1984 - 1993
School of Rock
The post-punk generation grows up -- and blows up --at the Antenna.
By andria lisle
New York had CBGB's and Los Angeles had the Whisky A Go-Go. We had the Antenna club, a tiny space that anchored the northwest corner of Madison Avenue and Avalon Street in Midtown. The Antenna was one of the first things I heard about when, at age 15, I moved to Memphis from suburban Atlanta. Rumors flew around my high school: "That's where all the freaks go." Or, even better: "They have bands playing awful music." Somehow, someway, I had to get down there.
Try as I might, I can't remember the first show I saw at the Antenna. But I do know that between 1984 and '87 (the year I graduated from high school), I saw hundreds of bands -- hardcore legends such as the Circle Jerks, MDC, and Suicidal Tendencies; straight-edge groups such as Youth of Today, Bold, and Uniform Choice; rising "college circuit" stars such as Hüsker Dü, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Replacements; and local heroes such as Slit Wrist, Sobering Consequences, and Metrowaste.
I stayed in Memphis after high school, and, as I got older, my tastes changed too. I witnessed sweat-wringing, gut-wrenching concerts from the likes of Mudhoney, the Flaming Lips, and Hole. In between, of course, were amazing performances by guitarist Cordell Jackson, eccentric roots-rockabilly enthusiast Tav Falco and his group the Panther Burns, the avant-garde Grifters, and no-holds-barred garage rockers the Oblivians. I saw Courtney Love threaten to beat up her biggest fans, and I just barely missed an errant beer bottle tossed offstage by an unrepentant G.G. Allin.
If the ever-revolving roster of bands taking the stage provided my musical education, then the interior of the Antenna club -- dingy black walls, blaring TV sets, filthy bathrooms, and all -- was my school. I'd loiter outside, either in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot or at the donut shop across the street, waiting for class to begin. Rebel, the Antenna's infamous bouncer, would take attendance, while brothers Steve and Mark McGehee -- the most unlikely purveyors of alternative music imaginable -- provided the weekly lesson plan.
"The McGehee brothers were heroes," says producer/musician Jim Dickinson. "They kept that place open at a loss for years." Dickinson, who remembers the location operating as the Mouse Trap ("a pimp joint") and, more famously, as the Well ("a redneck dive bar by day and a punk-rock joint at night"), feels that the Antenna was a predestined part of the circa-'80s Memphis scene. "Its arrival was inevitable," he notes, "and I saw many historic events there."
Although a mysterious Mr. X originally opened the Antenna club, Steve McGehee took over in 1981, managing the space as a type of clubhouse for his family and friends. Steve booked the bands and his sisters Robin and Donna worked behind the bar, while a handful of first-name-only characters -- Rowena, Anna, Angerhead, and Rebel -- filled in wherever they were needed.
The Antenna's longtime soundman, Davis McCain (now co-owner of Easley-McCain Recording), recalls those early days with fondness. "R.E.M.'s first show [in '81 -- admission was a paltry $2] was exciting. There were about seven people in the crowd, and one older couple was dancing. When I first heard their music and saw Michael Stipe shaking like he didn't have a backbone, I realized this is the future. They were doing stuff we'd never even thought about playing," he says.
As the national music scene evolved, so did the stage at the Antenna. "We had so many bands that became huge," remembers Mark McGehee. "We did shows that I was really proud of -- Helmet, Danzig, and Hole. [Hole's Courtney Love] was tough to deal with that night too," he adds. "The G.G. Allin show is the thing I'm least proud of, and the most press I've ever gotten," he says. "I knew it was gonna be trouble. I ended up calling the police to cover myself."
God only knows why I was at the show that night. It must've been boredom or morbid curiosity. I staked out what looked like a good spot in the back of the club, near the cigarette machine. Then, after a few minutes onstage with his band, the Murder Junkies, Allin defecated, shoved a microphone up his ass, and chased the audience outdoors. He ran, naked, right past me, and I pressed myself into the wall until it was safe to venture outside too. I spent the next hour standing in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot, shrieking, while an angry woman chased Allin in and out of the Antenna with a butcher knife. He survived, only to overdose a few years later, but the Antenna club was nearly shut down.
The next day, Mark McGehee had to meet with the vice squad, who had received a tape of the show. Local promoter Chris Walker, who had booked the show, got off more lightly. "No one said a word to me," he says today.
By the mid-'90s, groups like R.E.M. and Hole were playing arena-sized venues, and Mark McGehee coped by booking two shows a night -- all-ages shows in the early evening and over-21 gigs after 10 p.m. Andy Gienapp, an alumnus of local hardcore bands Komatoast and American Lesion, remembers that period well. "It was like a punk-rock utopia," he says, recalling shows where slam-dancing was actually friendly. "All these kids would fall down, and instead of stepping on 'em, other guys would pick 'em up. These people were nihilists, but they had solidarity," he enthuses.
At the height of the era, Mark McGehee paired American Lesion with California group Green Day -- one of the hardcore bands that took rebelliousness to the top of the radio charts. That, Gienapp feels, was the beginning of the end. "In the post-grunge age, the Antenna club was almost redundant," he explains. "There was this status quo before Green Day and Nirvana [made it big]. Underground suddenly became mainstream, and the entire subculture was taken away from us, laundered, and given to the general public. Punk rock was too threatening, and then not threatening enough, and no one was interested in it anymore."
Meanwhile, other Memphis venues like Six-1-Six and the New Daisy were chipping away at the Antenna's audiences. In the mid-'90s, the Young Avenue Deli opened, while Walker took over Barristers downtown. Memphis police, searching for underage drinkers, made several unwelcome raids at the Antenna club. Mark McGehee received a few parental complaints after a Sebadoh show in May '95, and, after a lackluster crowd attended a Tripping Daisy concert a few weeks later, he decided to close the doors for good.
Soon afterward, local entrepeneur Martin Watson reopened the space as the Void. Less than a year later, the Void disappeared, and Walker relocated Barristers to 1588 Madison for a short time. He attributes his failure to a broken air conditioner that sucked up all his funds. In 1996, the Madison Flame -- a lesbian bar -- opened in the location. The change in clientele worked, and business is still going strong.
"The Antenna club was kind of like my high school," Gienapp says. "When I think about the Antenna, I wonder what happened to this guy or that one."
"There were people," says McCain, "whose whole lives seemed to revolve around the Antenna club."
1994 - Present
Indie Magnet
How Easley-McCain Recording became a key player in the indie-rock explosion.
By andrew earles
Memphis is synonymous with music, sure, but have you ever stopped to compare our history of recording studios with that of other hotbeds? Single studios carry the reputation of Detroit and Philly, and Nashville has always seemed like more of a meat-grinder than a city with a nurtured studio identity. With Sun, Stax, Royal, Phillips Recording Service, American Sound Studios, Ardent, and, most recently, Easley-McCain, Memphis' resume of influential studios can stand alongside New York's or Los Angeles'.Over the past 14 years, Easley-McCain Recording has been an anomaly within the common studio paradigm. The grassroots aesthetics that marked its beginnings stretch to the present day. From the '80s DIY sessions that set the gears in motion to the early- to mid-'90s heyday that put Easley-McCain on lips around the music world, the economical, unique little studio, owned 50/50 by Doug Easley and Davis McCain, has always seemed artist-driven, scrupulously avoiding the poison of industry pressure.
"We've always been artist-oriented," McCain says. "We tried to never charge the big boys' prices, maybe because Doug and I had been in bands and had always been involved with independent labels. I think part of the reason that Pavement and Sonic Youth and the like came to Easley is because of the low price. They wanted to come to Memphis anyway. They could get out of their environments, get a nice hotel here, and eat barbecue every day."The studio's birth was, unsurprisingly, humble. After he got out of high school in the late 1970s, Easley acquired a house in the woods between James Road and the Wolf River bottoms. He set up a studio shortly after. Easley's first four-track cost around $2,800. "I took out a bank loan and bought some equipment from the Stax auction," Easley explains. "We would do some blues stuff -- Mose Vinson, Son Thomas. And Dave Shouse (the Grifters, the Bloodthirsty Lovers) and I actually go back that far. We were forming a band at the time and recording some at that location."
Easley then moved his equipment into a garage behind his home in the U of M area. It was here that he began to record many of the local bands that were playing the Antenna club, shows where McCain (then of the new-wave band Barking Dog) would often do sound. The two had worked on some recordings together when they ran into each other in New York in 1989. Easley expressed a desire to move the operations from behind his house and a partnership was sealed.
(Note: Before vacating the backyard studio, the Gories' exalted I Know You Fine, But How You Doin' was completed there, with Alex Chilton at the knobs.)The two-story Midtown cube that has been Easley-McCain for the past 14 years was constructed in 1967 as the Onyx. After Chips Moman's partner Don Crews acrimoniously split from American Sound Studios and took up residence in the building, it was often known as American East.
"It was state-of-the-art, probably the only studio in Memphis at the time that had been built as a studio -- foot-thick walls and echo chambers," says McCain.
The second floor held offices, which gives us this interesting bit of trivia: An independent record promoter decided to venture downstairs in 1974 and add vocals to "Devil in a Bottle," a Bobby David demo he'd been unsuccessfully peddling. The resulting song gave the world a country-pop force known as T.G. Sheppard. Studio activity continued until the early '80s (it was used as a rehearsal space for the Bar-Kays), then the building was used as storage for several years. Easley and McCain bought it in 1990, complete with water damage and broken windows. "You could basically walk right into it," says Easley.The first full recording completed at Easley-McCain was the Hilltops' Big Black River. That band's John Stirrat would later join an incarnation of Uncle Tupelo and, with Jeff Tweedy, go on to form Wilco, whose 1995 debut, A.M., was recorded at Easley-McCain. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's breakout, Extra Width, came out of the studio in late 1992. Alex Chilton performed (a rarity in 1992) at the wrap-up party. The popularity of the Grifters helped bring the studio national attention from indie bands. "There was a Grifters record, and when you opened it up, it said, 'All of this was recorded at Easley, and here's their phone number," McCain says. Grifters admirers Pavement trekked here to record Wowee Zowee, followed by Pavement admirers Sonic Youth, who recorded Washing Machine.
"As with all new businesses, early on there were days when we were sitting around scratching our heads, looking at one another," says Easley. But soon the pair was working overtime. "It was ridiculous," McCain says. "I went back and looked at the books. Doug and I were working so much that we'd have to schedule a day off just to wash our clothes." This eventually necessitated the hiring of Stuart Sikes, first as an intern, then as a full-time engineer. "Doug was in Germany, and we had just gotten our new board, so Stuart and I rewired the entire studio. That was his first job," says McCain.The tone around the studio darkened a bit in 1997. Texas troubadour and cult figure Townes Van Zandt had been recording at Easley-McCain just days before dying unexpectedly in Nashville. Similarly tragic, Jeff Buckley had been laboring over what would become part of Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk) at the studio before he drowned in the Mississippi. McCain says simply: "That was a bad time."
The crown jewel of Easley-McCain's client list was added in 2001. Though nobody really knew it at the time, the then-unknown White Stripes were recording an album (White Blood Cells) that would invade living rooms around the world. The album has far surpassed the sales of any other Easley-McCain production. "We really didn't see that one coming, and I don't think the band did either," Easley says.Business leveled off after that. Sikes moved to Texas in early 2002 and was succeeded by engineer Kevin Cubbins, who played with the Pawtuckets. Cubbins has been rounding up local talent, including many recent sessions involving the Makeshift Music collective. "Kevin's our street team -- out at shows, involved with bands, spreading the word. I guess I was the street team in the '80s," says Easley. Recently, Sikes was brought back to work on a portion of Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and he mixed Loretta Lynn's Van Lear Rose (which was produced by Jack White) at the studio.
If Easley-McCain isn't quite the indie-rock magnet it was a decade ago, that might be a result of larger changes in the music business. "I think that the shift in the industry is due to computers," says Easley. "That's what I blame, even as I sit in front of one." Much is heard about file sharing, but perhaps as significant is the increasing ease of computer-based home recording."I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with the [music] business," Easley says. But after nearly 15 years and with a long list of important and memorable records to its credit, no one's counting Easley-McCain out just yet.