Tier 3 (aka TR3) was an influential but short-lived 300-capacity

no wave No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and r ...

art nightclub in New York. Founded by Hilary Jaeger in 1979, Tier 3 was a major venue in the city's

underground music Underground music is music with practices perceived as outside, or somehow opposed to, Popular music, mainstream popular music culture. Underground styles lack the commercial success of popular music movements, and may involve the use of avant-g ...

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''. Ho ...

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...

art scene, along with the Mudd Club. Carlo McCormick, ''The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984'', 06 Live performances showcased

punk rock Punk rock (also known as simply punk) is a rock music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced sh ...

, ska,

noise music Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music include ...

free jazz Free jazz, or free form in the early to mid-1970s, is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventi ...

, new wave and

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, ...

.Marc Masters, ''No Wave London'', Black Dog Publishing (2007) The club was located at 225

West Broadway West Broadway is a north-south street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, separated into two parts by Tribeca Park. The northern part begins at Tribeca Park, near the intersection of Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue), Walker 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 Str ...

neighborhood of lower

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

. Besides Hilary Jaeger, who booked the bands and ran Tier 3 (initially giving 100% of the door money to the bands), the DJs were Bob Gurevics and Simeon Gallu in addition to many guest DJs. The Lounge Lizards had one of their first gigs at Tier 3 and Lindzee Smith occasionally showed films of the No Wave Cinema on the third floor."RIP Tier 3"
Andy Schwartz, ''Perfect Sound Forever'' (2008) On the second floor, art and photography shows were hung.

Kiki Smith Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS, feminism, and gender ...

, of Colab, painted a mural there. The third floor had a dance area lit by a disco ball. On the first floor, in the bar area, there was a DJ booth that

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 notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti ...

had painted. Basquiat also painted a mural on the wall between the bar room and the music room on the first floor, that had only a 10" stage, due to the low ceilings throughout. This low stage offered an intimate, face to face, relationship between musicians and the audience. Tier 3 closed in December 1980. Jaeger and her crew quit Tier 3 in December 1980 at around the same time the club received an eviction notice.

Musical groups who performed at Tier 3

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

Rhys Chatham Rhys Chatham (born September 19, 1952) is an American composer, guitarist, trumpet player, multi-instrumentalist (flutes in C, alto and bass, keyboard), primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orche ...

* Bush Tetras * Arsenal *

The Bongos The Bongos are 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 ...

* Boris Policeband *

Glenn Branca Glenn Branca (October 6, 1948 – May 13, 2018) was an American avant-garde music, avant-garde composer, guitarist, and luthier. Known for his use of volume, scordatura, alternative guitar tunings, minimal music, repetition, drone (music), dronin ...

* Madness * Liquid Liquid *

The Slits The Slits were a punk/post-punk band based in London, formed there in 1976 by members of the groups the Flowers of Romance and the Castrators. The group's early line-up consisted of Ari Up (Ariane Forster) and Palmolive (a.k.a. Paloma Rom ...

* World Saxophone Quartet * Z'EV * ESG *

The dB's The dB's are an American alternative Rock music, rock and power pop group, who formed in New York City in 1978 and first came to prominence in the early 1980s. Their debut album ''Stands for Decibels'' is acclaimed as one of the great "lost" pow ...

* Stimulators * 8 Eyed Spy with

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 ...

* The Raybeats *

Oliver Lake Oliver Lake (born September 14, 1942) is an American List of jazz saxophonists, jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist. He is known mainly for alto saxophone, but he also performs on soprano saxophone, soprano and flute. D ...

* The Raincoats * Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day * Lounge Lizards * Joseph Bowie * Luther Thomas * The Pop Group * Delta 5 * Young Marble Giants * Y Pants * Ping Pong * A Certain Ratio *

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

Mumps MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is an imperative, high-level programming language with an integrated transaction processing key–value database. It was originally developed at Massachusetts Gen ...

* Stare Kits * Student Teachers * Swinging Madisons * X

Notes

*Alan Moore and Marc Miller, eds., ''

ABC No Rio ABC No Rio is a collectively-run nonprofit arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. Founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of the 1979–80 Real Estate Show, the center featured an art gallery s ...

Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery'' ( Colab 1985) *Marc Masters (2007), ''No Wave London'', Black Dog Publishing * Carlo McCormick, ''The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984'',

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

Press, 2006 *Andy Schwartz
"RIP Tier 3"
''Perfect Sound Forever'', 2008

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tier 3 Nightclubs in Manhattan Former music venues in New York City Noise music No wave Punk rock venues