A couple of years back, I wrote a teary-eyed little post about revisiting the site of the long-since-closed early 90's music venue, The Marquee. There's currently a Marquee club over on 10th Avenue between 26th and 27th, but I'm not talking about that place. The Marquee I'm referring to wasn't too far from there, though. This Marquee was at 547 West 21st Street between 10th Avenue and the Lincoln expressway. It was way the hell out of the way at the time, but it was a great space. As I said in that earlier post, I saw a slew of amazing bands there and was deeply bummed when it closed (after which it turned into a Latino dance club and then a theatre and is now a comparatively sedate art gallery). Whenever I walk down that street (which isn't too often), the early 90's all come flooding back.
In any case, one of my fondest memories of The Marquee involves Henry Rollins. I was writing, at the time, for a tiny independent music magazine called The New York Review of Records (if you've heard of it, give yourself a gold star and accept my apologies). Henry Rollins was in town both touring with the Rollins Band and promoting his latest project, a collaboration with hirsute Rollins Band bassist Andrew Weiss called, somewhat forgettably, Wartime. I lined up an interview with Rollins for the NYROR and was told to meet him out front of The Marquee (where the Rollins Band would be performing that evening). Having been an avid Black Flag fan since first hearing "Rise Above" on a friend's mixtape in the early 80's, I was deeply psyched.
I met the great man standing outside of 547 West 21st Street, bereft of any semblance of a smile, with arms folded, legs akimbo. Still being somewhat new to the rock journalism game and easily prone to being awestruck by my idols, I probably seemed like a hapless little fanboy in my Skinny Puppy t-shirt, clutching my crappy hand-held tape recorder. But Rollins was nothing if not professional -- if not especially personable-- at least at first. We talked about Wartime and the Rollins Band, although he clearly had no interest in discussing Black Flag in the slightest. He was curt, viscerally self-effacing and practically bit my head off when I asked him if he stayed in touch with any of his "contemporaries.' By this I meant folks like Ian MacKaye or Glenn Danzig or H.R.. "Oh, I have contemporaries, do I? Who might they be?" he barked. I back-pedaled and explained myself (stammering, doubtlessly) and he cooled off, but the whole exchange was pretty intense.
By the end of the interview, he could tell I was genuinely sincere and a fan, and he gamely signed my copy of the No Policy e.p. by his first band, S.O.A. ("one old record" he scribbled on the sleeve). We shook hands in a Rollins immediately commenced an interview with another doe-eyed rock journo-type who'd been waiting patiently behind us.
I returned to the Marquee later that evening for the show. New York's own Lunachicks were the opening act, and they put on a hilarious, high-voltage performance. In the middle of the proceedings, however, there was a bit of a commotion in the crowd (and not just the usual pit scuffle). The `Chicks even stopped mid-song to get involved. I was standing over on the right, and only saw what looked like a wolfpack of skinheads suddenly close in on someone and beat him senseless. The guy was pulled out of the scrum ... strangely with his pants around his ankles. From the stage, one of the Lunachicks called out thanks to the skins. A couple of years later, I'd learn what that episode was about. The recipient of that rigorous beat-down was none other than Dino Sex, erstwhile drummer for GG Allin's band, The Murder Junkies. As detailed in disquieting minutia in the excellent GG Allin documentary, "Hated," Dino isn't quite right in the head and was deeply obsessed with the Lunachicks. As it turns out, Dino showed up at the show at the Marquee that evening and was so caught up in the erotic rapture from watching the mightly Lunachicks that he felt obliged to drop trou and commence masturbating in front of them. Neither the band nor the skinheads in the crowd were especially sympathetic to Dino's display, and responded accordingly. While bloodied upon his exit from the Marquee, Dino did survive the experience more or less intact. I believe he's currently a bike messenger. He's prone to dying his hair a flaming orange and sports a neon green handlebar mustache. Ya can't make this stuff up.
Anyway, The Rollins Band came on afterwards, thanked the Lunachicks for letting them "close" for them and launched into a blistering set. I'm only mentioning all this now as I stumbled upon the below clips from that very show. In the top clip, "Hard," enjoy Henry's signature verbal deflowering of a vengeful heckler. The bottom clip is a sprawling, funked-up cover of the Velvet Underground's "Move Right In" (if you like this rendition, a similar version, recorded live in Austria, can be found as an extra cut on Hard Volume, oddly listed as "Joy Riding with Frank"). Shortly after this show, The Rollins Band signed with Imago records, played the first year of Lollpalooza and released The End of Silence which catapulted Rollins towards an even greater audience.
Today, what was the Marquee is now an art gallery, the Lunachicks went on "hiatus" in 2000 and Rollins has largely since given up music, opting instead to continue writing, publishing books of photography (see clip below) and continuing his spoken word shows. I caught his birthday performance last year at Joe's Pub.
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