I’ve spoken about my love for the long-lost Marquee here several times (see links at the bottom of the post). Tucked at the westernmost end of 21st Street in the early 90’s, it was a somewhat out-of-the-way but entirely excellent venue. I’ve rattled off the names before, but just off the top of my head, I was lucky enough to witness shows there by the Butthole Surfers, Blur, Senseless Things, Julian Cope, Kitchens of Distinction, Lush, Ride, Curve, Birdland, The La's, Chapterhouse, 24-7 Spyz, Primus, House of Love, The Wedding Present, Pylon, Too Much Joy, Pigface, the Rollins Band, the Lunachicks, The Sundays, Therapy?, the Charlatans, the Wonder Stuff, Swervedriver, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Laika, Pop Will Eat Itself and, wait for it, Cop Shoot Cop. I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting a few. In any case, it was a great, goddamn space.
Like I said, I’ve waxed rhapsodic about the Marquee before, so I shan’t dwell too long on those reminiscences. Suffice to say, the club is long, long gone, its building razed to accommodate another towering glass condo. Everything about the street the Marquee was once perched on looks different. You’d never know it was ever there, alas.
That’s why the video below is so amazing, to me. This is video-diary, of sorts, put together by a sorely unsung Irish band from that same era called The Fatima Mansions. Named after an incongruously-christened, low-income housing development in their native Dublin and led by one Cathal Coughlan, previously in a band called Microdisney, the Fatima Mansions were a wilfully difficult band to categorize. At times as harsh as the angriest industrial rock of the era, then deceptively poppy the next minute, the `Mansions were a sly and versatile unit, but their unapologetic political bent, their lyrical allusions and their deliberate failure to adopt any definable tag or defining sartorial flourish (despite their sound, they didn’t dress like Ministry) left many “alt.rock” folks here in the U.S. scratching their heads. As such, many slept on this band, which is a damn shame. Their motto, incidentally, was KEEP MUSIC EVIL.. It’s no accident I loved them.
In any case, here we see the Fatima Mansions arriving in New York City in 1991, and going to the Marquee for a sound check before a gig there that evening. The amazing thing, for me, is that not only was I dutifully at the gig in question, I believe this was shot on the same afternoon I actually interviewed Cathal Coughlan in the offices of their ill-fated U.S. record label, Radioactive. Cathal was absolutely hilarious. We popped out for a pint afterwards, and he bought one of those “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKIN’ FUCK” t-shirts from a street vendor that left him in fits of giggles all afternoon.
Anyway, the video below captured the interior of the Marquee — quite an intimate room, in retrospect. If you remember those days, it’s well worth your time.
Here’s one of my favorite Fatima Mansions tracks.
More About the Marquee:
Top Eleven Since-Closed Live Music Venues in NYC
Marquee Memories
Marquee Memories: Redux
Making the PopScene at the Marquee
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