Punk’s (Not) Dead
Recalling the sights, sounds, and smells of Newport’s
punk rock haven, the Jockey Club.
By Darren Blase
Photograph by Sarah Kuhl
“Five dollars and I need an ID. Four bands tonight.” It
was 1983 and I was standing in the musty hallway of the Jockey Club, a former Newport
gambling casino that by the early ’80s had become a haven for social misfits
and punk rockers.
“Uhhh....” I was a 15-year-old Elder
High School sophomore, assured by
my best friend’s older brother that this place let anybody in. I tore open my
starchy Velcro wallet and before I knew it I was handing over my RadioShack
Battery Club card, which of course didn’t have a date of birth on it. “Looks
good. Enjoy the show. If Newport’s
finest visit us tonight, exits are in the back.” I got my hand stamped and took
one step into the cavernous ballroom, where I saw Joey “Shithead” Keithley,
lead singer of the Vancouver hardcore band DOA (who at that point in my life
was the Stones, Beatles, and Who rolled into one) playing pinball with some
kid. There was essentially no separation between the performer and the
audience—a huge selling point for me. And I wasn’t alone. The Jockey Club
quickly became a main stop for touring punk and new wave bands like The Replacements,
Minutemen, Samhain, Dead Kennedys, The Fall, Ramones, Hüsker Dü, Cramps,
Scream, Fang, Black Flag, and many more. (Need proof? Check out the club’s back
door, above.)
The constant flow of music of that caliber would be enough
to fill every now-40-year-old aging punker’s hope chest. But it was the
personal aspect that so many of the regulars left behind when the owner,
Shorty, a cigar-chomping bulldog of a man who always wielded a six-D-battery
flashlight for “disciplinary” reasons, sold the joint to the cab company next
door in the spring of 1988. Those reminiscences, and a motherlode of photos and
flyer art, live on in a new book from Aurora Press: Stories for Shorty: A
Collection of Recollections from the Jockey Club 1982–88. Here’s mine: At no
other club did D. Boon of the Minutemen (who sadly was killed in a car accident
shortly after) sit at the bar and help me cram for my Algebra final. Later that
week I passed the exam, and I can still solve a Collatz Conjecture problem
using the binomial theory. Thanks D.!
>>Jockey Club book release party at Shake It Records, 4156
Hamilton Ave., Northside, (513) 591-0123. Nov 22 @
5 pm
Originally published in the November 2008 issue.