An '80s punk-rock tour of Lansing’s hardcore past

This week, Steve Miller, formerly of The Fix, a legendary early-’80s Lansing hardcore band, recalls some lowkey punk-rock landmarks. Here’s what he had to say:

When I came home one afternoon in April 1982, I realized that being part of a nascent music scene meant some great perks.

The the Bad Brains would roll you joints in your living room, play your entire Pablo Moses collection with the bass turned up the right way and cook spinach noodles with spicy peanut sauce for lunch. And as a post dinner treat, stoned ping pong tournaments in the basement of our house.

As a member of a Lansing-based hardcore combo called the Fix, the only such unit in town, I was also part of the network of hospitable places to stay for bands touring the U.S. I had used the network on a couple U.S. tours by that time, and it was only fair to give back.

The Bad Brains stayed for a week at my place at 2204 Stirling, using it as a base for shows in the region. They cooked, cleaned and smoked, the easiest guests ever.

A year before that, Black Flag stayed at the Fix house at 823 Beulah — now a vacant lot — after a sold-out Black Flag/Fix show at Club Doo Bee, which later became The Watershed Tavern & Grill in Haslett. Walk in the place today and little has changed since it hosted Oingo Boingo, the Fast, Lydia Lunch, Destroy All Monsters, and D.O.A.

The latter were also guests at the Beulah house. Randy Rampage, Joey Shithead, Dave Gregg and Chuck Biscuits outdrank us – no easy feat – like the proud Canadians they were. One morning Rampage was walking out to the band’s van looking rock as could be, with bleached do’ flying high and wallet chains dangling hipside. Some kids came up and asked him if he was in a band. “Yes, I’m in KISS,” Rampage told them.

Most of the Lansing venues in the early ’80s were one-and-done places, where we’d come in and wreak havoc, ruining it for everyone. There was a Hobie’s downtown, where wealthy realtors have built their so-called “lofts” off Washington, that was used on at least one occasion. That would be the night Ron Wood of The Dogs let off a fire extinguisher toward the end of a Fix set in the jammed back room of the eatery, choking every drunk soul in the place.

The Lansing Civic Players hall also worked out as a venue a couple of times—the Fix with Trainable in June 1981 and Minor Threat a year later. The relationship between the theater group and the punks ended in acrimony when someone uptight noticed that local heroes the Crucifucks were on an upcoming bill with Boston hardcore band SS Decontrol, who were big for five minutes.

Sometimes a name is everything.

“The Civic Players found out about it and I got like thirty calls in the middle of the night,” said Meatmen honcho Tesco Vee, who was putting the show together. “I put my phone number on that flier, and some guy started calling, “What the hell is this Crucifucks shit?” Vee, of course, also co-founded the legendary Touch & Go zine in Lansing along with Dave Stimson.

In the late ’70s-early ’80s, Madison, Wis., had Merlins, Ann Arbor had the Second Chance; what was taking East Lansing so long to establish a full-time venue for our music? What is now Harper's in downtown East Lansing was Dooley’s at the time, which found someone adventurous to book the downstairs.

Out of the blue, and to the surprise of the few in the know, in 1978, Dooley’s booked the Stranglers on their first full U.S. tour in April. A couple weeks later, the Ramones played the same stage.

In January 1980, Johnny Thunders and Gang War also came to town and played a terrible set. In a lightning strike of karma, Thunders spent the night in the East Lansing jail. “The dumb fuck robbed the bar and left a trail of coins out to the van,” Ron Cooke, the late Gang War bassist, told me a few years ago.

When Flat, Black & Circular owners Dave Bernath and Dick Rosemont opened a small café in downtown East Lansing, a lot of folks thought that the college town was catching up. Bunches Continental Café served sandwiches with sprouts on them, then at night opened its glass tabletops and fashionable but uncomfortable wooden booths to real underground music with a courage and a backbone. Gun Club played two sets one night in March 1982 to almost nobody. Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s plastic cowboy boots hurt his credibility. It was the Ward Dotson/Rob Ritter version touring the “Fire of Love” LP.

R.E.M. wheeled in to Bunches around the same time and was listless and standoffish to the few curious locals there. To us, they were southern-fried hicks trying to play some bastardized Byrds. “They’ll never amount to much,” we sniffed. The band got $300 that night. The Bad Brains showed up a couple weeks later and showed everyone how it’s done. Two nights of mayhem that came off with nary a blemish to the plants, the old-school glass pie display and other very enticing breakables.

Bernath was booking the good stuff with little regard to what made him dough; MX-80 Sound played to a dozen people. Eugene Chadbourne came in. The Flesheaters, the Panther Burns. When the place closed in November 1982, Bernath was in talks to bring NYC legends Suicide to town.

Lansing didn’t have a Mr. Brown’s (Columbus) or a Seventh Street Entry (Minneapolis), but it did have a moving host of little places and people willing to bring in the best music around. Those certainly were not the good old days. Save those for now. But it’s inspiring to recall when music wasn’t all about money, but about playing your thoughts for people who were adventurous enough to check it out.