7 now-hidden hot spots from Chicago’s rock ’n’ roll history

Any good local harbors at least a little bit of obscure knowledge about Chicago’s rock history, be it the location of the fictional Championship Vinyl from High Fidelity (Milwaukee and Honore), a random story about a dreadlocked Pete Wentz at the Fireside Bowl, or that Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville album cover photo was taken in the photo booth at Rainbo. There’s always more to learn, though, especially on the brand new Chicago Rocks 1980-2002 bus tour hosted by scene vet Phil Rockrohr. Who would guess that a dental office used to be a happening club, or that yet another dental office used to be one of the best record stores in the Midwest? Prior to his inaugural tour April 2, Rockrohr walked The A.V. Club through some of Chicago’s long-lost musical hotspots.

Milio’s Hair Salon (959 W. Belmont Ave.)—Formerly The Quiet Knight, Tuts, and The Avalon
Phil Rockrohr: Milio’s has a long history going back to the late ’60s. It was The Quiet Knight, then Tuts, and then it was The Avalon before it closed. I think it was a tanning salon before it was Milio’s. It’s hard to believe the list of bands that played there, especially because it’s now a salon—Bob Marley, Tom Waits, R.E.M., Prince, Run D.M.C., The Cramps, Bauhaus, Echo And The Bunnymen, The Stray Cats, Psychedelic Furs. The first Smashing Pumpkins show was there. They played with a drum machine, and they were on the second stage, which was in a back room. They weren’t good enough or ready for a front-room stage. My friend played on the main stage that night with his band, The Shakers, and he said he went in and checked them out, but he wasn’t very impressed.

Dynamic Liquors (2132 N. Halsted St.)—Formerly La Mere Vipere
PR: If you’ve seen the punk documentary You Weren’t There, there’s incredible stuff in it about La Mere Vipere. It was the city’s first punk club until it mysteriously burned down after less than a year in operation. Try and imagine what it would have been like to go to a punk club in Chicago in 1977.

There’s a clip in the movie where they talk to different scene vets about what it was like to wear punk clothes and have a different haircut in Chicago at that time. It’s so different today. Then, it was very blue-collar and very narrow-minded. There are five or 10 different interviews, and they said people called them Devo all the time, because they’d been on SNL, and people knew who they were, but also that everyone called them “faggot.”

The point is that Dynamic Liquors represents something that’s really incomprehensible to some of us today. I know it’s just a liquor store, but if you go in and talk to them, they’ll tell you it’s set up exactly the same. The owners knew what it was before, and when they’ve done work on it, they’ve found a lot of weird things where these old little alcoves used to be like drugs and condoms.

There’s great footage inside La Mere in You Weren’t There. You can see that they almost didn’t know how be punks yet, like they were doing this part-’70s hippie part-punk mix. It takes time to adapt to a lifestyle or a new idea, and they were in the process of transition.

Also the neighborhood was really crappy at the time. I know it’s hard to imagine Halsted and Armitage being crappy, but gangs patrolled the corner and sold drugs there. It was a different place and time.

Lincoln Park Institute for Oral And Cosmetic Surgery (2449 N. Lincoln Ave.)—Formerly Wax Trax! Records
PR: That’s the record store and label that launched Ministry, Front 242, My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult, Revolting Cocks, and dozens more bands.

I haven’t been in the location since it was Wax Trax!, actually, but at the time ... well, after La Mere Vipere burned down, people realized that they could make this scene for themselves. A few months later, Wax Trax! opened and it created a scene, especially for younger people who weren’t around before or couldn’t go to bars. It was an oasis for the whole Midwest. People drove from Peoria and Champaign to get records at Wax Trax! in 1978. No one else sold them. You could order them from your local chain store, but it might take weeks or months to get something, or it might not come in at all.

Everyone gravitated to Wax Trax!, and everyone speaks very highly of it. It was a gathering place that sold clothes and records, and was just a place to hang out. And then the record label launched, and that changed rock music as far as the addition of industrial and electronic elements.

Westend Dental (1170 W. Armitage Ave.)—Formerly the West End Music Club
PR: West End was booked by Sue Miller, who would go on to own Lounge Ax and is now married to Jeff Tweedy. It holds a special place in my heart because all my friends went there. If you were in your late teens and were really into this new music, this was the first club to have underage shows. Sue Miller was pretty young herself, maybe in her 20s.

At the time, I was really into The Who and The Jam, and they had these mod nights. They were legendary for teenagers and early twentysomethings, and gave us this sense of subcultural identity, even if that subculture was British and 20 years old.

Sue, to my understanding, didn’t intend to work there as a booker, but no one wanted to do it. She booked Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Camper Van Beethoven, The Feelies, Meat Puppets, Suzanne Vega, and The Minutemen. These were bands that no one else was booking at the time, in the early ’80s. Then Metro opened and started having the same mod nights and underage shows. Sue pioneered that concept, though.

Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria (1520 N. Damen Ave.)—Former site of Idful Studio
PR: Idful is where Liz Phair’s Exile In Guyville, Veruca Salt’s American Thighs, and parts of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Adore were recorded.

I don’t want to give people the wrong impression, though. They tore down all the buildings a while ago and then rebuilt them in the same general locations. The building that was Idful was rebuilt, and Lou Malnati’s is there now, in that same address.

I think it’s great that Brad Wood, the producer, went and leased this space, and went in and made all these records that made rock history. I lived there around the same time, and I had no idea that history was being made in my backyard. If you listen to the Liz Phair Girlysound Tapes, you get a real appreciation for her and how that record was made. I think it’s the beginning of indie rock, at least the format or the sound, to me.

The Bank Inc. recording studio (1624 N. California Ave.)—Formerly the home, rehearsal space, and recreational center of Urge Overkill
PR: I was never at The Bank, but I had a lot of friends who went there. By all accounts it was a party headquarters. Urge practiced there, lived there, and had a lot of parties there. My friends who went there are all in AA now, meaning they don’t remember a lot about it. I’m sure it was no more decadent than any backstage area at a Rolling Stones show, but it was all drugs, sex, and alcohol. Plus, you know, they wrote and practiced some of the best songs they’ve ever written there in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

The A.V. Club: 1624 N. California probably wasn’t the greatest location at the time, safety-wise.

PR: Even now it’s not the greatest location. It was a really shitty neighborhood, though. My impression is that Urge always blended in really easily with their surroundings, though. They never looked at it as an unsafe location, but it scared me in the late ’80s, going that far west. There’s still a hotel right next door that doesn’t look that nice.

I assume the people that run The Bank now know what the studio used to be. It was a bank before Urge lived there. I haven’t been able to get in touch with the people who are there now, but from their website it looks like they focus on pop, R&B, and hip-hop.

Sidetrack (3349 N. Halsted St.)—Formerly Chicago Trax recording studio
PR: Now, Sidetrack’s a really nice gay bar. It’s really popular, and it’s got different levels and rooms and places to go outside. You can’t even get in there during the Pride Parade. It used to only be one storefront, 3349 N. Halsted, but they expanded and took up the one directly south, 3347 N. Halsted, and that’s the old Chicago Trax. It was the studio’s second location. The first was at Wayne and Schubert, in an old house.

The second location, though, is when they got really big, famous, and made a ton of money. The list of bands that worked there is like 15 pages long. Most of the Ministry stuff that Al Jourgensen would say is good was made there, like “Jesus Built My Hotrod.” A lot of artists used those studios for mixing, mastering, and recording. Michael Jackson worked there. So did Rod Stewart, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Soul Asylum, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Jesus Lizard, Liz Phair, R. Kelly, Public Enemy, The Grateful Dead, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Eminem.