WORCESTER — A legendary Worcester institution and watering hole, Ralph's Chadwick Square Diner is celebrating 40 years this weekend.

In honor of the occasion, Ralph’s will celebrate with two rocking showcases on Saturday, Oct. 19. The first is with The Performers, The Ballbusters and Thee Sonomatics at 3 p.m. (cost $10); followed by Corey Glover of Living Colour, Dirty Laundry and Huck/Childhood at 8 p.m. (cost $30).

In 1979, Ralph N. Moberly and his wife, Carolyn, bought the Chadwick Square Diner, one of the oldest diners in the city, and moved it from 1475 Main St. to the old Northworks factory complex off of Grove Street.

Adorned with classic bar fixtures taken from the old Blue Moon Saloon in Milford, Ralph’s Chadwick Square Diner quickly became the premier music club in Worcester, attracting the best of the budding local punk and garage music scene, as well as stellar crop of Boston, New York and nationally known touring bands.

“It’s a 1930s diner and Ralph found that perfect spot for it and it just fit right in there with the 1860s fire station," current Ralph’s owner Vincent Hemmeter said. "You have three different bars with three different atmospheres and a whole lot of characters. Ralph liked the outsider and the underdog and it appealed to me that way. I guess there’s a lot of people out there that appeals to.”

Leonard B. Saarinen, aka L.B. Worm (the man who coined the moniker Wormtown for Worcester), started going to Ralph’s in 1980, a year after it opened.

“I was a year late to the party,” Saarinen said. “I used to love the Friday afternoon 'happy hour' when we still had happy hours. It was a buck and a quarter for a Rolling Rock and a free hot dog.”

A Ralph’s longtime mainstay and anointed “Queen of Ralph’s,” Deborah Beaudry-Bloise remembers going to Ralph’s after work, and having Ralph (the man) in the back kitchen cooking whatever it is he had bought or caught that day.

“Ralph was an amazing cook, a quick wit and a funny, funny guy,” Beaudry-Bloise said. “His employee Christmas parties were legendary. He would hire a school bus and we would meet at Ralph's and just get on the bus and not know where we were going. It could be roller skating, out to dinner at Faneuil Hall, or Mac's Diner.”

Today, Ralph’s menus pretty much consists of cheeseburgers, chili, hot dogs, grilled cheese, veggie burgers, potato chips, stiff shots and cold beer.

“When Ralph got the liquor license, the story is he crossed out the menu and he wrote, 'just drink,' ” Hemmeter recalled. “And, he said, 'No one complains their mother opens a Budweiser better than me.' I always liked that quote.”

Saarinen considers Ralph’s Chadwick Square Diner’s biggest accomplishment is how it became the premiere live showcase for the city’s budding punk rock scene.

“In the early days of the Wormtown scene, no bars were letting anybody play. But, Ralph would always open his doors to anybody because he wanted to be different,” Saarinen said. “Some of them weren’t even of age yet, like the Commandos and the Performers back in the early days. You also had the Odds (who played 21 consecutive Tuesday nights at Ralph’s in 1982) playing every night. I remember the place being so (expletive) crazy, a line out the door. There would be cops standing there and five people came out and five people would be allowed in.”

Throughout the '80s and into the early '90s, no local club could touch Ralph's popularity. Not only did Ralph’s build a reputation for being a place to see really good bands, it became the in-place to be. Period.

“Ralph’s was an interesting place because it wasn’t Boston and it wasn’t New York. It was in-between but it had this allure,” Letters to Cleo’s manager (and former Ralph's band booker) Michael Creamer said. “It was funny because everybody that had to load in had to come up the stairs. We would talk to bands on the phone beforehand and they would be like, ‘Oh, we got to go up the stairs … Oh, that sucks.’ And the minute they got here, they would walk around for 15 minutes just looking around, saying, ‘Man, I never been in a place like this. I’ve never seen anything like this. This place is amazing! Man, this place should be in Boston or New York.’”

In February 1986, Hemmeter started tending bar, flipping cheeseburgers, and serving piping hot chili in the diner car portion of Ralph’s Chadwick Square Diner, despite having absolutely no experience whatsoever.

“Ralph gave me the register and said, ‘Whatever you don’t know, fake it,’" Hemmeter said. "I faked it for a while and then I realized I was good at it.”

In the ‘90s, one of the most popular bands that played at Ralph’s was the Funky Knights, a tight, New York funk-punk outfit with a real raunchy sense of humor.

“We saw the Funky Knights in this bar called Continental Divide (in New York). And we were laughing our (expletives) off the whole time. So we convinced them to come up to Worcester and play for the weekend,” Hemmeter said. “I'd say, just as many people hated them as loved them but the people who loved them must have told everybody that you had to see this train wreck. So on Saturdays (when the Funky Knights played) was always capacity.”

As the drummer for bands that include Bonehead, White Knuckle Sobriety, Mick Lawless and the Reckless Hearts and the Missionarys, Doug Wedge said he must have played Ralph’s a hundred times. But there is one particular Missionarys’ gig at Ralph’s in the summer of ’92 that sticks out more than the rest. It was when former couple Caroline Kirohn and Dave Robicheau (on vocals and guitar, respectively, for the Missionarys) erupted into serious onstage drama, worthy of Fleetwood Mac.

"So, we’re in the middle of a particular song and they were looking at each other back and forth and Dave started poking Caroline with his headstock (of his guitar), trying to egg her on, get her going. While we’re all playing, Caroline goes up to him and said, ‘Keep it up and I’ll punch your ugly girlfriend (who was in the crowd).’ And, then, after that, Dave shoved her and Caroline threw her microphone and hit Richie (Meliska), the other guitar player in the band. Caroline and Dave really started grappling with each other," Wedge recalled. "After that night, the shows started getting better and were always packed with people.”

“One thing about Ralph’s through all the years, there was never many fights. There was always a good mix of people. Yet, everyone seemed to get along,’ Hemmeter added. “Then again, there was the time a guy attacked a crowd of people with a chainsaw. Oh, my God. That was pretty crazy … And it was on a Friday the 13th too.”

The heavy duty roster of local acts that have played over the years is too numerous to count. But a few worth mentioning include The Aggressions, Rick Blaze and the Ballbusters, Black Rose Garden, Bottlefight, Mitch Chakour, Childhood, Classic Ruins, The Commandos, Creatures of Habit, Curtain Society, The Dummies/Brainless Wonders, Free Radicals, Gizmos, Huck, Jason James, Bob Jordan, The Mighty Belmondos/The Crybabies, The Missionarys, Musclecah, The Noisy Boys, The Numbskulls, The Odds, The Pathetics, The Performers, Prefab Messiahs, Public Works, Ronnie and the Rejects, The Unattached, SBGB, Surreal McCoys and The Time Beings.

Boston acts that played Ralph's include Rick Berlin, Tracy Bonham, Cobalt 60, Doomriders, Human Sexual Response, One Ton Shotgun (featuring Belly's Gail Greenwood), Jonathan Richman, Willie “Loco” Alexander, Jennifer Tryin, Letters to Cleo, Lou Miami and the Cosmetics, The Lyres, The Neighborhoods and The Real Kids.

New York acts Bush Tetras, Walter Lure, Murder Junkies, Richie Ramone, Tommy Ramone, Ross The Boss, Sheer Terror, the Shirts, Super 400, and the Toasters have all played there.

And national acts Alice In Chains, Anvil, The Balls, Black Flag, Blowfly, Chemlab, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, the Ducky Boys, Eddy Dixon and the Dixonettes, the Flamin Groovies, The Fleshtones, the Funky Knights, Hüsker Dü, Living Colour, Local H, Lydia Lunch, Murphy’s Law, Powerman 5000, the Queers, Rash of Stabbings, the Smithereens, Southern Culture on the Skids, Translator and Romeo Void have also rocked out at Ralph’s.

Beaudry-Bloise fondly recalls the night Living Colour, in the height of its popularity, first played Ralph’s.

"Living Colour was an awesome experience," she said. "I was working backstage hospitality, and people were, literally, trying to climb up the building to get in. You could feel the whole place vibrating and shaking like it was just going to cave in. There was amazing energy."

With his hair past his waist and sweat-drenched, tattoed muscles bulging like the Michelin Man, Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins delivered one of the loudest and most intense shows in the history of Ralph's. It was during the band's "Slip It In" tour on Oct. 22, 1984.

Waving his gnarly looking hand puppets “Ham Ham” and “Turkey Turkey” to Black Flag’s heavy barrage of high-decible blitzkrieg, Wormtown legend Captain PJ (William LeBlanc) was acknowledged by Rollins, when the singer snapped, “Some people get their aggressions out with music. Others do it with puppets.”

While many recall the Black Flag show fondly, Rollins remembers it differently.

"The show in 1984 was marked by violence," Rollins said. "It looked like some people had showed up just to beat up some of the patrons.”

Another major attraction at Ralph’s is the plethora of absurdities, antiquities, eccentricities, oddities, rarities and mounted taxidermy that makes the place one-part amusement park ride, one-part David Lynch dreamscape, one-part Raymond Chandler seediness, one-part Russ Meyer camp, one-part Rod Serling storyline, one-part Tod Browning moodpiece and 100% rock 'n' roll.

This includes a humongous blinking eyeball, pop culture murals, mannequin parts, a pair of coffins (including an animatronic one), a life-size sculpture of “The Tallest Man in the World” and more stuffed animal heads than you can shake a stick at.

“I remember when Ralph had the full Harley hanging upside down from the ceiling,” Saarinen said. “Ralph’s (the bar's) was an extension of Ralph’s (the man's) personality."

“The Harley that he had up there,” Hemmeter said. “Ralph took that down before he sold the bar to me, and actually, rode it around a little bit.”

Also prominently display on the second floor, the photos of Rick Blaze (real name Richard Frank Bloise Jr.), the singer for The Ballbusters, who died Aug. 9, 2011, and Scott Ricciuti, the singer-guitarist for Childhood, Huck, Preacher Roe, Pistol Whipped and many other legendary local bands and affiliations, who died April 5, 2012.

"My late husband, Rick Blaze, always said that he wanted to be stuffed and hung in the rafters at Ralph's when he died," Beaudry-Bloise said. "Well, I think human taxidermy is illegal, so I put his ashes in a CD case and we mounted it in the rafters at Ralph's."

Charles Membrino of Eddie Japan (who has also been at Ralph’s hundreds of times, both as a performer and a patron) describes the famed Worcester nightspot as the alternative rock equivalent to “Cheers,” just a little more sarcastic.

“I remember Ralph introducing himself to me and a group of friends and asking us, ‘Are you having a good time?' twice, each,” Membrino said. “When asked why he asked us twice, Ralph said he wanted to make sure we weren’t going to change our answer and see if he could trust us. It always struck me as funny and sincere.”

At 6-foot-9-inches and 275 pounds, leather jacket-clad, gentle giant Patrick Dunn is a longtime Ralph’s patron who, literally and figuratively, hovers head and shoulders above the rest.

“Ralph’s was my watering hole, and I was a regular there from the early 1990s until 2008, when I got married,” Dunn said. “Way too many stories to list here, and I’ve forgot half or more of those times but, luckily I have photos … I still get asked if I am still a bouncer at Ralph’s, though I never was employed there, but broke up numerous fights in the 'pit' at shows, due to my size.”

“I have two accomplishments of which I am particularly proud," said Doug Moore of Big Dawg and Wilbur and the Dukes. "(Earning) fifth place in a Union 24 spelling bee in the fifth grade at Paxton Center School and, according to the staff, setting the record for the amount of beer sold at Ralph’s in one night with Wilbur and the Dukes (in the summer of 1990)."

In 1997, Hemmeter, after more than 10 years tending bar at Ralph’s, left the renowned music club to open his own namesake, Vincent’s, at 49 Suffolk St. In November 2002, Moberly sold his namesake bar to Hemmeter and Hemmeter's short-lived business partner John Palmieri, who also once worked at Ralph's.

“I didn’t change the feel of it,” Hemmeter insisted, after buying Ralph's. "I just did all the expensive fixing things that don’t show.”

Moberly, 63, died unexpectedly on March 27, 2008, but his legend and the legacy lives on.

“You got the awful parking lot. You have the leaky roof (which Hemmeter fixed after he bought it). You got that stupid stairwell, trying to get amps up and down that thing. You got the cool jukebox. You’re gonna to get some good rock 'n' roll. And you’re gonna get some cheap beer," Wedge said. "I still love going there. I still love playing there."













“We used to go out to Boston to see bands and then Ralph’s became so popular that bands in Boston heard about Ralph’s and wanted to come to Worcester to play,” Saarinen said. “Ralph’s is my home away from home. It has been for 40 years.”

“Sir Morgan’s might have hosted the Rolling Stones but, in the long run, Ralph’s is really the best place in town and the place people associate with Worcester,” Creamer said. “You’re probably going to hear something you never heard before on the jukebox or you’re probably going to see a band that you’d never see anywhere else. And, to me, that gives me a sense of pride, growing up in Worcester.”