Walking through Washington, D.C. is akin to walking through a museum. You’d be hard-pressed to find another city in the U.S. that’s colored more vividly with history, be it the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Wall, the ceaseless light of the Eternal Flame, or the literal homestead of democracy that is the White House. But the city’s rich history extends beyond textbook fodder and tourist attractions. It also exists in its proud and thriving music scene, at the center of which stands a venue that has fostered and nurtured countless bands large and small over the course of 34 years and two locations.

The 9:30 Club isn’t just another cavernous dungeon through which bands aimlessly drift in and out night after night. It’s the nucleus of the DC music community and an institution that’s widely recognized as the gold standard of rock clubs. While so many rock clubs fall haphazardly into the “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” category, the 9:30 Club, from its humble origins catering to the city’s bustling punk community to its current standing as a world-class rock venue, always strived for something different.



When other venues thumbed their noses at all-ages shows, the 9:30 Club opened its doors to kids. When other venues were overlooking so-called “alternative” acts, the 9:30 Club were early supporters of many bands that would eventually give rise to the alternative rock boom of the early ’90s. The 9:30 staff consistently positioned itself ahead of the curve, and it continues to do so today.

So, how did they get here? We reached out to a handful of artists, writers, club owners, and DC insiders, as well as 9:30 Club staffers themselves, to get the full story behind one of the most celebrated rock clubs in the U.S.



In the Beginning…

The Atlantis Building circa 1920

By 1980, the DC music scene was being overrun by young bands clamoring for a place to call their own. Too young to attend or play shows at many of the city’s venues, Dody DiSanto and her husband, Jon Bowers, started the 9:30 Club, which hosted some of the city’s first all-ages shows.

Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi, founder and owner of Dischord Records): The 9:30 Club was in a building that had previously been a restaurant called The Atlantic. The Atlantic did shows. It was a punk venue. I’d never been there. I was a punk kid playing basements and garages. Nobody was paying attention to us at all, so none of us took anything particularly seriously.

Cynthia Connolly (Photographer, former talent booker at DC Space, co-author of Banned in DC): Banned in DC really references that time period when people weren’t able to get club shows. There weren’t very many clubs anyway. A lot of the shows were in churches or church halls and then houses in the very early ’80s because there wasn’t any space to perform in. And of course, the Bad Brains, if you listen to their song [“Banned in DC”], they were banned in DC. That’s where it came from.

Henry Rollins (Black Flag, Rollins Band): [Before the 9:30 Club], there was The Bayou, which was okay if a bit anonymous, just a big box. The Ontario Theater was a movie theater where bands played. We would go, of course, and see the Cramps, Stranglers, Bad Brains, Buzzcocks, Clash, Gang of Four, Police, Damned. We saw a lot of shows there, but they never sounded all that good. DC Space was a good place for a show, and we had some great times there. Madams Organ, while it lasted, was pretty amazing, but you knew it wasn’t going to last.

Connolly: There wasn’t anything happening in downtown DC except for some amazing old businesses that actually had lasted from the ’50s and were still there. And then (there was) the 9:30 Club, Ford’s Theater where Lincoln got shot, DC Space, and then some furniture stores. But it was all in buildings that hadn’t been renovated. They were sort of using these spaces as they were from the ’50s or ’60s, so they had this sort of lonely feeling. It was a pretty interesting time.

Dante Ferrando (Owner of Black Cat club): I remember when they first opened, they did a promotion where they handed out buttons that you put on your jacket. They had the 9:30 logo on them. It was less of a strict concert venue and more something for the entire DC scene. They would have theme parties and bring in truckloads of sand. DJs were an integral part of every show, and there was always a video component. So, there was a lot going on at that point.

Will Eastman (DJ, owner of U Street Music Hall): If you look at the calendars they have in the basement Backbar going back to 1980, you can see they’ve placed DJ events side by side with live music from the beginning. It’s part of their DNA.

Connolly: There was an article in January 1981 in the Washington Post about the Teen Idles, and I had seen that because my mom was trying to move to DC and she subscribed to the Washington Post. When we moved in April of 1981, I was like, “I’ve gotta find who these people are.” So, I found them. It was Nathan Strejcek, Dan Ingram, Ian MacKaye, and Jeff Nelson. I found Dan Ingram and Nathan Strejcek in Georgetown and that same day met Ian MacKaye, who worked at the Georgetown Theatre.

I ended up becoming friends with them instantly and helped Ian do the layout for the first Minor Threat single and was just involved with the whole punk music scene there. Of course, I ended up going to the 9:30 Club and making fliers for shows that were at the 9:30 Club that my friends were doing.

DiSanto’s willingness to work with younger bands paired up well with the venue’s booking agent and future owner, Seth Hurwitz, who had an ear for music and an eye for bands who occupied the fringes of the DC musical community.

Seth Hurwitz (Co-owner, promoter 9:30 Club): I was on the radio, and I interviewed a promoter, and I got a job with him. He had a theater, and he gave up that theater, then I made a deal with that theater direct. I just copied what he did. I started talking to bands just like he did, and the only ones who would talk to me were the alternative guys who were being ignored by the bigger promoters. Around the same time that I started, the original 9:30 Club started. Ian [Copeland] needed a place for me to do stuff for really small bands, so the Fleshtones were the first band that we did at the 9:30.

Connolly: [Seth] embraced a lot of different genres of music because he loved music. That’s probably why the 9:30 Club is considered to be one of the best clubs. His love and passion for music was built into the 9:30 Club that exists today.



Hurwitz: My dad was a computer programmer who worked for the government, but he had this alternative side to him. He used to take us to see Fellini movies and eat Japanese food. He always encouraged me to challenge myself. That was kind of ingrained in me, so the idea of going to this club where there were strange-looking people and music that I didn’t quite understand made sense. That was obviously the place that I needed to go. So, when I started booking at the 9:30 and it became time for me to become custodian of that, I felt like I was in charge of nurturing and preserving that. I never got a tattoo or a piercing or funny hair or any of that, but it was all still very exciting to me, and I loved it and respected it. I wanted to keep it going, and that was the challenge.

Rollins: Some of the best shows I have ever seen or played were at [the 9:30 Club]. As a fan of the place, I thought Dody ran the venue very well. Otherwise, the venues were more bars that had a small stage whacked into the corner almost as an afterthought. It was cool to see a band like The Cramps in such a small space and watch Lux roll around on the floor.

MacKaye: The early Black Flag shows there were just phenomenal. Black Flag’s first show there was epic, just such a good show. It was exciting for us. Dead Kennedys were great. I’m not really a list maker. But there have been a lot of experiences I’ve had at the 9:30 that were really profound. There were really great shows.

Connolly: One of my favorite shows at the 9:30 Club, I think it was July 1981, was Minor Threat, G.I., and Youth Brigade. It was a moment where we made fliers and fliered the show, but we were kind of wondering who the hell was going to come to this. Our friends were coming to this, but then all these kids from New York and Boston came and somehow they had heard about the show. To this day, we still don’t know how they heard about the show. I suppose somebody from Dischord might have written a letter to somebody, but we don’t know how they found out about the show. Again, there was no Internet. I guess it was by telephone. They all came down from Boston, which is a really long drive, eight or nine hours to DC, to go to this show. It was then we realized that whatever this punk thing was, it was way bigger than we had any idea. That was an amazing show.

Ferrando: I only worked [at the 9:30 club] for coat check for I think two seasons. Basically I had some friends who worked there. Alec MacKaye worked in the pizza kitchen, and I knew a couple of other people who worked there. It was a fun job because it was fairly autonomous. There was the huge catacombs of the basement, and they didn’t really care what you did with it. There was this tradition where whoever was doing coat check could do whatever extra sort of sideline thing they wanted to do. I used to sell records. I had a bunch of the old Dischord Records stuff up there. It was an easy job. You got to talk to and hang out with people who did go to the club regularly. If they were bored or the show wasn’t that great, people would come downstairs and hang out. It was basically a bar with booze in the basement.

MacKaye: When 9:30 Club first opened in June of 1980, it wasn’t all ages, so we were immediately like, “Fuck that place.” We were underage, and at the time, the band that I was in, the Teen Idles, kept getting banned from venues. These places that we called new wave venues couldn’t deal with the punk stuff.

Hurwitz: As far as all-ages shows go, I always thought that was the way it should be. I never understood the legality of excluding younger kids anyway. If you go to a restaurant, they serve liquor, but people of all ages go there. I never understood why people assumed it would be against the law to let kids in because a place served alcohol, so eventually we just [made everything all ages].

Ferrando: The all-ages show was completely integral to the DC scene at that point and time. The drinking age at the time was 18, but the bulk of the scene in that early Dischord era was really young. The old guys in the scene were guys like Ian (MacKaye) and Henry (Rollins), and they were like 18 or 19. But most of the other kids were 16 or 17, and others like me were 13 or 14. If the 9:30 Club hadn’t been all ages, our scene wouldn’t have been on the map, really.

Rollins: The 9:30 was a great thing for the local music scene. It gave bands from out of town a place to play that wasn’t too big but still held plenty of people. So, if there was an act that wasn’t exactly huge, they had a place to play and from that, we got to see some great shows.

Eastman: I first visited the old 9:30 Club in 1994, for a Velocity Girl show. I was in town searching for an apartment for an imminent move to DC and a friend introduced me to Archie Moore and the Velocity Girl gang. A news program was there filming b-roll for a segment about “youth sexuality.” I remember a lot of jokes being made about that.

MacKaye: I saw the Bad Brains play there. There were a lot of great gigs there early on. It was kind of cool to have a venue that specialized in the sort of music we liked.

Ferrando: People liked the shows and appreciated them, but our crowd was kind of a pain in the ass. They were punk shows, they didn’t make much money at the bar, and some of the people in the scene were a little reckless. There were always some people from outside the punk scene who didn’t have a good understanding of punk rock shows who were super aggressive. It was like, “Oh, I’ve heard about slam dancing.” Then there’d be fights because they’d cause problems, and people would be thrown out. So, I don’t think they were particularly easy shows for 9:30 to do. I definitely remember them making the decision at one point to not do any more punk shows. I remember a bit of a plea from our music scene to keep doing them.

Connolly: It wasn’t economically viable for clubs to do punk shows in the early ’80s. Dody, who was owning [the 9:30 Club] at the time, took a chance on doing it.

MacKaye: The Teen Idles used to do shows at Mabuhay Gardens (in San Francisco). The Mab had a method for letting kids into shows. They would put Xs on the hands of kids who were under the age of 18, which was the legal drinking age at the time. When we got back to Washington, we went to the 9:30 and said, “Hey, we want to do shows. We’re not going to drink. We’ll put Xs on our hands, and if you trust us then I think we can pull this off.” We were eventually able to do shows, which was great. It was a really amazing thing for us to be able to do that.

Ferrando: Dody held a meeting about it during the day. She asked a whole bunch of people from bands in the punk scene to come talk to her so they could figure out what to do. It was sort of this big brainstorming session. We said, “We don’t make any money. Just let us do shows in the afternoon.” So, we ended up doing matinees.

Rollins: For me, the most memorable show was the Teen Idles last show in November of 1980. It was the end of a band that I had seen almost every show of.

MacKaye: The last show that the Teen Idles ever played was the first ever kid punk show on November 6, 1980. That was the first time that any of us actually got to play the 9:30. Dody was interested in the kids here. In 1981, things were really taking off here, like the punk/hardcore scene. We went to Dody and said, “We want to do punk matinee shows.” CBGBs sort of did the same thing a few years later, but it was the same concept. We did the shows, I booked them, and we policed ourselves for the most part.



Sold!

The 9:30 Club was a boon to the local music scene, both in its willingness to work with younger bands and in its ability to draw national talent. However, the financial stress of keeping the club running eventually proved to be too much for DiSanto and Bowers, who sold the club to Hurwitz and his partner, Rich Heinecke, in 1986. Hurwitz initially winced at the thought of taking ownership of the club, which had been losing money. But little did he or anyone in the DC scene know that the club’s fortunes were quickly about to change.

Hurwitz: Dody wanted to get rid of [the 9:30 Club], and we kind of fought against that. We really were like, “Oh, geeze.” We dreaded the day that she was really ready to sell it, but we realized that if we didn’t buy it, the competition would. So, we sort of begrudgingly bought it. It became our albatross as far as money goes.

Ferrando: Seth had been booking shows there for many years before that. I think the club changed a lot at that point, not surprisingly. There was a different focus. Seth’s always been a really good promoter, and people who are focused on that side of the industry are good at spotting bands and booking bands that are going to be big and make you a lot of money. Because you don’t really make a lot of money off of 200- or 300-person shows. You usually lose money doing it.

Hurwitz: We realized that working with bands when they’re smaller is how you get them when they get bigger, and that’s how to get the money. That was necessary for us.

MacKaye: Seth is someone I’ve known for years and years. He’s a friend. When he bought the club, things changed, but he was still committed to things being all ages. It’s still all ages to this day. That’s one of the craziest things about this town, that all of the biggest clubs are all ages.

Hurwitz: There was never this long-range plot. It was just about surviving and taking the next step. And it still is today. I’m a one step at a time sort of person. I’m not into that whole corporate mentality. I’m fine with things going up and down. I don’t need to show growth. I don’t need to show anything to anyone. If we’re making a decent living, then it’s fine. I don’t need to keep making more and more and more. Whatever keeps us comfortable and keeps our infrastructure tolerable and manageable works for us. Everything happened in a very organic way.

The club not only maintained throughout the late ’80s and into the early ’90s under Hurwitz’s ownership, but it began to thrive. The alternative rock boom of the ’90s helped the club to zero in on larger national acts, many of whom got their start by playing the 9:30 stage. But as things began to balloon, some in DC started to see the club’s growth as a loss for the scene.

Hurwitz: Back when rock music was getting really horrible with Jefferson Starship and stuff like that, real rock like Nirvana and the Chili Peppers that had a soul to it and was different and irreverent made things exciting again. It suddenly dawned on you that this was happening everywhere else, and that other people were sick of bad music. People rebelled, and rock and roll traditionally is about rebellion and danger. When people get tired of the norm, that’s what’s supposed to happen. But that it happened on such a big scale and became such a tidal wave, that was shocking. It’s like, “Everyone else feels like me? Other people are sick of this crap, too?” We couldn’t believe it.

Ferrando: There were a lot of people who hit a point where they thought that if they were going to make it in the arts or music scene, they either had to go to LA or New York to pull it off. There was a bit of what I’d call an artistic brain drain in the late ’80s and early ’90s that was kind of intense. Seth’s focus on larger national shows made sense, because that’s where he was at. But it wasn’t the greatest thing for the local scene. The 9:30 was one of the few places to play, and it wasn’t focused on local stuff at all.

Hurwitz: If you want the cool bands to play your club because it’s clearly the cool place to play, then you have to maintain that integrity. You can’t be everything to everybody. There was a lot of anxiety about, “Wow, should we book this band? We know it’s going to sell out.” But they weren’t cool. I’m talking about a band like the Spin Doctors. Obviously they were big, but God, they sucked. They were really uncool, so we didn’t book them.

The Move to V Street

Photo by Kevin Harber

The original 9:30 Club was never in the best of shape, but by the start the ’90s, the haggard condition of the old venue began to take its toll. Hurwitz had long been eying a move to a newer, larger space, but it was the emergence of a new club in 1993, the Black Cat, that forced Hurwitz to expedite his plans to relocate. In January 1996, the new 9:30 Club reopened at its current location on V Street.

Rollins: There is something very strong and singular about seeing a lot of shows in one venue over a lot of years. There is a lot of your life in there. The venue becomes part of your story. To be able to walk back into the old 9:30 one more time, that would be something. I like the new one, too, of course, but my memories are tied to the old one.

Ferrando: Everybody has fond memories of the [old 9:30] club because of what happened inside of it, the people who worked there and the bands that played there. But the space itself was terrible. It was really neat as far as clubs go. There were some things about it that were fantastic. But the concert room was small, there was a big column in front of the stage, and the ticket sales outnumbered the amount of people that you could possibly fit in that room by almost two.

Hurwitz: [The old 9:30 Club] was in a state of disrepair from the beginning. Or as we fondly referred to it back then, “It had character.” We got away with it until there was competition. But back then, it was like the old (baseball) stadiums. There was just a lower accepted standard. When the Orioles left Memorial Stadium, it seemed blasphemous. Then they reinvented the whole concept of going to a baseball game.

Ferrando: When Nirvana or somebody played there, you were standing in another room in another direction from the stage just hoping you could hear something. It just was not a good concert space. If your main goal was to promote concerts, I don’t think it was worth saving. I don’t think Seth made a mistake by not dumping a lot of money into it. That was probably smart.

Hurwitz: What happened was the Black Cat opened, which was a little bigger and a little nicer. And all these bands just bolted and people we thought were lifelong friends just left us for the greener grass. We learned in short order the hard life lesson that it’s show business, not show friends. Very few bands and managers were loyal to us. It’s kind of shocking and sad. We’ll never forget it. I remember all of those people, and I don’t delude myself into believing that any of them are my friends. I don’t walk around bitter, but I remember.

Ferrando: Seth thought he had these relationships with people where they’d play the 9:30 Club no matter what. But on my end, all I was hearing from bands was, “Oh yeah, there should be another venue in that town.” When we opened, he kept a lot of his shows, but there were definitely some people who immediately were ready to jump ship, a bunch of them.

Photo by Luis Gomez

Hurwitz: We realized what we had to do to win was build a bigger and better club. It’s a corny thing to say, but that’s how America is. You’re supposed to win by building a better mousetrap. You win by doing a better job and building a better product. That’s how the free enterprise system is supposed to work. So, we set out to make the club that would hopefully end all of the arguments. We were the first to go after that ultimate club concept, and we did it, and the rest is history.

Ferrando: When Seth moved, [the relationship between 9:30 and the Black Cat] got worse because it forced him to spend a lot of money. I think he thought, “I was gonna move, but now I’m gonna move, and I’m gonna do it right and spend a lot of money. I was outdone, and now I’m gonna do a better club.” That’s something I’m fairly proud of. I’m cheap. He’s cheap, so I can completely understand his reluctance initially to spend money. But I’m glad I got him to spend some money because I think he did a great job with the new 9:30 Club. For what it is and how it’s designed, I think he did an amazing job.

Connolly: [The 9:30 Club] wasn’t as local, and there was sort of a moment there of how the local scene was going to fill in and where that was going to go. Obviously, it went to the Black Cat. When the 9:30 Club moved to a bigger space, it was, “Oh, well, it’s not going to go there,” because they were going to have larger acts that brought in larger groups of people. I think there was some concern about that, but it got lost in the shuffle, and everything worked out fine.

Hurwitz: I think [Dante] realized to his credit that it was best to get out of the big act concert business. He went back to booking stuff that he liked and focusing on new acts, and if they got too big, then it was like, “Fuck it, what can I do?” He kind of found peace with that, and we found peace with that. We’re happy neighbors now.

Eastman: 9:30 is adaptable. It can feel like an underground club, or it can feel like an arena, depending on the music, the light show, and the vibe. 9:30 Club’s sound envelopes you. Those line arrays are powerful, and the system is very well dialed in. You could probably run 80 percent of the clubs in America with just the monitors they use onstage at 9:30.

Rollins: It is an excellent venue. When it was re-modeled years ago, it was not done on the cheap. The sight lines are great. From anywhere in the venue, you have a great vantage point. The monitor system, a big thing for bands, is excellent, and the front of house sound is great as well. It’s good for the bands, good for the audience. This is the way it should be. It’s hard to have a bad show on that stage. It’s like a show at the Fillmore in San Francisco. Everybody’s going to have a good night.

Hurwitz: I think one of my favorite compliments ever was on our opening night, when Robert Benjamin from WHFS turned to me and said, “This is the Camden Yards of clubs.”



So… What’s Going On At The Club Tonight?

Keeping true to the spirit of the old 9:30 Club, the expanded venue on V Street continues to pride itself on booking some of the world’s best touring acts, even some who have long-since outgrown the club circuit. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Justin Timberlake, and even Bob Dylan have played the 9:30 Club in recent years while in town. The venue also played host to another group of up-and-comers on the cusp of becoming one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Hurwitz: I will say that the Radiohead story is one of the best. They were supposed to do the Tibetan Freedom Concert or something at RFK Stadium, but lightning struck and hurt someone, and they cancelled the show. I ended up going to a barbecue or something, and I’ll never forget it. I got a call in my car. “This is Brian from Radiohead. We were wondering what’s going on at the club tonight.”

I thought they just wanted to go hang out. I said, “Well, we have a private party, but if you want, I can arrange something for you guys downstairs.” Then they asked if we still had the same soundboard from the last time that they played. They started asking all of these technical questions. I was like, “Do you guys want to play or something?” They had a meeting about it and called back saying, “Yeah, we’d love to play.” We let everyone know, and everyone who had a ticket to the show at RFK was let in first come, first serve.

I remember thinking, “Is this really happening?” I got to the venue, and there were Radiohead cases on the floor. Michael Stipe was there. That was the night that Brad Pitt was spotted on the balcony with Jennifer Aniston, and their relationship was just a rumor at that point. It was unreal. Pulp took the stage at 12:30. Then at two in the morning Radiohead came on. It was just phenomenal. One of the most magical moments ever.

You’re Only As Good As The Company You Keep

The 9:30 Club has long built its reputation on booking some of the industry’s best shows, but none of it gets done without a top-flight staff. The 9:30 Club crew continues to receive accolades from members of the DC community, as well as the numerous bands that pass through its doors night in and night out.

Eastman: I think the 9:30 Club has been so successful because the entire crew there have worked their asses off from the very beginning. With anything arts- and music-related, whether it’s media, performance, a venue, etc., it takes an incredible amount to make it hitch-free and look easy. It’s like a duck paddling frantically underwater like mad to make it go off. All you see is calm, forward motion. That’s what we’ve been experiencing for decades as artists and concertgoers: calm, forward motion. Be a fly on the wall around Seth Hurwitz or anyone over at 9:30 Club for a day, and you’ll see the paddling.

Rollins: I have never encountered anyone at the 9:30 that was anything less than a total 100% pro, and friendly as well. Other venues could take a lesson. Really, a great group.

MacKaye: I love the people who work there. I don’t think it’s much of a club anymore, but it’s one of the best concert venues in the country. They really think about what they do, and I respect that immensely. They’re thoughtful, and I put a lot of emphasis on that. I think a lot of other places are more corporate joints that are just doing their drill. And I understand. But I think there’s something to be said for people who have the experience but aren’t just pushing people through.

Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar): For those who don’t know, the 9:30 Club is one of the most professionally run music venues in the world. Blowoff (Mould’s dance music collaboration with Richard Morel) parties happened on Saturday nights, immediately following an early evening concert that ended around 10:45. In those next 45 minutes, 1,000+ people would have to be cleared from the venue, bands had to load out, dressing rooms had to be cleaned and restocked, production set in place, and the room cleaned and reset for the next 1000+ people.

Connolly: When you enter the 9:30 Club, there’s this true sense of the employees having pride in working there and respect for those who attend the 9:30 Club, so there is this mutual immediate interaction when you walk through the door. They’re just really professional. They changed a lot about that. When they moved to the new space, it was like they could rebuild the 9:30 Club, and they made it into this space that was extremely professional on all accounts. It went all the way down to taking your ID at the door to having multiple bars. The bar service and the food service are really good.

The club has had many employees over the course of its 34-year history. Many of whom were longtime fixtures within the DC music scene, and one in particular, the late doorman Josh Burdette, served as the face of the venue in the eyes of many prior to his untimely passing in September 2013.

Mould: I was at the Experience Music Project in Seattle with two friends. We had spent about three hours walking through the exhibits and had just ordered lunch at the counter of EMP’s ground floor restaurant. While sitting at a round, white table waiting on food, I checked for messages on my phone. My manager had sent an e-mail with a link to the initial news story about Josh‘s passing. I told my companions of the news — both of them knew of Josh. There was a long silence at the table. “So Sad About Us” by The Who played over the restaurant’s sound system. After the song ended, our food arrived. We had a quiet meal, the silence finally broken with simple recollections of Josh.

Hurwitz: The whole Josh thing was just horribly sad and shocking. We were so proud of him as this beloved ambassador of ours. He just represented everything about us. But, of course, we had to move on, and he had set so many examples for everyone to follow, the biggest one being that kindness and doing the right thing trumps all. There is no substitute.

Ferrando: The 9:30 Club has a long list of people who have worked there over the years that I know very well. Josh is one of those people who was part of that larger group that made up DC’s underground culture. Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of those people died a lot sooner than they should have. It always sucks, and it’s really hard to look back on.

Mould: We will all miss you, Josh. Rest in peace, my friend.

30 Years and Counting

In 2010, the club hosted a 30-year anniversary concert. The show, which was emceed by Rollins, served as a living history to the legendary venue, with local acts from years past sharing the stage with the likes of Dave Grohl, Bob Mould, and countless others.

Hurwitz: I started making calls and getting things lined up, and little by little it sorted itself out. And finally, it became a real timeline of the 9:30 Club.

Rollins: How did I get involved? I was asked. Simple as that. Of all the people who could have been picked (to emcee the event), it was a stone cold honor to be the one.

Hurwitz: Everyone wanted to know who else was playing. A lot of people wanted to do it because they thought a bunch of celebrities were playing, and a lot of people fell out that way when they realized it wasn’t going to be a big celebrity thing. Dave Grohl’s manager called me up, and at that point I was so tired of people not playing because nobody else famous was playing. He calls me up and says, “Dave wants to know who else is playing.”

And I was like, “Man, I am so fucking sick of everybody asking me that question. You know what? Nobody else is playing. There’s nobody fucking famous playing.” And he says, “Oh, he doesn’t care about famous people. Will Trouble Funk be playing?” “Well, yeah. They’ll be playing.” And then they asked about three or four other local bands, and I said, “Yeah, they’re playing, too.” And it very quickly became “Okay, then he’s in.” He just wanted to make sure his friends were there.

MacKaye: Amy [Farina of The Evens] and I played there. We played a couple of songs. I was actually conflicted about it, because we don’t play clubs. Also, there was a political component because the Black Cat are also friends of ours. I’ve known them for years. So, if Fugazi played the Black Cat, we’d also have to play the 9:30, otherwise it’s politically problematic. It became frustrating, because I like both sides. If you play one, you want to play the other. But Seth called me and told me about the 30th anniversary show and that they wanted us to be a part of it, and that’s fair enough. I just thought, “I should probably do this.” So, we discussed how we would do it, and it was decided that we wouldn’t play on the stage, but that we’d play on the balcony. It was sort of a curveball, which I think everyone enjoyed. And it was a great show. It worked out great.

Hurwitz: It was truly great. The whole night was just magic. It was just one of those things that followed the timeline of everything that we did. It just fell together like it was supposed to, and that’s the way it should be. It was one of my very favorite moments of my whole life. It was just a wonderful, wonderful evening.

Rollins: Truly, one of the better moments for me. It meant a lot. Huge. Hopefully, we’ll do it again for the 50th.