies had no investment whatsoever
in the city of Trenton, they were worried
about the bottom line.
And it continued, and continued, and continued,
until the late 1960's in 1968 when
the riot occurred in Trenton.
- [Voiceover] Negro leaders publicly deplore
at this looting and violence.
Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People.
- It discourages me, and dismays me,
and disheartens me is that in the reports
so far coming in, we have reports of looting.
Not anger, not violent outbreaks,
not an expression of their sorrow
and resentment at the killing of Dr. King.
But the utilizing this as an opportunity
to steal things.
I think Martin's memory is desecrated by
this kind of action.
- The riots in Trenton were broken up
along racial lines.
Now, the powder keg of the 1968 riot is
really fueled by the assassination of
Martin Luther King.
King is assassinated, a few days later
riot breaks out in the city of Trenton,
one man Harlan Joseph is killed.
A dozens of police officers, firemen,
the city is completely burned.
That was the death of the city.
State government was taking off,
so state government was buying up huge
neighborhoods like Jew Town.
Bought up the entire neighborhood,
demolished it, and wanted to put up urban renewal.
State buildings, so you get these huge
state complexes being built surrounded by
huge parking lots.
But the people move out after that.
The people who live here, the people who
grew up here, who immigrated here,
who were really invested in the city of Trenton,
their confidence was shaken.
No longer was this a great place to live,
no longer was this a great place to enjoy
yourself, this was a place to run from.
(hip hop music plays)
- [Doug] None of what I had learned
explained Calhoun Street.
Because the story I had heard was that,
to put it bluntly black people took over Trenton.
That's the narrative.
So this narrative of black people took over
Trenton and so we had to move out.
That's the story that a lot of white
suburban kids around Trenton grew up with.
But really that's not the story.
The story is that these other opportunities
became available to some people but not
to others, and so there was a large underclass
that was trapped in Trenton.
For me, going to City Gardens,
what it did was it made Trenton
a place that I had to pay attention to.
This is a real place, with real people,
and it's part of real community.
(fast paced polka music plays)
- Welcome to the house of Now.
Ooh, he said "meow" I think.
This is supposed to be the dining room.
All CD's on the walls.
Met John Lennon, in 1975 in Philadelphia,
but I had a chance to meet him.
I was drumming in my band and we actually
did Twist n' Shout.
This is the basement but I had a whole
bunch of bobble heads.
Lot of people collect baseball bobble heads.
Actually there's one here where his head fell off.
Here's "Have a Jewish Christmas".
Of course, Pac Man Christmas.
Everybody needs a Pac Man Christmas album.
Look at this Christmas in Brazil,
Santa Claus of the top of that car there.
This is a really rare Skatalites album.
When I tour managed the Skatalites.
Skavoovie.
Most of the guys were still alive then,
they're all dead now I believe.
Christmas with the Colonel Sanders,
there's a couple of them.
Here's a Desmond Decker album from the '60's.
Fitness records, burlesque records.
How to belly dance for your husband,
How to strip for your husband.
Easy instructions.
Stop smoking on vinyl.
Yeah that's really gonna work.
Maternity to Motherhood, common sense
guide to pregnancy and childbirth.
Why did I buy this?
What did I pay for it?
Did I pay a dollar?
Sitar, these are all records with
sitars on 'em.
This is the funny, it's a great section.
Cajun Truckers Rock-a-billy.
Sousa and Circus.
Kinda went hand and hand I though.
- [Mike] A lot of the original punks in general
were real characters.
They were real natural entertainers or weirdos.
Creative weirdos, not like the people
you try to avoid when you come across
them in the street.
And so the vibe was always fun.
The creative weirdo is the guy who always
livens up the dull party if you go to one.
The guy with the lampshade on his head.
- For young and old, Ex-Lax, the chocolate,
chocolated laxative.
There's a word you don't use too often
in the English language, a choc...
Choc-o-lated?
What do you think?
- Often very big people, ya know,
kind of physically imposing and don't
care what you think about 'em.
What are you gonna do?
Punch him?
You don't like what they're doin', you know.
Randy was kind of an imposing character.
(cheering)
(🎜 The Meatmen -'Mr. Tapeworm' music plays 🎜)
- I take my son to shows now and he won't
go anywhere near the front of the stage.
And I'm like, it's weird because I'm pulling
him to the front of the stage and he
doesn't want anything to do with it.
So yeah, I can understand how people
were scared, and actually I do remember
a time when I was scared is
The Butthole Surfers show.
Because he was trying to light us on fire.
(laughs) So, that's the only time
I was scared.
(🎜 Butthole Surfers -'Too Parter' music plays 🎜)
- [Mickey] They were probably the best live
band in the world for maybe like 10
or 12 years, at least.
- We'd been listening to the Buttholes a lot
actually, and to us we imagined them as not
even human beings we thought they were just
psychopaths like five or six psychopaths
that just did acid all the time.
Which really wasn't that far from
the truth actually.
To look at them, they were the weirdest looking
band in the whole fuckin' world.
Gibby had that long stringy hair and there was
shit stuck in it, like clothes pins and dolls
hangin' out of it and whatever, trash.
When they came on it was like being in hell.
It was like literally being in hell.
It was like, specifically designed to fuck with you.
- There was a time when City Gardens couldn't
do all age shows.
- [Johnny] During the course of City Garden's life,
the drinking age changed.
And when the drinking age changed
the shows changed a lot.
- Then it was like, 19 then it was 20
to drink and get in.
They wouldn't let all ages in.
(whistle)
- Hello, skinhead, are you hungry?
Looking for a City Gardens treat?
Well hold on 'til I absorb some heat.
Some added tang might please you too.
I'll slide into a stale bun,
and I'm ready for your eating fun.
- And then I almost got a restaurant license
literally by having a hot dog maker machine,
fattening the building become a restaurant
where it could open up to all ages.
- [Randy] I knew they had nude dance,
topless dancer, I knew that and I said,
"Look, this is an all ages show.
"Can you do me a favor and not have
"the nude dancer on stage?"
He was like, "Well yeah we won't do it,
"but you know, there's gonna be a screen
"of like these Signal 30 films
"of car accidents and people's bodies
"all burned in car wrecks playing
"in the background, the projector going
"through her figure."
"okay we won't do it."
First fuckin' song her fuckin' top comes off.
- [Scott] This was the first time that actually
got like, a majority of people from our
high school to come out.
So they came out to see Ween and that was
a good show and that was a lot of fun.
And then the Butthole Surfers comes on,
and all of our high school friends are watching
this naked girl go-go dance.
You gotta remember, these are preppy
high school kids.
- [Mickey] When you saw them you got a sense
that anything was possible, that anything could
happen, everything was in play,
somebody could get killed.
Ya know, you were gonna see them fuck on stage.
- [Randy] I had worked with them so many times
I had no problem with them, and then that night
just like, all hell broke loose.
- [Mickey] Gibby would set his arms on fire
with rubbing alcohol, and it was just
so much to look at.
- [Randy] The lighter fluid on the symbol
and lighting them and Gibby striking
it with a mallet.
(wooshing sound)
- [Randy] You fuck with the Buttholes
and they're not gonna back down.
- Flames were shootin' up into the ceiling.
- It would go up, it would hit the ceiling
and then it would go horizontal like,
creep across.
And City Gardens had all the wiring exposed
and insulation hanging down.
You could see the ends curl up,
and burn up, and sizzle.
It would like, have red coals on it.
It was like, "Fuck, these guys are gonna
"burn this club down to the grown.
"1,200 people are gonna die and it's
"gonna be amazing, ya know. No one's gonna
"move when it happens."
- [Randy] I think that's what started it all
because we're afraid of fire.
- And I think he wasn't expecting it to do that.
Because the look on his face was,
"Holy shit."
- [Jon Stewart] For some reason so many of us
thought it was a good idea to incorporate fire
into their show, one of the upper curtains
caught on fire.
Yeah they were for some reason there
was like a pyromaniac thing with them.
- And he just kept drumming and playing,
and he had a bullhorn so that was very loud.
As loud as the PA.
- [Don] Gibby turned the cymbal upside down
and started hitting it and flames started
shooting in the air, and Tut was standing
next to me and he went running off like,
"That's it!" (laughs)
"None of that!"
- Frank, came to a couple of us
and told us to go stop it.
- So I took a picture of beer and I just
poured it on the cymbal.
I remember Gibby looking at me, and he took
the bottle of alcohol, walked towards me
Threw it on my shirt and just totally doused me.
He lit the lighter, and was walking towards me
with this psycho look in his eyes.
And I was coming back ready to hit him,
and he turned around and he looked at me,
he put his hand out so I just shook his hand
I wasn't gonna hit him then.
- [Scott] Toward the end when they wanted to
close the club, the band wouldn't leave.
- [Randy] We pulled the power I guess somewhere.
It had to be an hour and a half into
the show though.
- Black Flag played there many times,
Rollins band played there many times.
And when I would be living around here
we'd go see shows there.
So we'd see the Bad Brains, The Pixies, Ween.
- They booked everything.
Sinead O'Connor.
- It was her very first show ever
in the United States.
- UB40.
- Jane's Addiction.
- Geeze, I seen The Wailers there
a ton of times, that was always great.
- Husker Du, Dickies, Ramones, Violent Femmes.
- Green Day played there?
Ya know, Nirvana played there?
I gotta go on YouTube to remember that
Nirvana played there.
- De La Soul was like, the crowing, you know,
that was like the crown jewel show.
- Circle Jerks were always great.
Bad Brains were always amazing,
one of the loudest bands I've ever worked with.
- Like, I saw Ministry there.
When Ministry was new wave.
I have pictures, great pictures,
Al Jourgensen dressed pretty much like a girl.
- I would go see anything at City Gardens
for a while because I knew it was gonna be
completely outside the realm of the hair metal
or the crappy dance music that popular
with the kids of my school that I didn't relate to.
- Voivod, Faith No More, Soundgarden show.
And Voivod was actually the headliner.
- GWAR shows. (laughs)
GWAR shows, where on Earth did that come from
and how cool is GWAR?
- Shit, the Chili Peppers.
Ya know it's real easy to laugh now
about the Chili Peppers and say like,
"Oh, but that band was the best."
And they were like, the first to do it
and that was everybody's favorite band.
And this is before hits and radio and success
and whatever, they were playing places
like City Garden, and they played there a lot.
- It made all the difference to music
in New Jersey, I mean, if it wasn't there
you'd be going to Philadelphia,
you'd be going to CB's.
It was really important.
- [Dave] (muffled) for me homie.
Lou Koller, come on.
Tim Shaw?
What's up?
(🎜 Vision - 'Falling Apart' music plays 🎜)
🎜 Never thought of the consequences You never thought at all 🎜
🎜 Never thought you'd be the one To ever take a fall 🎜
- Randy Now called my mom's house phone,
ya know, cause I was in high school still.
And he said, "Hey, it's Randy.
"Would you guys like to open up
"for The Exploited?", and I was like,
"Fuck yeah!"
(🎜 The Scandals - 'Four Seventeen' music plays 🎜)
- [Bryan] That Exploited show for sure
goes down in infamy.
- [Peter] The first time that I played
at City Gardens, my band's called Vision.
(🎜 Vision - 'No Mistake' music plays 🎜)
We had a show there in early January
in 1987 and we were booked to open a show
that included headliners The Exploited,
and supporting them, The Pagan Babies,
and The Uprise.
(🎜 Bouncing Souls - 'Baptized' music plays 🎜)
- The guy that played bass in my band
at the time, was banned from the club
for beating people up.
The night of the show
we went there and I went there with so much
anxiety, 'cause I knew that I was gonna have
to talk to Randy and be like,
"This is my bass player, but he's banned
"from the club for fightin' people."
- [Randy] I know he was barred I guess.
If you get barred you had to have
done something stupid.
We just didn't say, "Hey, kick that guy
"out because he's a nice guy", ya know.
And I wasn't kickin' 'em out,
it was security guards.
They would tell me and then I'd say,
"You gotta stay out."
- Randy did not know that he was
playing in our band until we showed up
at that time.
- We walked through the club.
They had no idea I was in the band,
and we knew something was gonna happen.
We knew that we were walking into this...
It would erupt at some point.
- [Peter] As the words left Dave's mouth
Randy lost his mind.
- Ah, what the fuck?
- [Peter] "What's he doin' here?
"Blah blah blah", he's freakin' out.
- [Dave] Randy screamed at me.
He screamed at me so loud he was
spitting in my face.
I don't even think my mother and father
ever yelled at me the way that he
yelled at me that night.
- "How could you do this to me?
"You fucked us, you screwed me.
"What the fuck were you thinking?"
(uptempo music plays)
- [Dave] I said, "Listen man."
(laughs) I said, "I can't help the fact
"that the guy's in my band, ya know.
"But we wanna play the show regardless."
He goes, "Fuck you!".
(laughs) He was like, "Fuck you,
"you fucked me!"
Before that, Vision had only played like
basements and a couple little odds and ins shows.
This is our biggest break, we're gonna play
in front of 1,100 people opening
up for The Exploited.
- "You're gone. You can't play."
- "Absolutely not gonna fuckin' play here.
"Get the fuck out."
- [Dave] Wattie from The Exploited
comes walkin' over with his manager
and he says, "What's the problem?",
and I say, "We're not gonna be able to play
"because my bass player's not
"allowed in the venue."
And he goes, "Did you come from a far distance?"
And I go, "Not as far as you." (laughs)
"40 minutes away" and he goes, "That's
"far enough", and he walked to Randy and goes,
"If Vision doesn't play, The Exploited
"don't play."
The Uprise did the exact same thing,
The Pagan Babies did the exact same thing.
- Almost everybody in every band...
around Randy.
Like one guy, and twenty people around him
just hassling him, "Come on, let us play,
"let him play, let him play."
- [Randy] Obviously he had power over me to say,
"If they don't play we don't play."
- But I think he had to go talk to Tut
because the man behind the curtain, ya know,
he was the guy, he was the guy who
probably hated me.
I don't think Randy really hated me,
he just had the duty to keep throwing me out.
- So we ended up getting to play the show,
we compromised with Randy and said,
"We'll play, and then Chris will leave."
(🎜 The Exploited - 'Y.O.P.' music plays 🎜)
- [Randy] I don't know what date in like,
punk rock history,
one day I would promote bands and I would
have to say, "From England" to make people
come see them.
You know, and including early Exploited shows,
"From England, The Exploited."
That brought people out.
And all of a sudden one day it was like
opposite, you put "from England, The Exploited",
and people were like, against a band.
- [Dan] We watched Vision, you know,
then we get up and did our thing.
I remember being done, and getting our gear off
stage, we were all like, "Yay. We just played,
"that's so cool."
And then we were up in that perch
on side of the stage.
- [Tim] It turned out that that they
didn't have a merch guy.
So, Randy looks to us and says,
"Hey, would you guys be interested in
"doing the merch for Exploited?",
he's like, "You know, I'll kick back
"a little money for ya, ya know."
And we were like, "Sure. Cool."
Ya know, "Whatever, yeah yeah."
- Chris had to go after we were done playing,
he had to leave.
I got elected to take him home. (laughs)
Best part about that is, after we get done
playin', load everything up into my car,
leave, Chris, "Oh I forgot a bag."
- Then The Exploited play.
And they have the record out that has
"Fuck the USA" on it.
- Back at that time, you know, '87, '88,
there was just so many skinheads, so many like,
white power skinheads back then.
- And the place goes ballistic.
- The skinheads kinda like,
took offense to a lot of Exploited stuff.
I don't understand why they paid to get in,
but maybe they paid to get to try to
abuse The Exploited, right.
- [Bryan] One of the members,
and I can't remember, I think it was the bass
player, the littler guy in The Exploited,
actually got, they tried to pull him into the crowd.
Like, actually got pulled by his feet
off the stage.
- [Tim] Holy shit are we gonna now
be involved in this 'cause we're
sellin' their merch?
Are skinheads gonna come back here and
beat the shit out of our little 13,
14-year-old asses? (laughs)
- [Peter] To see Wattie right in the faces
of the people in the front row,
with probably dozens of gabs of spit
in his Mohawk.
- [Randy] Remember actually, these big, of course
every fuckin' bad skinhead was like,
six foot, like Frankenstein six foot ten,
300 pounds.
I can remember goin' up there,
little, fat, dumpy me, 20 years older than them
sayin', "I don't care if you spit on 'em,
"just don't touch 'em."
- [Matt] Turn around, drive all the way back.
He can't go in the club 'cause he's not allowed
in the club, so I have to go get his bag.
And I was almost jaw-dropped, ya know,
walkin' back in just to see treatment
that The Exploited was getting.
I just couldn't believe it.
- (laughs) And that was just brutal.
Just so much violence at an Exploited show
that I just couldn't believe it.
And I'm kinda like goin', "Wow.
"I'm gonna stand over to the side
"I'm a little kid."
- [Larry] (laughs) And he's sittin' here
spittin' at the crowd, you know, they're
goin' back and forth, then somebody had
the bright idea like, "Hey their van's outside."
- Then they like trashed The Exploited's van.
(sirens)
- Exploited was bummed.
(sirens)
- I never considered hardcore to be a musical
sound, I always thought of it as a lifestyle,
an attitude.
- There weren't a lot of punks back then.
I mean, there was maybe two or three punks
in my high school, you know.
So, having that meeting place you saw
that there was other people you share your ideas,
you learn about other bands, exchange your
fanzines, you know all that kind of good stuff.
And it really strengthened the local scene.
First of all, it gave bands like us the chance
to get in front and get our name
out to all these areas 'cause
there was no internet.
That was our social network, City Gardens.
That was our...
Our Facebook was in the parking lot.
- [Linda] When you go there and your
friends are there, and people from the outside
come in, and they didn't belong.
And it's like, "What are you doin' here?
"It's our club, get out of my pit."
- City Gardens had a great hardcore
scene there, they would get The New York bands,
they would get the D.C. bands to come up and play.
And you could see it almost week by week,
if not month by month,
the face of the crowd's changing.
- A thousand or 1,400 kids goin' crazy
for you, and you know, it literally looks like
they're beatin' the shit out of each other
and climbin' over bouncers to get on
stage and stage dive.
And that's a fuckin' rush, man.
- These are times when people just came out
to a show and really enjoyed the show.
- Simple hardcore.
- Simple. - Boom.
- Some people perceived City Gardens
as being violent, but I wouldn't say it was
violent, it was more like mutually agreed upon,
kind of orchestrated dance.
- The pit, in the Suicidal days in '85,
it was such as unbelievably fun experience
in a physical sense.
- It made you believe
that you're invincible.
Man, when you go inside that crowd...
You didn't wanna go home.
You know what I mean?
Just stay in the club, sleep on the fuckin' floor.
It was amazing.
- From '82 to '86, you know,
we saw hardcore sort of emerge.
And what started off as really fun,
turned absolutely scary.
And there were guys and it was like,
in the braces, and the shaved heads,
and all of a sudden this was not Minor Threat
that I loved straight edge hardcore.
This was something else.
- I didn't quite realize that there was such
like, this Neo-Nazi thing going on
and for whatever reason, Pennsylvania was like
the hub, and Trenton was close enough.
- People had these really fucked up ideas
of the way that things should be,
and we didn't have that idea.
- Punks like punks.
Period.
There's different factions of skins,
white power skins, there are clean cut
American skins, Christian skins, the freakin'...
There was a shit load of skins,
but only thing that bonded 'em together,
all skins are violent, all skins like skins.
Period.
- There were people there that
would actually fuckin' murder somebody
for you, if they were your friend.
That's as close as you can come to being
related to somebody who you barely even knew.
They were just down with you because
they liked your band.
- I mean, that's actually when I quit,
when I just stopped, 'case I had a real job.
And you know, doin' this shit Sunday night
and stuff like that it like, Monday morning
I gotta go to work, and there was something
going on, some kind of thing going on.
I remember being outside and somebody yelled,
"He's got, that guy's got a gun", or something.
(laughs) Man, I'm not gettin' shot for $40.
This shit isn't worth it, I'm done with this.
- Jocks would come out and they'd try to get
in to the whole, you know, the pit
and the whole like dancing thing.
And they thought, "Hey this is fun."
And marines would come out and start
wailing on people and stuff,
and it was like, that's not what it was about.
- We would always stop and break up the fights
or if need be, we would go right in there.
Get off stage and break up fights,
and we had to do that numerous times at that club.
- It was like real shit,
these were like, real people coming from
cities and fucked up parts of the suburbs,
and rich white kids, and they were all
converging on this one place.
And you know, it was going to get real
at one point or the other.
- You'd be in the pit right?
And the band didn't even start yet.
And we're gonna rock, rock...
Just hit the chord, just hit the chord,
just touch the guitar, all you gotta do
touch the guitar, touch it, touch it once,
I'm punching this mother fucker right here.
Touch it, touch the fuckin' guitar!
Boom! (laughs)
It was beautiful and the fights would start.
- We had to do that in a way just to sort of,
you know, you invite somebody in to your house
and they start breaking shit.
You're like, "No."
- Violence was the trade off
for the club's proximity to the suburbs.
Suburban kids
don't actually have the street smarts
that they think they have.
Or I should say that if your street smarts
is formed entirely by what you've read in
a hardcore band's lyric sheet,
you are coming into things with a very
sort of idealized fantasy.
That made the violence aspect of it
actually much worse at City Gardens than it was
at clubs in the city.
And I think that's why, eventually,
towards the end of the '80's a lot of people
with kind of jock mentalities started coming
to shows, because those guys I don't think
had the, I don't think they had the ability
to decode they lyrics of what that music
had been about for a long time.
You know, themes like fear, and depression,
and self-loathing, and other kinds of
transgressive attitudes, you know.
They just heard the rage that was locked
up inside the sound of that music,
and then used it as a soundtrack to pummel
people that they felt were different or
just were smaller than them.
- Tut basically said to Randy, "Stop booking
"bands that are gonna bring skinheads out."
You know, I think Randy's reaction was,
"Those shows bring kids in and I make
"money from those shows."
So I think the first way Randy sort of tried
to bend Tut's rule was, well we're
just gonna ban Doc Martens.
Which again, I think is a great example
of Randy's big heart which was,
yeah Tut laid down this rule,
but as a business man and also as
somebody who's tryin' to do something
for the kids in this area, let's see if we
can find another solution without
actually canceling these shows.
- [Roger] You as a singer,
you had the voice, you had control of that whole...
I control that whole crowd any given moment,
if I told them to smash the place they would.
If I told them that hey, "Quit the B.S.
"this is not what it's about",
which I always did, it's about unity.
It's about being together, they'd listen.
- And I can remember at the Bad Brains show,
them actually cooperating and the fact that
it got out of hand wild, and HR and the band
would say, "We're gonna do some reggae
"for a while", and that actually calmed
people down.
(🎜 guitar strumming 🎜)
- [Randy] Of course on the last song all
hell would break loose.
You know, the last song of the show
or the encore, "I'm gonna jump off the
"fuckin' stage. What are they gonna do?
"Throw me out? The show is over."
- [Tim] That last song we'd be sitting there
and basically spending more time looking around
and checking for bouncers, making sure we had
a clear path to get up on the stage and dive.
- [Linda] They were trying to control it,
but taking slam dancing out of a punk rock
show would not make it a punk rock show.
So, being that it was punk we're rebels anyway.
So like, who's gonna read signs?
Like, we're there to have fun.
- (guitar playing) - Last night in New York,
just a handful of thugs in the crowd.
They didn't do much, but everybody else
just stood there petrified,
they didn't wanna react or show emotion
or anything.
In other words, the people we all hated
in school are back.
(audience cheering)
Aside from that, I like dancin' around.
I like jumpin' off a stage.
We don't mind it if you're cool about it,
but are you gettin' anything out of it?
(audience cheering)
I mean sometimes I wonder whether
so called hardcore has become just another
thrill ritual like riding a roller coaster,
skating a pipe, or a metal show,
or Duran Duran or whatever.
I think dancing's cool, as long as it isn't
a mindless reaction, you know what I mean?
Come here, get your thrills, dive off the stage,
go home, and learn nothing.
That kind of thing makes us feel like
we've totally fuckin' failed.
- [Johnny] For insurance reasons,
no stage diving, no slam dancing.
You know, you had to have a disclaimer.
In fact, I think if I'm not mistaken
there were shows where you had to sign
wavers and things like that,
so if you got hurt it was your business.
- [Lou] If you knew the backstage area,
there was the stage and there was this little
booth lookin' thing and it was a backstage
and it had this tiny little window.
It was like maybe three feet high
by two feet wide, and I remember starting
our show and the place is going crazy,
and you see Dave Vision stand up in that
little window and dive from the
backstage into the crowd.
(laughs)
See that's what City Gardens was like.
There was no stage diving, but then the most
insane action would happen on that dance floor.
- We had let the kids basically do whatever
they wanted to do.
We were the first venue in the area
doing punk rock.
You know, with Dead Kennedys and Black Flag.
If kids wanted to jump up and jump off the
stage we let 'em, if they wanted to hang
from the girder we let 'em.
We let 'em do whatever they wanted.
But then all of a sudden we'd come to
the mailbox, we'd have a little yellow slip
that says, "You have a certified letter."
- I've been in the pit.
Like I was the feisty little girl.
Ya know, I still have my first pair of Docs,
and they're all scuffed up and I would be out
there and I've got like ripped open
band shirts and stuff.
I took a couple to the chin quite
a few times.
And then he'd yell at me like, "You're gonna
"get me sewed, your grandparents are
"going to sew me!"
- You're being sewed,
this person who went to your show
broke his arm.
- They didn't care if Randy was throwing people
out or not, there were people doing flips,
like back flips off.
I mean, it was just awesome.
- And then, it would happen again
and it was gettin' a little more frequent,
a little more frequent.
- They probably got as hurt as they always did,
but they didn't react the way that they
did before that.
They were actually trying to make a payday
out of it which was really, really fucked up.
It's like, you know.
You want this club to stay open?
Do you wanna go see these bands?
There's very few people booking these bands.
- [Randy] I had to buy the policies, ya know.
A thousand dollars.
So and then once again, you're talkin' about
did we make money?
You know, a thousand people at a show for
ten or 12 dollars, ya know, ten percent of that
just went for an insurance policy.
- [Marc] There were times when Randy
would just say, "I can't. No", he would say,
"No", and he'd look all sheepish and sort of
sad about it and he'd say, "Tut basically
"said we can't."
And so, that sort of was my understanding
of how things worked.
Randy had a certain threshold that he was
allowed to go up to as long as money
was being made, but if there was pressure
being put on the club, if the cops were
snoopin' around, Tut was like, "I don't want
"any part of this, Randy. So find another way
"to make this happen, don't book those
"bands anymore."
- I'd get on the stage in front of 600 kids
and say, "We can't do it anymore,
"you're sewing us! You, I'm not sewing you,
"you are sewing me."
- The whole vibe of the place changed,
and the big thing for me was it didn't
seem to have an appreciation
for how much work it took to put these shows on.
How much work by Randy, by the bands,
by the people who worked at City Gardens.
That they just took everything for granted.
(rock music)
- [Steve] I also remember going to
buying tickets and Randy being completely
pissed off because
Johnny Rotten never showed up for a PIL show
that was sold out.
Just never came.
And he was pissed.
- [Randy] The bands were wanting more and more.
And we had a Cramps show and they wanted like,
$6,000 instead of $3,000.
And you know, tour buses, and tractor trailers,
and breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- [Amy] Just seeing Randy
and Tut, the toll that it was taking on them.
You could just see them getting more and more...
It was just grinding them down,
they were getting burned out that it was
just harder and harder.
They could never catch a break.
- I remember back then it was really easy
to throw shit balls at a band and say like,
"Oh, this band sucks 'cause they're chargin'
"nine dollars."
You know, and Fugazi would come around
and charge four.
I would go like, "Oh this band is a ripoff
"and a sellout", and Randy would go like,
"Hey, it's not my fault the band wants
"this much money."
And then in the end ultimately Tut ended
up looking like the bad guy, or the man,
or whatever 'cause he was the man.
You know?
- [Randy] The fun is not having lawsuits.
Fun is not taking your life in your hands.
- It's just when it stops being fun it's
time to hang it up.
- [Randy] I'm tired of this, and that's when I
pretty much said, "I think we're gonna
"wrap this up."
(🎜 The Minutemen - 'Do You Want New Wave Or Do you Want The Truth' music plays 🎜)
- When Randy left there I believe Tut
was still trying to keep it going and booking
like local bands, and I did see my friend's
local band there and there was,
you know, crickets.
It was 30 or 40 people in a club that
holds 900 plus.
Whoever was booking the shows at that time
didn't have the knowledge to bring bands
in there, it was all Randy.
Randy brought all of those bands there.
(train sounds)
(screeching)
(cheering)
🎜 One, two, three 🎜
(🎜 The Doughboys - 'Black Sheep' music plays 🎜)
🎜 I came out 🎜
🎜 Feet first 🎜
🎜 Jumped down runnin' 🎜
🎜 Quenchin' thirst 🎜
🎜 I'm feelin' bad 🎜
🎜 Some self rule 🎜
🎜 How I survive cause with all attitude 🎜
🎜 I guess I arrive right on time 🎜
🎜 I'm as ripe as that fruit from the vine 🎜
🎜 Yeah Yeah 🎜
🎜 You know they call me the black sheep 🎜
🎜 I'm runnin' wild, while y'all sleep 🎜
🎜 You know they call me the black sheep 🎜
- [Jim] People give him a lot of credit
and a lot of adulation for great shows.
"Oh he put on this ska show,
"or that hardcore show",
or this Nine Inch Nails show,
or whatever.
And he gets a lot of credit for individual shows,
and he's the guy who brought this huge
band to Trenton, New Jersey.
But, I don't think that he really gets enough
credit for building the foundation of what
was to come and what could be built
on top of that.
- [Randy] But right now, from Highland Park,
New Jersey, the Grip Weeds. (cheering)
(🎜 The Grip Weeds - 'Every Minute' music plays 🎜)
- All this hard work that he put in
at this club that he loved has resulted
in having absolutely nothing but memories.
There's no retirement money there,
there's no way to really support himself,
and he's still workin' like dog,
and I think that's...
For me that's the sadness of the whole little story.
- [Director's Voice] What do these all sort of mean
to you, this whole collection?
(sighs)
- What does it mean to me?
Ya know, now at 54
and the way the economy is and
how I'm really not makin' any money,
I wish I'd never bought all these things,
I wish I had the money instead,
or I invested it.
I have no retirement, you know.
It's all gone.
- Because in the end, City Gardens was
a mom and pop organization.
The building was owned by one guy,
the shows were booked by one guy.
- You know, he loves music.
Even though it's kicked him on his ass.
(rock music)
(cheering)
- [Randy] Thank you very much.
- [Johnny] When you think of legendary venues,
CBGB's, the Troubadour in California,
even The Cavern Club in Liverpool,
City Gardens isn't like that.
You can wear a CBGB's t-shirt,
and you know what that means.
Anybody can wear one, you know immediately
what that means.
There is no City Gardens t-shirt.
There's no kind of mental picture
of what City Gardens was.
City Gardens was the people, the bands,
and it was Randy Now.
- It wasn't a hardcore club,
it wasn't a punk club,
it wasn't a ska club.
I mean, different bands different nights.
You could see The Bad Brains one night,
Killing Joke the next night,
a ska band the next night.
I loved it for that.
- You know, he had a vision for what he
wanted to do and he made it happen.
At the time, as a local band you may have
your grumbles and gripes with Randy,
but in retrospect it was pretty selfless
what he was doing.
- The will to live life on your terms
is that life-long lesson we get from this music.
- Some might look at it like, "Oh he's
"floggin' the dead horse."
But I don't look at it that way at all,
I look at every night as a new chance
to get out there and have fun and...
It's kinda the cavalcade of old hits.
It's like, I'd be playing Tooling for Anus
in the Holiday Inn in Secaucus when
I'm 80-years-old, you know.
- What motivates a person and what drives
a person to keep doing and getting better
at what they do or try to over a course
of a long time, that's something you kinda...
Ya know, if touring and all that stuff
goes with the territory it just does.
Everybody has to go and work and to keep
the machine alive so to speak,
and connect with an audience.
Now live is funny cause you know there's
so much access now to anything,
but yet live is probably the most
important part of a bands life.
- For every venue that is jammed up right
now with bands trying to get out and into
these stages, there's some empty elks lodge,
some empty Nights at Columbus Hall,
there's some empty basement somewhere
waiting for something to happen.
- No it never occurred to me that he would
ever be booking shows for venues that only
hold 50 people, but it always occurred to me
that sooner or later someone's gonna wanna
make a movie about him.
(laughs) What is the logic in that?
- I mean to be quite honest,
and it might be a little naive of me
I just never thought City Gardens would close.
I mean, I was so in the moment with that place
up until the day that somebody told me it closed,
I just assumed that I'd be in my 40's
and Randy would still be bookin' shows there.
- We have a place in New Hope called
John and Peters, and the best part of
John and Peters is the pictures on the wall.
It's not what they're doing now,
what they're doing now is nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
They're living off of some old laurel somewhere,
and it's not good.
But you look at the wall and you go,
"Chris Christopherson was here?", you know,
"When is he comin' back?"
He ain't comin' back, none of those people...
They're all either dead or they're not
coming back to that room.
City Gardens is not living off of
the pictures on the wall which is great.
- One day I really would like to walk
through there again, I don't know what would
be required, but I'd like
to turn the lights on and just kinda stand
around and just kinda eyeball it
one last time.
- The guy loves rock 'n' roll.
(🎜 House of Others - 'Memento Mori' music plays 🎜)
- Okay everybody let's go,
we gotta say goodnight.