If you Google “rock clubs, Brooklyn,” you’ll see more than a dozen, most of them in Williamsburg, Bushwick, Gowanus or nearby. But before any of them were there, Lauterbach’s, at 335 Prospect Ave. in the South Slope, had a thriving scene featuring original rock bands.
None of the Lauterbach’s bands – Frank’s Museum, Chemical Wedding, Cryptic Soup, Formaldehyde Blues Train, the Squirrels from Hell, Beatniks from Mars, the Original Rays and a host of others – became household names. But they set off an explosion of creativity and developed a following that survives today.
In the 1980s, Brooklyn wasn’t trendy. There were few rock clubs there other than L’Amour at 1546 62nd St., which was best known for hard rock and heavy metal. That changed around 1988, when Bob Racioppo, a former member of the new wave/CBGB’s band the Shirts, walked into Lauterbach’s, a neighborhood bar. Racioppo was driving a cab and had a new band, Chemical Wedding.
He noticed that the bar, owned by the Lauterbach family who lived upstairs, had a stage and looked like a good place for rock bands to play. “It looked like a mini-CBGB’s,” he recalls. “It had a pool table, and the original CBGB’s also had a pool table.” The South Slope in those days, he says, was “white and Puerto Rican working class,” not yet gentrified.
Racioppo, who came from Sunset Park, asked the owners, George and Alice Lauterbach, whether he could present music, and they agreed. He also started bartending there. “I brought in money,” he says. “I knew how to treat bands because I (as a music veteran) knew how bands like to be treated.” The club soon began to attract fans beyond the immediate area.
Bands mainly came to Lauterbach’s by word of mouth. Most were from Brooklyn, but not all. For example, Will Duggan, bass player of the Squirrels from Hell, came from Long Island, while other members of his group hailed from other parts of the metro area.
“We were in the recording studio, and one of the bands we knew told us about the scene at Lauterbach’s. We met Bob [Racioppo] and we became friends,” Duggan says. In fact, he adds, all the bands became friendly with each other — something that didn’t happen as much in the high-pressure, competitive world of Manhattan clubs.
Lauterbach’s put out a series of compilation albums featuring groups who played there. The first, “Today Brooklyn, Tomorrow the World,” came out on vinyl in 1988 and contained 10 songs. This writer bought the second album, “Beat This,” in 1990, on cassette (it also came out on CD). It features 20 songs by 20 artists in a wide variety of styles, from thrashing punk to neo-reggae to soft, introspective art-rock.
Mick Cantarella recorded many of the Lauterbach’s groups at his Grampa Studio on Warren Street in Boerum Hill. From there, “I could ride my bike back and forth to Lauterbach’s in my leather jacket,” he remembers. Here are his memories of some of the groups:
Chemical Wedding – “Bob Racioppo (5 string guitar) was formerly the bass player in the Shirts, and had enjoyed more success than anyone else there, so he was kind of looked upon as kind of the leader of this whole thing, and with great respect. Oh, also Chemical Wedding rocked. They had a fabulous singer, Jana, and Bob put together a solid band behind her.”
The Fields – ”A country band, so a little different than the rock bands there, but they had the goods, and checked off all the boxes for what a good band needs in every department. Oh, they also rocked.”
Frank’s Museum – “Frank (Ruscitti) knew how to put on a performance, had great songs, and always had a good band behind him. Oh, they also rocked. I danced many a dance to them.”
Formaldehyde Blues Train – “I’ll start with they rocked. Not all the best technical players, but somehow that worked in their favor.”
Bite The Wax Godhead – “Just about the only band that played there with a drum machine, which was not booed, that is how supportive the folks there were. BTWG was more of a pop band, and the lead singer Alec Cumming was/is influenced by the Beach Boys.”
Al Lee Wyer – “A blue-collar singer-songwriter with a thick Brooklyn accent who wrote just the most amazing lyrics, and then put them to these beautiful melodies.”.
The albums were only one part of a mini-publicity machine. Lauterbach’s took out listings in Time Out New York and The New Yorker, as well as paid ads in the Village Voice. Periodically, the “Brooklyn Beat” bands, as they were known, put on group shows at CBGB’s.
“At one time, at CBGB’s, we had 19 bands on stage,” says Robert Maloney, aka Robert Moe, who fronted a band known as The Moe. On other occasions, Duggan of the Squirrels from Hell, who had connections in Long Island, took some of the bands out to Scandals in Merrick.
The Lauterbach’s team sent cassettes and CDs to as many as 500 college radio stations across the country, according to Moe. In the New York area, Brooklyn Beat bands got airplay on WFUV, WFMU, WNYU and elsewhere. Still, this writer doesn’t remember any of the Brooklyn Beat groups being played on WNEW-FM and K-ROCK, then the city’s two major rock stations.
Racioppo explains: “If they were to be played on big radio stations, they would have to have gotten signed [to major labels].” Brooklyn Beat bands usually recorded for small labels, or self-produced their records.
Racioppo booked the bands until 1992. “I quit bartending when we were held up with a shotgun. Then, I went back to my first love, painting,” he says. Then Moe, who’d known Racioppo since their days at Bishop Ford High School, took over the booking.
Moe came from Windsor Terrace “near Farrell’s Bar,” and in fact, a recent video of one of The Moe’s songs, “Romance is Risky,” was partially shot inside Farrell’s. About his own band, Moe said, “I was never much into practicing, rehearsing. I was more improvisational. Sometimes I wrote songs on stage.” Moe continued to book acts until he temporarily moved to Seattle in 1996.
Most of those interviewed for this article agree that the magic went out of Lauterbach’s sometime in the ‘90s when the club was closed for about six months for renovations. “They took twice as long as they should have, and they put in a stone floor in the back room where they used to have a wooden floor,” Cantarella says. This changed the acoustics for the worse, he adds.
The Lauterbach family sold the house about 15 years ago, according to Moe, and the space once occupied by the club is now a day care center.
Some of the acts that regularly played Lauterbach’s are still playing. You can hear new music from the Squirrels from Hell on their website. Duggan says the Squirrels, which have been around since 1978, are the oldest local rock group in the metro area. Frank Ruscitti of Frank’s Museum, now a history teacher, has several new songs on YouTube, including a “Ukraine Song.” Al Lee Wyer still writes and performs satirical songs like “Color Blind at the Traffic Light,” “Blue Sky, Red State” and “A Degenerate Gambler’s Christmas.”
Looking back on Lauterbach’s, Duggan says, “It was a great scene, and the bands that played there were all very good.” Wyer pays the ultimate compliment: “We were having fun!”
One Comment
Very cool. Squirrels From Hell are playing on Han 21st at Pete’s Candy Store. 9 PM.