Club Foot: the early '80s
From Duke's to the Cave and the Cannibal, Brad First brought some unforgettable music to Austin
Brad First got fired from Club Foot in 1983 for booking one of the most legendary concerts in Austin music history: a 15-piece band from Africa fronted by King Sunny Ade. The $7,500 fee was high for the three-year-old club, and First also had to charter a bus to bring them from Houston. No touring African band had ever played an Austin club that anyone could recall, so it was more risk than Club Foot owner John Bird was willing to take.
The 950-capacity venue at 110 E. 4th Street, behind the Greyhound station, would have to sell 800 tickets just to break even. “A $10 ticket was almost unheard of back then,” said First, who couldn’t risk not booking a band that he knew would turn Club Foot into a den of delirium.
Promoted in conjunction with UT’s African Student Union, and trumpeted by Dan Del Santo’s “World Beat” radio show on KUT, the King Sunny Ade show sold out. Those who were there describe it more in religious than musical terms. The Talking Heads 1980 show at the Armadillo on the Remain in Light tour primed the local audience in African polyrhythms, but this was the real thing! The crowd gasped in ecstasy after three solid hours of the original groove music.
Even though hurt by his dismissal, the booker was there. “I wanted to see King Sunny, first of all, but I also wanted to see John Bird,” First said. Looks like this show worked out, he told the owner, and asked for his job back. “No” was the quick answer. Bird had fired the staff, with plans to rebrand as Nightlife, and it would take more than one sensational concert to turn him around (though later he did.).
A budding entrepreneur whose dabbles included brokering horse semen to thoroughbred breeders, Bird reportedly “won” a failing gay disco called 110 Club in a card game. With its two-tiered sightlines, Bird returned the former location of Boondocks (which hosted the first public Carnaval Brasileiro in 1978) and Crazy Bob’s to a live music format, but with national acts. Jim Ramsey’s Spotlight Productions booked the club’s first two roadshows- the Stranglers on October 28, 1980 and Gang of Four a week later, on the night Ronald Reagan was elected President.
After berating the crowd of Americans for choosing “a B-list actor” to lead them, the politically-radical Gang firehosed the room with danceable punk rock that left everyone dripping. “It was one of those great rock shows that crosses the line into pandemonium,” said photographer David C. Fox. “You know that saying about how ‘rock and roll saved my life’? That’s how that night felt.”
First walked back to Duke’s Royal Coach Inn, the punk/new wave club he ran with Fox, Roland Swenson and Sam Staples, and sat there in the dark with head in hands. Our days are numbered, he thought. There was no way Duke’s and its local bands could compete with the live music explosion he’d just experienced two blocks away.
Duke’s had been a down-on-its-luck Mexican bar, taken over and rejuvenated by the punk/ new wave scene, just like Raul’s before it. When Austin’s first punk club closed in Feb. 1980, it created a void that Duke’s rushed to fill. But Raul’s was back just two months later with new owner Steve Hayden, booking more aggressive bands, like the Dicks, the Offenders and MDC, while Duke’s catered to the new-wavish bands: F-Systems, Terminal Mind, Gator Family, Standing Waves, Skunks, Jitters, the Next. Both booked the Big Boys.
With Swenson moving to NYC, temporarily it turned out, with management client Standing Waves, First met with Bird (the brother of author Sarah Bird) as soon as he could about working at Club Foot. “He didn’t have anyone booked for New Year’s Eve, and Duke’s had Joe King Carrasco, a big draw,” said First. “So he said, ‘if you can bring Joe King Carrasco to Club Foot, you’ve got a job.” Ramsey was a freelance promoter, who booked most of the new wave shows at the Austin Opera House, and various other rooms. Bird wanted someone fully committed to Club Foot. Someone who could fill the calendar seven nights a week, which, First said, caused some of the club’s financial shortcomings. “If we had 100 people, it felt empty.”
The legendary clubs in Austin have this math in common: for every unforgettable night, there were three wastes of everyone’s time.
Brad’s first show at Club Foot was the night the Armadillo closed for good. This is called timing. Antone’s was also between locations, with an 18-month gap between Great Northern Blvd. (#2) and 2915 Guadalupe St., so Club Foot got B.B. King, James Brown, Sam & Dave, Willie Dixon, Albert Collins, SRV, Fabulous Thunderbirds, John Lee Hooker and other acts that would’ve went with Austin’s “Home of the Blues.”
But the club, managed by Phil Cawvey, was better known for the acts that exploded on MTV. First convinced Bird to upgrade the club’s video screens and sound system. “The perfect club, to me, was one where the people stay after the show and hang out and dance,” he said.
“John Bird was very hands on,” said First. “He was protecting his investment, so we had all sorts of meetings over everything: ad buys, production costs, how much we were paying each act. He didn’t like any risks with booking. One bad show would really hurt and two could wipe us out.” Is there a business with more ups-and-downs than concert promotion?
Club Foot competed mainly with the Austin Opera House for touring acts not yet big enough for the Erwin Center, and got most of them: U2, New Order, Metallica, R.E.M., Iggy Pop, the Go-Gos, Bangles, X, Stray Cats, OMD, Warren Zevon, and on and on. Because it built up vertically, with a balcony of onlookers, the club never felt too big, and the little duckaway rooms upstairs provided a respite from claustrophobia. Somehow, with all that corrugated metal on the walls, the acoustics were great, too.
Everybody loved Club Foot, where all types of music worked. But the live music business, with all its overhead and speculation, is not for entrepreneurs. It’s for diehard music fans who are delighted to break even on a great show. Thinking all the press and big names meant Club Foot was raking in it, the owner of the building- a former General Electric Supply Center- notified Bird that the rent would increase from $3,300 a month to $11,000 at the end of the lease, and that was it! Bird moved on with new investments, including the Golden Chick franchise.
The club’s final official show was Standing Waves Dec. 17, 1983, though Big Boys rented it for a BYOB punk blowout on New Year’s Eve. Sam Staples, the lighting designer, was the club’s last manager (under protest). “After financial irregularities (with First’s replacement), he fired her and told me I was the new manager,” said Staples, who’d come over with First from Duke’s. “He said if I didn’t take the job he’d close the club and then I wouldn’t even have the lighting job.” Staples had one demand, that First return as booker, which Bird agreed to on a part-time basis. “Brad booked for awhile but then became busy with First Productions, so I hired Jody Denberg to book the club.”
First went on to his greatest financial success in the music business, teaming with Jennifer Jaqua and Richard Luckett on Club Iguana- a genius concept that kept all the door, with zero overhead. The hip dance crowd followed the Iguana all over town for a couple years. Married to Dottie Swenson, Roland’s sister, First has scouted and booked bands for SXSW since 2006.
The Afro-party moved to Liberty Lunch, where King Sunny and Ebenezer Obey packed the place, plus their mentor, the great Fela, played there at least twice. “Direct from Africa” on a club ad guaranteed at least 600 paying customers, though when Fela played at the City Coliseum in ’86, the show lost money. “There were no dressing rooms at the Coliseum, so we had to put the band in a big bathroom behind the stage,” recalled Louis Meyers, who co-promoted the show. The headliner barked at Meyers: “You do not put FELA in a shithouse!”
First had no designs on running live music venues when he came from Houston in 1977 to get an RTF degree from UT. His dream was to be a record producer, “the next Steve Lillywhite.” His entree into the music biz was being roped into mixing sound at Raul’s for Standing Waves, featuring his ARC Co-op roommate David Cardwell.
He never did produce a record, but by the end of the ‘90s, First had made a huge and lasting impact on the Austin club scene.
More First: The Cave Club brings industrial music to Red River and makes Frank Kozik a star.
Memories…Crazy Bob had been chugging pitchers of margaritas when introducing BETO to entice the audience to drink up and pulled a 45 pistol out on us when it came time for payment…I had to go back the next day to pick up the payment of 500 $1 bills wadded up like spit wads.
(Crazy Bob’s didn’t last long.)
That first Carnaval, we learned one record and played the same set 3 times. We had those tunes down by the 3rd set. That was a GREAT party!
I remember seeing U2 there when their first album came out. Seems like they played a lot of songs twice and I read an article later that said it was because they'd only started playing instruments a few years before and didn't know any other songs.