Scorgie’s legendary Rochester Bar was one of the best music clubs in the USA
Rochester was once home to one of the best music clubs in the country.
Scorgie’s on Andrews Street was the place to be for punk and new wave music in the 1980s. Rolling Stone magazine named Scorgie’s one of the 100 best music clubs in the country. National acts like the Ramones and the Bangles played there, as well as local artists like the Press Tones and Personal Effects.
The club had a dingy atmosphere rarely found elsewhere in the city. Scorgie’s, which fully embraced the alternative music scene, was the source of many stories of dirty talk. “Scorgie’s was the perfect place for it,” said Paul Dodd, Personal Effects’ drummer, in a 2008 article by Jeff Spevak in the Democrat and Chronicle. “It was just a bunch of misfits.”
Don Scorgie, an Irishman, opened the bar on the upper floor of 150 Andrews Street in 1977. The ground floor room, where live music was played, opened two years later.
Initially, Scorgie booked artists playing everything from blues to folk to rock, including legendary bluesman John Lee Hooker. Within a few years, Scorgie became a haven for alternative music, whether you call it new wave or punk.
Scorgie threw Elvis Costello out of his bar in 1979 after Costello “demanded to be treated like a star,” according to a 1983 news report. A punk band, the Cramps, caused a stir in 1981 when lead singer Lux Interior began tearing down ceiling tiles. Someone had pulled down the singer’s skin-tight pants, leaving him completely naked to wreak the destruction, club regulars recalled in the 2008 article.
“Rock and roll in its purest form,” said musician Stan Merrill in the story. “You went to Scorgie’s to see legendary rock ‘n’ roll figures.”
The Go-Go’s played at Scorgie’s before they made their big break. So did 10,000 Maniacs, who played several shows. National acts like the Replacements, Alex Chilton and John Cale were there, as well as local bands like New Math, the Cliches and the Chesterfield Kings.
The upstairs bar had a quirky nautical theme and a great jukebox. The downstairs room, which only held about 210 people, had a great sound system and a bar, but no seating.
The heyday was relatively short-lived. In 1985, Scorgie’s stopped playing live music and the downstairs space was converted into a comedy club. The club went through various incarnations in the ’90s – sometimes mixing music with the comedy acts – but it was never the same. Scorgie’s closed for good in 1994 and the building has been empty for years.
In a 1990 Times-Union article, Scorgie explained why he brought music back.
“It gets the blood pumping, you know?” he said in the Karen Krenis story. “I always told everyone I was the oldest punk rocker in town, and I loved it.”
The place had such iconic status that a reunion was held in 2008 at the German House on South Avenue. A website, a huge blog of memories, was set up.
Not only was Scorgie’s a great place to listen to great music and get freaked out, it was also influential. Danny Deutsch, a bartender at the club, now owns the Abilene nightclub. Tom Kohn, a regular at Scorgie’s during the club’s heyday, owns the Bop Shop music store.
“We are all doing what we dreamed of,” Kohn said in the 2008 story. “That was so important in getting so many of us to where we are today.”
As Jeff Spevak vividly described in his 2008 story, the saga of Scorgie lives on.
“Scorgie’s remains a chaotic legend, full of acrobatics, drunkenness, fights, fake IDs, inexplicably frequent ceiling blow-ups and, most notably, the night Scorgie threw Elvis Costello out of the bar.”
You can experience it for yourself when The Return of The Clichés, a band that former Rochester Times-Union critic David Stearns once called “promising, provocative and embarrassingly stupid,” performs in Abilene.
The reunion concert is scheduled for Sunday, August 18th, 4 p.m.
Alan Morrell is a former reporter for the Democrat and Chronicle and a freelance writer in the Rochester area.
This story was originally published in December 2013 as part of the Whatever Happened To series.
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