We'd be willing to bet that the area comprising Tampa, St. Pete and Clearwater has had more original-music venues open and close over the last 25 years than any other metropolis of comparable population. There's the fact of its strange, itinerant demographics. There's the fact that it covers a huge chunk of geography. And there's the fact that we found we can't possibly archive them all here — every time one of us blurts out a name we forgot, the other comes up with three more.
And we've been going out for decades, man.
So we quit (where the hell was the Paint Factory, anyway?), sticking with the many we, our colleagues, and a few longtime local-band fanatics know and remember best. Yeah, we know we missed a couple. But we did pretty good, anyway. Take a look, and be transported by the magic of memory. Oh, and don't forget to pour a little liquor on the ground.
49th STREET MINING COMPANY '80s haven for local dirt-rock and hair bands that sat on 49th Street in St. Pete near 54th Avenue. The Bobby Friss Band played there regularly.
403 CHAOS At the tail end of the '90s, in a tiny record store across the street from the University of Tampa, bands that would soon redefine the sound of punk rock played for the door and a floor to crash on. Hot Water Music? Yep. The Get Up Kids? Uh-huh.
AGORA BALLROOM Probably Tampa Bay's first showcase club of the post-punk era. The late '70s/early '80s room, situated near the Tampa dog track, hosted the likes of The Ramones, Iggy Pop and [the loudest show Snider ever witnessed] Johnny Winter.
B.B. JOE'S Cool, homey spot for jazz lovers in the Jannus Landing block of Central Avenue. Singer Fred Johnson and his band played there for years in the '80s. The late cornet player Nat Adderley performed there, too.
BIG APPLE WEST Cozy '80s club on Central Avenue (just west of U.S. 19) in St. Pete that presented acoustic acts and some jazz.
BLUE CHAIR MUSIC Like 403 Chaos, The Blue Chair was an exceptionally community-oriented effort. Opened by a local writer (Marty Clear) and music/counterculture nut (Edwin Velez) in 1992 — with a whole lot of help from their friends — this record store/venue/hangout helped define "pre-Centro" Ybor City's funky, fringe-y flavor. Independent acts from grindcore to hip-hop played at both of the store's two successive locations, until the area's latest makeover redeveloped Blue Chair right out of the neighborhood.
BLUES SHIP Cool, rustic (upstairs) roadhouse on Seventh Avenue in Ybor City that presented regular slates of local blues talent and occasional national acts.
BOOMERANG'S This Clearwater bar virtually spawned mid-Pinellas' most fondly remembered rock clique, a cadre that included Men from Earth, Freaks Rule and several others (Smoked Nova, anyone?). The story about a whiskey-soaked, underage Billy Wells trying to break down the front door is, to the best of our knowledge, mostly true.
BROTHER'S LOUNGE A key cog in the '80s jazz club scene, Brother's was reputed to be run by the Mob. It sat in a windowed office building on the west end of Kennedy Boulevard. Citiheat was the house band for years.
CHESHIRE CAT Hardscrabble club in Gulfport during the '70s that hosted a lot of the area's better Southern rock bands.
CLEARWATER GUITAR GALLERY Situated in an office/industrial park, this little theater showcased such six-string talent as Barney Kessel, Kenny Burrell and Leo Kottke.
CLEARWATER NATIONAL GUARD ARMORY Housed one of the most infamous shows in Tampa Bay annals — a little slice of mayhem with the Butthole Surfers as ringleaders. The mini-riot drew police and a story in the St. Petersburg Times that declined to use the band's name.
CLUB DETROIT Downtown St. Pete's answer to Ybor's fabled Ritz Theatre (currently Masquerade), Club Detroit was a highly sought-after Pinellas County gig for local bands during the '80s and '90s. Great stage, great sound, and lots of big names packed the small but great room over the years. Scott Weiland staggered in front of Stone Temple Pilots there shortly before "Sex Type Thing" exploded, and an early Primus show was so crowded that folks were smashed against the venue's glass facade like those algae-eating aquarium fish.
CLUB DIAMONDS One of very few live-music rooms between the Skyway and Sarasota proper, the neighborhood bar/rock club/billiards parlor gave original acts a venue for a little while just after the turn of the millennium. Rumors of Mob involvement surrounded its closing — the last we heard, it was a furniture warehouse.
CLUB MORE For a few years at the end of the '90s, Club More was the only reason for local-music fans to enter downtown Clearwater. Musician/carpenter Flash Gordon and his associates booked up-and-coming nationals, as well, and strove to make the entertainment the Bay area's most eclectic for a venue of its size. It was a major blow to the scene when Club More closed in 2001; financial woes were the main reason but, this being Clearwater, rumors of political manipulation ran rampant.
CURTIS HIXON HALL Sufficed as Tampa's "big venue" for many years, until the USF Sun Dome took over the mantle. Many terrific shows, including Talking Heads with their Afro-influenced large band, Stevie Ray Vaughan and scores of others.
EL GORDO'S A little place that sat atop a Mexican Restaurant on St. Pete Beach. Deloris Telescope held court there for a long time.
FORT HOMER HESTERLY ARMORY A bunker stuck between Howard and Armenia avenues in Tampa that hosted any number of major R&B shows in the '50s, '60s and '70s, and then some rock and punk things later on.
FRANKIE'S PATIO P-Funk funked this place up. Cheap Trick played the courtyard on Ybor's Seventh Avenue. Frankie's fed off the YC renaissance for a while, and then faltered due to rumored infighting and mismanagement. Remember the humongous fan that attempted to keep the place cool?
THE HIDEAWAY Former Helium Bomb drummer Bryce Johnson commandeered this out-of-the-way St. Pete Beach pub a couple of years ago, and started booking local and regional acts. The bar immediately fostered a communal vibe, but the lack of incidental customer traffic forced him to shutter the operation after 12 months.
HURRICANE LOUNGE Located downstairs at the Hurricane Seafood Restaurant on Pass-a-Grille, this jazz club drew solid crowds for several years in the '80s. Guitarist Ted Shumate led a house band for quite awhile. Wynton Marsalis once sat in.
JAZZ CELLAR Real urban vibe to this upscale club that was set in a basement in Ybor Square on Ninth Avenue. Run by the folks who owned Paragon Music, it had impeccable acoustics and sound equipment (although the low ceiling was a hindrance). Even had a house big band. Played local and national acts (Mose Allison). Closed in mid '90s for lack of business.
JUNCTION PIZZA One of a handful of truly all-ages venues to ever exist in Pinellas County, Junction Pizza's back room was where a number of St. Pete's best post-Alternative Explosion bands learned how to play. Oh, and Lenny Dykstra filmed a commercial for Major League Baseball there with local punk-pop trio Joe Popp.
KILLIAN'S ROCK CAFÉ A bigger version of this rock venue eventually enjoyed a brief vogue in Ybor City. But for many longtime local pundits, the Waters Avenue location was second only to the Rock-It Club as the place to watch hair metal, scope rock sluts and maybe score a little flake.
LE CLUB A terrific room at the Tierra Verde Island Resort that hosted scores of great acts, many of them jazz or jazz-oriented, in the first half of the '80s: Pat Metheny, Weather Report, Count Basie, Dr. John, etc.
LE JAZZ HOT Another smaller room at Tierra Verde that provided a bona fide jazz club for a few years in the '80s. National acts like Clark Terry, Milt Jackson, Zoot Sims and others would come in and perform with a house rhythm section led by bassist John Lamb.
THE LIAR'S CLUB Tampa's most recent victim of fickle patronage, questionable location and inexperienced management, The Liar's Club just shut down a couple of months ago. The Seminole Heights room boasted a seriously Goth-a-billy motif, but booked everything from industrial to alt-country.
THE LONDON VICTORY CLUB Almost every native fan of seminal '80s alt-rock who was ahead of the curve has a story about seeing some European act in this mid-size downtown Tampa landmark long before they were huge. U2 is the subject of most of them, but impossible-to-prove legends also say The Police played there.
LONESOME COYOTE Very odd little '80s venue set somewhere in a warehouse complex in Pinellas Park. Black Flag supposedly played there. The State Theatre's Dave Hundley remembers the promoters serving illicit beer out of a sink.
M.L. CHASERS One of Clearwater's best known '80s/early '90s hard-rock spots. Sort of the North Pinellas analogue to Killian's, it was the kind of place where everybody's girlfriend was a, um, dancer.
MAESTRO'S The Macar Brothers, a light jazz act, opened their own "acoustically perfect" room in North Tampa during the '80s. Outfitted like a recording studio, the sound came off as antiseptic.
THE MONTERREY DELI This small, friendly, downtown Sarasota all-ages joint hosted the rise of Manasota's pop-punk/posthardcore/emo scene as the '90s became the '00s. Sardine-can crowds were common on weekends as bands like The Chase Theory, The Silent Treatment and Signal 76 cut their teeth.
MR. T'S CLUB 19 Large '80s showcase club at the junction of U.S. 19 and Gulf-to-Bay in Clearwater. Played prominent local bands and some nationals. Stevie Ray Vaughan did his galvanizing Bay area debut there.
MS. LUCKY'S Situated on (then) Buffalo Avenue, this early '80s joint was probably Tampa's first punk/new wave club. Booked by punk impresario Linda Laker, it regularly hosted bands like Zenith Nadir and the Swimming Pool Qs.
THE QUARTERDECK Popular '70s Madeira Beach watering hole that played regular host to the Mad Beach Band, Tampa Bay's answer to Jimmy Buffett and that ilk.
THE RECOVERY ROOM This hole-in-the-wall opened up on N. Nebraska Avenue as the apocryphal Stone Lounge's salad days were fading. Light traffic and an unusual amount of violence (some of it skinhead-related) shut it down not too long afterward.
THE ROADHOUSE Just off E. Kennedy Boulevard on Albany, small semi-professional wrestling arena The Roadhouse also staged metal and death metal shows during the early '80s. The lighting rig made for excellent pre-Eddie Vedder swinging, and the mosh-pits could be frenetic.
THE ROCK-IT CLUB Has to be Tampa's most storied venue/rock bar. Though it specialized in commercial metal, The Pixies played a one-off there while in town to open for U2 at the stadium. Fringe acts from Babes in Toyland to Scatterbrain also came through shortly before the club's early-'90s demise.
THE RUBB Independently wealthy and extremely nice Gainesville native Michael Tubbs had a dream: to create a big, plush, modern, top-notch venue in the midst of Ybor's danceterias and cover-band bars devoted almost exclusively to original music. And he made it happen … for a while.
STAR CLUB One of Ybor's seediest and most storied venues. Green Day, Urge Overkill and countless others made tour stops (and complained about the P.A.) there before they were huge. There were actually a couple of rooms that went under the name, but most associate it with the Seventh Avenue grotto open back before the street even thought about no longer being dangerous.
THE STONE LOUNGE It was pretty much Ground Zero for the last (mid-'90s) Golden Age of Tampa's local music scene. When not hosting underground touring bands — Sebadoh, Everclear and, no kidding, fucking Korn played there — the club would pack out for Bay area punk, alt, metal and indie acts. Eventually, co-owner Kim Dicce moved up to Ybor's The Rubb; the building became a strip club, and briefly housed another live-music venue, The Refinery (run by now-Mojo Gurus guitarist Jeff Vitolo).
THE STUFFED PEPPER Hole-in-the-wall joint on Central Avenue in St. Pete, just east of U.S. 19. Played local punk, rockabilly and roots bands.
THE SUNSET Before Nasty Savage/Gardy Loo! guitarist Ben Myer helped make the Brass Mug Hillsborough County's most enduring metal haven (around 1990), its North Tampa neighbor The Sunset pretty much owned the weightier end of the spectrum.
THE SWAMP CLUB It was before my [Scott's] time, but I've heard a lot of stories about this Gulfport biker/beach/punk bar's stint hosting raucous shows by everyone from the Athens-inflected Multi-Color House to drunk punks The Voodoo Idols.
TAMPA JAI ALAI FRONTON Located near Gandy in Tampa, it was the market's premiere medium-size venue for a good chunk of the '70s and '80s. Acoustics were lousy, but somehow that didn't matter when Bob Marley or Bonnie Raitt or The Pretenders were playing.
TAMPA STADIUM The place where U2 and The Who and Paul McCartney and the Stones and Whitney Houston and Bowie and others all played their monster stadium gigs in the market. Also where a rained-out Led Zeppelin show sparked a riot in the late '70s. Tore down to make way for Raymond James Stadium.
TARANTULA RECORDS This short-lived Town & Country record shop managed to host a surprising number of local and touring punk shows during its brief late-'90s span.
TUT'S PYRAMID Another exceedingly ephemeral endeavor. Across downtown Tampa's Franklin Street promenade from the building that used to house alt-music dance club 911 (yeah, yeah, they did shows, but for, like, five minutes), the tiny Tut's Pyramid saw a few seasons' worth or rock and hip-hop shows around '92-'93. Hey, does anybody else remember when Everglade played, and Jim Reese's amps fell on him?
THE VOLLEY CLUB Way, way, way up in North Tampa (not too far from where Skipper's Smokehouse still stands), The Volley Club catered mainly to hard rock and metal acts. Countless local Sunset Strip wannabes and young death-metal up-and-comers cut their teeth here as the '80s gave way to the '90s.
THE VOODOO LOUNGE As the heyday of The Stone and The Rubb faded, many of the musicians who'd experienced it made this small St. Pete bar their new clubhouse. (Props to Big Catch owner John LaBuddie, who leased the place and let it grow that way.) Camaraderie was forged, new bands were introduced, many tabs were forgotten, and the crowds started to get a little bigger. The Voodoo seemed on the verge of blowing up when the building's owner ousted LaBuddie so some younger relative could turn the space into a techno club.
THE WAREHOUSE @ THE COLUMBIA RESTAURANT Another part of the '80s effort to build a Tampa Bay jazz club scene. Drew strong crowds well before the rest of Ybor's Seventh Avenue took off.
Contact Senior Writer Eric Snider at 813-248-8888, ext. 114, or eric.snider@weeklyplanet.com. Contact Music Critic Scott Harrell at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2004.