The Mudd Club was a

nightclub A nightclub (music club, discothèque, disco club, or simply club) is an entertainment venue during nighttime comprising a dance floor, lightshow, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who plays recorded music. Nightclubs gen ...

located at 77 White Street in the

TriBeCa Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stree ...

neighborhood of

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for

underground music Underground music is music with practices perceived as outside, or somehow opposed to, mainstream popular music culture. Underground music is intimately tied to popular music culture as a whole, so there are important tensions within underground ...

and

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. H ...

events. It was opened by Steve Maas,

Diego Cortez James Allan Curtis (September 30, 1946 – June 21, 2021), known professionally as Diego Cortez, was an American filmmaker and art curator closely associated with the no wave period in New York City. Cortez was the co-founder of the Mudd Club, ...

and

Anya Phillips Anya Phillips (1955 – June 19, 1981) was an American fashion designer and the co-founder of legendary New York nightclub the Mudd Club along with Steve Maas and Diego Cortez. Phillips had an influence on the fashion, sound and look of the New York ...

History

The Mudd Club was founded by filmmaker Steve Maas, art curator Diego Cortez, and downtown punk scene figure Anya Phillips in 1978. Maas named the club after

Samuel Alexander Mudd Samuel Alexander Mudd Sr. (December 20, 1833 – January 10, 1883) was an American physician who was imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth concerning the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Mudd worked as a doctor and tobacco far ...

, the physician who treated

John Wilkes Booth John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838 – April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who assassinated United States President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth ...

in the aftermath of

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

's assassination. To secure the space for the venue, which was a loft owned by artist Ross Bleckner, Maas described the future

venue Venue is the location at which an event takes place. It may refer to: Locations * Venue (law), the place a case is heard * Financial trading venue, a place or system where financial transactions can occur * Music venue, place used for a concer ...

as essentially an art bar

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dinin ...

, like Mickey Ruskin's One University Place, itself based on Ruskin's successful

Max's Kansas City Max's Kansas City was a nightclub and restaurant at 213 Park Avenue South in New York City, which became a gathering spot for musicians, poets, artists and politicians in the 1960s and 1970s. It was opened by Mickey Ruskin (1933–1983) in Decem ...

. Mudd Club featured a bar, gender-neutral bathrooms, and an art gallery curated by

Keith Haring Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his wor ...

on the fourth floor.Gruen, John (ed). ''Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography'', Prentice Hall Press, 1991. Live performances there included new wave,

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, literary icons

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

and

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

, and catwalk exhibitions for emerging fashion designers

Anna Sui Anna Sui (; born August 4, 1964) is an American fashion designer. She was named one of the "Top 5 Fashion Icons of the Decade", and in 2009 earned the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America ( ...

and

Jasper Conran Jasper Alexander Thirlby Conran (born 12 December 1959) is an English designer. He has worked on collections of womenswear and for the home, as well as productions for the stage in ballet, opera and theatre. Early life He is the second son of ...

. Performers included New York no wave bands such as DNA,

Nona Hendryx Nona Bernis Hendryx (born October 9, 1944) is an American vocalist, record producer, songwriter, musician, and author. Hendryx is known for her work as a solo artist as well as for being one-third of the trio Labelle, who had a hit with "Lady ...

's Zero Cool,

the Contortions James Chance and the Contortions (initially known simply as Contortions, a spin-off group is called James White and the Blacks) was a musical group led by saxophonist and vocalist James Chance, formed in 1977. They were a central act of New York ...

Tuxedomoon Tuxedomoon is an experimental, post-punk, new wave band from San Francisco, California, United States. The band formed in the late 1970s at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Pulling influence from punk and electronic music, the group, or ...

and

Jean-Michel Basquiat Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, alongside ...

's band

Gray Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be compose ...

. In 1979,

Talking Heads Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.Talki ...

performed songs from their new album ''

Fear of Music ''Fear of Music'' is the third studio album by American rock band Talking Heads, released on August 3, 1979, by Sire Records. It was recorded at locations in New York City during April and May 1979 and was produced by Brian Eno and Talking He ...

''. Tim Page produced several concerts at the Mudd Club in 1981, in an attempt to meld contemporary classical music with rock and pop. On the dance floor, DJs David Azarch, Anita Sarko and Johnny Dynell played a unique mixture of punk, funk and curiosities. From the start it functioned as an "amazing antidote to the uptown glitz of

Studio 54 Studio 54 is a Broadway theater and a former disco nightclub at 254 West 54th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Operated by the Roundabout Theatre Company, Studio 54 has 1,006 seats on two levels. The theater w ...

in the '70s".Musto, Michael
"Farewell, Queen of the Mudd Club"
''Village Voice'' Le Daily Musto Blog, Aug. 17 2008. Six months after it opened, the Mudd Club was mentioned in ''

People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

'': "New York's fly-by-night crowd of punks, posers and the ultra-hip has discovered new turf on which to flaunt its manic chic. It is the Mudd Club ... . For sheer kinkiness, there has been nothing like it since the cabaret scene in 1920s

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

".''People'', July 16, 1979. As it became more frequented by downtown celebrities, a door policy was established and it acquired a chic, often

elitist Elitism is the belief or notion that individuals who form an elite—a select group of people perceived as having an intrinsic quality, high intellect, wealth, power, notability, special skills, or experience—are more likely to be constr ...

reputation. After its first few years, Studio 54 celebrities like

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

Grace Jones Grace Beverly Jones (born 19 May 1948) is a model, singer and actress. Born in Jamaica, she and her family moved to Syracuse, New York, when she was a teenager. Jones began her modelling career in New York state, then in Paris, working for ...

and

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...

began to show up. In 1981, the Mudd Club's Steve Maas began showing up at the more informal Club 57 on

St. Mark's Place 8th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan that runs from Sixth Avenue to Third Avenue, and also from Avenue B to Avenue D; its addresses switch from West to East as it crosses Fifth Avenue. Between Third Avenue and Ave ...

, and began hiring the Club 57 crowd (including HaringHaring, Keith. ''Keith Haring Journals''. Penguin, 1997.) to help acquire part of that downtown scene.Hager, Steve. ''Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene''. St. Martin. 1986. The Mudd Club was frequented by many of Manhattan's up-and-coming cult celebrities. Other individuals associated with the venue included musicians

Lou Reed Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades ...

Johnny Thunders John Anthony Genzale (July 15, 1952 – April 23, 1991), known professionally as Johnny Thunders, was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. He came to prominence in the early 1970s as a member of the New York Dolls. He later played wit ...

David Byrne David Byrne (; born 14 May 1952) is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of ...

Debbie Harry Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981. Born in ...

Arto Lindsay Arthur Morgan "Arto" Lindsay (born May 28, 1953) is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He was a member of the pioneering 1970s no wave group DNA, which featured on the 1978 compilation '' No New York''. I ...

John Lurie John Lurie (born December 14, 1952) is an American musician, painter, actor, director, and producer. He co-founded the Lounge Lizards jazz ensemble; has acted in 19 films, including ''Stranger than Paradise'' and '' Down by Law''; has composed ...

Nico Naftiran Intertrade Company limited (NICO) is a Swiss-based subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). NICO is a general contractor for the oil and gas industry. NIOC buys the vast majority of Iran's gasoline imports. NICO is a key pl ...

with Jim Tisdall,

Lydia Lunch Lydia Lunch (born Lydia Anne Koch; June 2, 1959)Martin Charles Strong. ''The Great Indie Discography''. 2003, page 85 is an American singer, poet, writer, actress and self-empowerment speaker. Her career began during the 1970s New York City no ...

, X,

the Cramps The Cramps were an American rock band formed in 1976 and active until 2006. Their lineup rotated frequently during their existence, with the husband-and-wife duo of singer Lux Interior and guitarist Poison Ivy the only ever-present members. ...

the B-52's The B-52's, also styled as The B-52s, are an American new wave band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976. The original lineup consisted of Fred Schneider (vocals, percussion), Kate Pierson (vocals, keyboards, synth bass), Cindy Wilson (vocals, ...

the Bongos The Bongos were a power pop band from Hoboken, New Jersey that emerged from the New York City arts scene, primarily active in the 1980s, led by Richard Barone. With their unique musical style, they were major progenitors of the Hoboken indie-pop ...

and

Judas Priest Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band formed in Birmingham in 1969. They have sold over 50 million albums and are frequently ranked as one of the greatest metal bands of all time. Despite an innovative and pioneering body of work in th ...

; artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his then-girlfriend

Madonna Madonna Louise Ciccone (; ; born August 16, 1958) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Widely dubbed the " Queen of Pop", Madonna has been noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, a ...

;Fretz, Eric. ''Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography'', Greenwood Press, 2010. Chapter 3. performers

Klaus Nomi Klaus Sperber (January 24, 1944 – August 6, 1983), known professionally as Klaus Nomi, was a German countertenor noted for his wide vocal range and an unusual, otherworldly stage persona. In the 1970s Nomi immersed himself in the East Village ...

and John Sex; designers

Betsey Johnson Betsey Johnson (born 1942) is an American fashion designer best known for her feminine and whimsical designs. Many of her designs are considered "over the top" and embellished. She also is known for doing a cartwheel ending in a split at the ...

Maripol Maripol (b. 1957) is an artist, film producer, fashion designer and stylist. She has had an influence on the looks of influential artists such as Madonna and Grace Jones. As part of the 1980s New York downtown scene, she captured the likes of Jea ...

and

Marisol Deluna Marisol Deluna is an American fashion designer based in New York City who specializes in screen-printed fashion accessories, apparel and home décor sold under the label Marisol Deluna New York. Early life Born on June 20, 1967, to Rudolfo ( ...

; and underground filmmakers

Amos Poe Amos Poe is an American New York City-based director and screenwriter, described by ''The New York Times'' as a "pioneering indie filmmaker." Career Amos Poe is one of the first punk filmmakers and his film '' The Blank Generation'' (1976)� ...

;

Vincent Gallo Vincent Gallo (born 1961) is an American actor and director. He has had supporting roles in films such as ''Arizona Dream'' (1993), ''The House of the Spirits'' (1993), ''Palookaville'' (1995), and '' The Funeral'' (1996). His lead roles include ...

, Kathy Acker, and

Glenn O'Brien Glenn O'Brien (March 2, 1947 – April 7, 2017) was an American writer who focused largely on the subjects of art, music, and fashion. He was featured for many years as "The Style Guy" in ''GQ'' magazine and published a book with that title. He ...

; supermodel

Gia Carangi Gia Marie Carangi (January 29, 1960November 18, 1986) was an American model, considered by many to be the first supermodel. She was featured on the cover of many magazines, including multiple editions of '' Vogue'' and ''Cosmopolitan'', and appe ...

and makeup artist Sandy Linter. The Mudd Club closed in the spring of 1983. A regular noted, "At the end, it was not much fun anymore. I mean, it had just become—kind of like the hangers-on to the hangers-on at the Mudd Club".O'Brien, Glenn. "A Dialogue with Diego Cortez", ''Jean-Michel Basuiat 1981: The Studio of the Street'', Chrata, 2007. Maas opened another Mudd Club in

in 2001 (located at Grosse Hamburger Strasse 17); this Berlin club was considered an intimate venue for touring bands. In 2007, the arts organization

Creative Time Creative Time is a New York-based nonprofit arts organization. It was founded in 1974 to support the creation of innovative, site-specific, socially engaged artworks in the public realm, particularly in vacant spaces of historical and architectura ...

placed a plaque on the NYC building to commemorate the club's existence. On October 28–29, 2010, a 30-year reunion of Mudd Club artists and regulars was held at the Delancey nightclub in Manhattan. Many bands and performers from the Mudd Club and Club 57 performed, including

Bush Tetras Bush Tetras are an American post-punk band from New York City, formed in 1979. They are best known for the 1980 song "Too Many Creeps", which exemplified the band's sound of "jagged rhythms, slicing guitars, and sniping vocals".Comateens The Comateens were originally a new wave duo formed in 1978 in New York City by bassist/vocalist Nic North and guitarist Ramona Jan. Soon after, Lyn Byrd joined on vocals and synthesizer, and the duo became a trio. When Jan departed in 1980, North ...

and Walter Steading. The Mudd Club reunion was also attended by two of the three original doormen, Joey Kelly (Buddy Love, Magic Tramps, Dive Bar Romeos) and Richard Boch (author and painter) but not the actor/voiceperson Colter Rule, who was quoted as stating, "I dislike organized partying".Mudd Club / Club 57 / New Wave Vaudeville Reunion website
Vincentelli, Elisabeth.
Its Name Was Mudd
" ''New York Post'', October 23, 2010. A memoir by Boch, ''The Mudd Club'', was published by

Feral House Feral House is an American book publisher founded in 1989 by Adam Parfrey and based in Port Townsend, Washington. Early history The company's first book was '' The Satanic Witch'' (1989; originally published in 1971 by Dodd, Mead & Company) by ...

in September 2017.

In pop culture

The club has been mentioned in various songs such as " Life During Wartime" (1979) by

Talking Heads Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.Talki ...

, "The Return of Jackie and Judy" (1980) by the

Ramones The Ramones were an American punk rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first true punk rock group. Despite achieving a limited commercial appeal in the United St ...

, " New York / N.Y." (1983) by

Nina Hagen Catharina "Nina" Hagen (; born 11 March 1955) is a German singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her theatrical vocals and rose to prominence during the punk and new wave movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She is known as ...

, and "Off the Shelf"(1983) by

Elliott Murphy Elliott James Murphy (born March 16, 1949) is an American rock singer-songwriter, novelist, record producer and journalist living in Paris. Biography Elliott Murphy was born in Rockville Centre, New York, grew up in Garden City, Long Island ...

Frank Zappa Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity and satire of ...

included a song named after the club on his 1981 album ''

You Are What You Is ''You Are What You Is'' is a 1981 double album by American musician Frank Zappa. His 34th album, it consists of three musical suites which encompass pop, doo-wop, jazz, hard rock, reggae, soul, blues, new wave and country. The album's lyrics ...

''. In 2022, Judas Priest issued the CD ''Live at the Mudd Club ’79'' as part of their box set, ''50 Heavy Metal Years Of Music''.https://shop.judaspriest.com/products/singles-boxset

References

Sources

* Boch, Richard.''The Mudd Club'', Feral House, 2017 * Musto, Michael. ''Downtown''. Vintage Books, 1986. * Gendron, Bernard. ''Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde'', University Of Chicago Press, 2002. * Reynolds, Simon: ''Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984'',

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.''Why Are Lines Shorter for Gas Than the Mudd Club in New York? Because Every Night Is Odd There''
''

'' magazine, v.12, n.3, July 16, 1979 *Linda Dawn Hammond
Photos from the Mudd Club
1979. {{Tribeca, Manhattan Nightclubs in Manhattan Former music venues in New York City Punk rock venues Tribeca 1978 establishments in New York City 1983 disestablishments in New York (state)

History

In pop culture

See also

References

Sources