Medusa’s

This year marks a quarter century since the closing of Medusa’s, Chicago’s most famous all-ages nightclub. Named after its gloriously coiffed owner, airline-employee-turned-impresario Dave “Medusa” Shelton, the late-night dance venue and art space on Sheffield Avenue achieved something unprecedented during its nine-year run: It brought together all of Chicago’s long-segregated nightlife tribes in a single throbbing melting pot. Goths, skinheads, punks, black house-music fans, white Boystown denizens, closeted suburban honor-roll kids—they all converged on Medusa’s vast dance floor or in the rooms upstairs, where performance artists staged outlandish live exhibitions involving everything from fake blood to mutilated mannequin parts. Billing itself as a “juice bar,” the cavernous Lake View club sold no alcohol—there were convenience stores for that—and it stayed open until the dancing stopped, which was often midmorning the next day. Its teen dance parties, which increasingly became the club’s focus in its later years, were a rite of passage for a generation of high schoolers, and the music was as eclectic as the clientele: funk, electronic, R&B, industrial, punk, ska, house, even pop. Live bands were part of the mix, too—little-known artists who’d go on to fame: Al Jourgensen, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billy Corgan, the Violent Femmes, Front 242. For countless Chicagoans, Medusa’s was a portal to the city’s counterculture. Those already on the other side saw it as a refuge, a community, and, above all, a playground. Its rise and ultimate fall straddled one of the most musically, culturally, and sexually dynamic periods in the city’s history. For the club’s most passionate devotees—and for the DJs, promoters, artists, and provocateurs who worked there—25 years can feel like a day. So dim the lights and crank the Ministry. Here is the story of Medusa’s from those who knew it best.

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Front 242 performing its first-ever U.S. show at Medusa’s in 1984; Dave “Medusa” Shelton in 1983, sporting the perm (given by a drag queen) that earned him his nickname; a Halloween art installation featuring a coffin; a line of clubgoers snaking around from the Sheffield Avenue entrance. PHOTOS: courtesy of Dave Shelton

Pimps, Punks, Goths, and Geeks Medusa’s opened in the fall of 1983, a year or so after Shelton, then 26, signed a lease for a four-story brick building in Lake View that had once housed a Swedish social club. Shelton had managed to obtain from the city a license to operate a “public place of assembly.” Dave Shelton Founder and owner I borrowed 16 grand from my mom to get the club going. That was her savings. I lived there for over a year, scraping the paint off the ceilings and staying up all night fixing shit. I was so broke I sold my car for money to live on. But I always knew I was going to get it open. Billy Miller Art director If you were walking down the street, you wouldn’t know there was anything going on in there. There was no sign, and it was in an out-of-the-way neighborhood. It was an unusual place to have something like that. “There’d be people shooting up heroin in the bathroom and having sex behind the couch.” Billy Miller, art director Lorri Francis Employee Dave let a few of us live there, and we didn’t have to pay rent or utilities. I lived in a room that was the backstage area. They called it the Pink Pussy Palace. We had the most fun when we weren’t open. We’d go out and eat purple microdots like fiends and do blow all day and all night. And then we’d go back to Medusa’s and just be nuts. On the Fourth of July, we’d be in the building shooting bottle rockets at each other. And then we’d go on the roof and shoot bottle rockets at the entrance to Sheffield’s [a bar across the street]. Sheffield’s must have fucking hated our guts. Greg “Blue” Pittsley Manager After a couple of months of sparse crowds, we could expect a rush at 2 in the morning, and then people would stay till 8 or 9. When the last people decided they were done dancing is when we would close. Joe Shanahan Owner of Lake View clubs Metro and Smart Bar None of us had fancy light shows, but Dave would do something just with a red bulb in a corner with a revolving fan or something, and it created atmosphere and ambience and it felt raw. In the ’80s, the people I knew went away from slick. They wanted that great basement party in the biggest possible space. Shelton We had pimps from Cicero. We had the Rush Street crowd. Broadway in Boystown. Punks were coming from [the late-night bar] Exit. Pittsley All of a sudden there were more goths who showed up in line, there were more skinheads. Shelton And it was the first time they were all under one roof. It was constant word of mouth. It just kept spreading and spreading. Advertisement Valerie “Psycho-Bitch” Scheinpflug, DJ There’d be someone with a Mohawk standing next to someone in assless leather chaps standing next to somebody with feathered hair wearing a sport shirt. Bud Sweet, DJ They came from everywhere. Nobody worried about getting picked on. Nobody was getting judged. Rodney Rushing Comanager I used to wear skirts, and I’d stand at the top of the stairs on Friday and Saturday nights. And if people laughed about it, they’d be talked to. I had a big Asian bouncer and a big Caucasian bouncer and a big skinhead bouncer all behind me, like, “Yeah, that’s what it is.” Leroy Fields, VJ It was a gay, drag, queer, anything-goes atmosphere. It kind of reminded me of a poor man’s Studio 54. Miller One weekend at Medusa’s would be like a year’s worth of somewhere else. There’d be people shooting up heroin in the bathroom and people having sex behind the couch. Just craziness.

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Medusa’s comanager Rodney Rushing (in dress) with a costumed patron in the early 1980s (it wasn’t Halloween); Anthony Kiedis performing with the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1984; a 1989 dance party; a club kid, Marc Rodriguez, dressed for a typical night out. PHOTOS: courtesy of Dave Shelton

“DJ’ing Is Like Sex” DJs Bud Sweet and Mark Stephens initially stuck to a strict repertoire of alternative tracks on Fridays and a mix of funk, electronic, R&B, and industrial on Saturdays, but playlists soon encompassed a broader range of genres, including a healthy dose of obscure cuts as well as new pop hits now and then for the ironic fun of it. Shelton I didn’t want radio music, the really commercial hits. We wanted stuff that we liked. Rodney made a big push for the alternative music. I was an R&B guy. Julia Nash Employee, daughter of Wax Trax cofounder Jim Nash Artists on the Wax Trax label were in heavy rotation at the club, and the record store [in Lincoln Park] was a hub for Medusa’s DJs. Most of the music being played at the club was purchased there. Sweet I was playing new wave and a little bit of postpunk. There was a little bit of goth stuff in there, too. And Ministry, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb. Mark Stephens DJ (from the Chicago Tribune , September 12, 1986) [DJ’ing at Medusa’s is] sort of like sex. There’s an element of tease—and actually giving them satisfaction. Teri Bristol DJ Mark’s mixes were seamless. You could never tell where one song began and one ended. And you’re talking about the early ’80s, when equipment wasn’t all that great. Everything wasn’t perfectly syncopated. To be able to keep the beat was a real art form. Advertisement Scheinpflug The man could make you dance to artists and songs you would never in a million years dance to otherwise. You’d be two minutes into a song, getting down on the dance floor, and you’d think about it, like, I’m dancing to fuckin’ Janet Jackson? Really? Joe Michelli VJ You got to hear new and different music that was not being played in other clubs. It took balls, and taste. Sweet There was no Spotify, iTunes, or Pandora. Everyone, or most, went out to hear new music at nightclubs, and they were loyal to the DJs. It was very important that you already had the floor on board so that you, in a way, could trick them into staying interested before they realized they were hearing something new.

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An art installation by Tom Hemingway, in a section of the club known as the Barbara Cartland VIP Room; club-goers; a performance artist; All Ages Night; club-goers on the third floor; All Ages Night. PHOTOS: courtesy of Dave Shelton

“Every Day is Halloween” Never just a dance club, Medusa’s was a three-floor fun house of outrageous visual and performance art. Live concerts, which the club started staging on and off not long after opening, featured some memorable antics, too. Shanahan Nightlife was shifting to more of a theatrical feeling, with performance art and live music and DJs and poets—an “every day is Halloween” kind of feel. You dressed up to go out. Dave Shelton and his crew captured that spirit. Miller Dave was unusual because he kind of gave us carte blanche. We would just think up stuff and decorate the place, and then I would bring in all the performance people I knew. Shelton Artists loved it—the more absurd, the better. Rushing Billy curated this thing called Digest Blood Beat [by artist Brendan deVallance and the art group SXPU]. They had performance pieces happening all around the club. We opened up a bathroom near the video lounge that had never been used. There was a bathtub that was filled with red liquid, and this girl was bound and gagged, rolling around in the water. And there was one little spotlight coming down and an audio loop of this guy going, “You like it like that, don’t you, baby?” Michelli Let me paint a little picture: Take a bit of Santeria ritual weirdness, blend in some Reagan-era paranoia, a mock crucifixion, alien hairstyles, dreary guitar noise, strobe lights, and veiled, half-naked girls in body paint. It was shocking, transfixing, and utterly out of this world. Dave loved it. All of the staff did, too. Pittsley There was an art group called Family Plan. On the main stage above the dance floor, they did what they called a Merry-Go-Round of Horror. They had these spikes with mannequin parts hanging off them, and they hung real meat they got from the butcher’s. It was really well done. Very disturbing. Natasha Sintich Patron [Shock-rocker GG Allin, who performed at Medusa’s in May 1989] would throw his poop onstage and cut himself. I stood in the doorway while he was playing, and my friends were like, “Come on, let’s go in!” And I’m like, “Nope.” Francis [After his show] Allin came into the office. He had no clothes on and blood and shit on himself, and he sat down in a chair and we paid him. No big deal. And then [Pittsley] wrapped up the chair in a big garbage bag and said to me, “Here, this is your chair from now on.” Miller Sometimes I would run out of artists, so I just looked in the phone book and started getting people like animal handlers and strippers. One time this performer came, and she was almost nude, with little pasties, and then a sheer long cape and high heels and this big wig. She got onstage and she had worked out a thing with the projectionist. They had a spotlight, and at a certain point she stood on her head, legs apart, screwed a light bulb into her pussy, and the light bulb lit up. Michelli In one of a number of my special little projects, I found as many occurrences as I could in a whole raft of films of the phrase “Fuck you!” and variations thereof and edited as many as I could together in rapid-fire succession for a three- or four-minute sequence. People would request it every time I worked. Fields Joe [Michelli] did a video to the Stooges song “I Wanna Be Your Dog” that included footage of Divine eating dog shit in John Waters’s Pink Flamingos. It was rather radical, not to be shown too often. He found images of dogs humping people’s legs and even some brief canine sex. Michelli I was very much under the influence of the Dadaists. Dave would come in, look at all the faces absolutely glued to the screens, throw me a smile, shake his head, and walk out.

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The main dance floor; “There were no fashion rules, except to wear what you want to express yourself,” says Shelton; outside the club; club-goers; “Despite all the pounding music and lights,” Shelton says, “Medusa’s had plenty of nooks and crannies to grab a smoke and have a discussion.” PHOTOS: courtesy of Dave Shelton

The Energy Was Through the Roof In 1985, Medusa’s started throwing teen dance parties, hiring a septuagenarian bouncer named Rose to work the door and attracting a crowd as eclectic as the older after-hours clientele. Many teen night regulars remember the parties as transformational. Jonas Lowrance Teen dance promoter I had done one teen night at Cabaret Metro. It was crazy. There were lines around the block to get in and probably 1,500 kids there. So I approached Dave and said, “I think I can pack Medusa’s for three or four hours before you even open for the late-night crowd.” He let me put ads in all the high school newspapers. Brigid Murphy Performance artist A lot of Medusa’s culture came from kids who were fish out of water, and they found other people like them. They were misfits, basically. “It was gay, drag, queer, anything goes. It reminded me of a poor man’s Studio 54.” Leroy Fields, VJ Ursula Bielski Patron If you were at all “different” back then, you found Medusa’s. It was a time before alternative dress and interests were considered normal, and it could be very rough to be around the mainstream kids in high school. I found validation of my interests there. Everything was dark—the rooms, the clothes, the people. It seemed like a so much more accurate reflection of the world at that time and of the city and of my own life. Pittsley Some of the kids were more lost than others. A lot of them were thinking about running away from home or dropping out of school. They would say, “Can I stay here?” And I’d say, “I think you should go home and talk to your mom.” Terry Martin DJ MTV was very influential at the time, and it was more of a goth-industrial look the kids had. It was very androgynous. It allowed for a lot of sexual ambiguity and freedom. And the energy was through the roof. They had these four scaffolds in the club, and the kids would get up on them and just bang on the scaffolding. Jamal Moss Patron You would see people dry-humping against the wall. Or you’d walk up to the second floor and people were sitting down on the stools, had their coats wrapped over each other, and were pleasuring each other. Jennifer Marszalek Employee [Kids] always found creative ways to bring in alcohol. It was very popular to put vodka into a contact lens solution bottle or a pump hair spray bottle. Pittsley They’d go to 7-Eleven, buy a Big Gulp, then bribe somebody on the street to buy liquor for them. They’d pour a pint of vodka into the Big Gulp and drink the whole thing. By the time they got to the top of the stairs, they were loaded. I’d say, “Better come with me,” and then they would sit down in the office and start throwing up. We always had a supply of bar rags and garbage cans. Advertisement John Curley, DJ Dave was always very good with the kids. He was very one on one with people. If something came up, he was kind of motherly. He wasn’t just the Wizard of Oz, hiding in his booth. Pittsley One time the back end of an air duct came down and hit these three kids who were dancing. They were brought to the office, and one kid was clearly in shock, because he was turning white and he was clammy and shaky. I called 911, and they got him to the hospital. Shelton The kids it landed on were from a religious college that didn’t allow dancing. Pittsley I started making phone calls to their parents. The [injured] kid’s father listened to the whole story and said, “I want to thank you for being so professional. And you don’t have to worry about anything from us, because we are not lawsuit people.” Then he said, “My son has got some real answering to do.”

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Club-goers; a bouncer by the stage exit; working the door; waiting to get into an All Ages Night; punk rockers Bones (in hat) and Joe Kelly. PHOTOS: courtesy of Dave Shelton