Mudd Club

History

The Mudd Club was founded by filmmaker Steve Mass, art curator and filmmaker Diego Cortez, and downtown punk scene persona Anya Phillips in 1978. Mass named the club after Samuel Alexander Mudd, the physician who treated John Wilkes Booth in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.{{Cite journal | access-date = January 13, 2009

Mudd Club featured a bar, unisex bathrooms, and an art gallery curated by Keith Haring on the fourth floor. Live performances there included new wave, experimental music, performance art, literary icons Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and catwalk exhibitions for emerging fashion designers Anna Sui and Jasper Conran. Performers included New York no wave bands such as DNA, Rhys Chatham, Nona Hendryx's Zero Cool, the Contortions, Tuxedomoon and Jean-Michel Basquiat's band Gray. In 1979, Talking Heads performed songs from their new album Fear of Music. Tim Page produced several concerts at the Mudd Club in 1981, in an attempt to meld contemporary art music with rock music and pop music. On the dance floor, DJs David Azarch, Anita Sarko and Johnny Dynell played a unique mixture of punk rock, funk music and curiosities. From the start it functioned as a post-punk "amazing antidote to the uptown glitz of Studio 54 in the '70s". Six months after it opened, the Mudd Club was mentioned in People: "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". As it became more frequented by downtown celebrities, a door policy was established and it acquired a chic, often elitist hip reputation.

After its first few years, Studio 54 celebrities like Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, Michael Musto, and David Bowie began to show up. In 1981, the Mudd Club's Steve Mass began going to the more informal Club 57 on St. Mark's Place, and began hiring the Club 57 crowd (including Keith Haring) to help draw in the younger and hipper part of the downtown art scene. As a result, the Mudd Club was frequented by many of Manhattan's up-and-coming cultural celebrities. People associated with frequenting the venue included musicians Lou Reed, Johnny Thunders, David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Arto Lindsay, John Lurie, Nico, Lydia Lunch, X, the Cramps, the B-52's, the Bongos and Judas Priest artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his then-girlfriend Madonna; Colab members; performers Klaus Nomi and John Sex; designers Betsey Johnson, Maripol and Marisol Deluna; underground filmmakers Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Charlie Ahearn, Vincent Gallo, Jamie Nares, Jim Jarmusch, Vivienne Dick, Scott B and Beth B, Kathy Acker, and Glenn O'Brien; supermodel Gia Carangi; 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".

Mass opened another Mudd Club in Berlin 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 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, Three Teens Kill Four, Comateens 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, the first doorman (Halloween, '78- June,'79 with Joey Kelly as "security), who was quoted as stating, "I dislike organized partying these days". A memoir by Boch, The Mudd Club, based on his nearly two years working the Mudd Club door, was published by Feral House in September 2017.

In pop culture

The club has been mentioned in various songs such as "Life During Wartime" (1979) by Talking Heads, "The Return of Jackie and Judy" (1980) by the Ramones, "New York / N.Y." (1983) by Nina Hagen, and "Off the Shelf"(1983) by Elliott Murphy. Frank Zappa included a song named after the club on his 1981 album You Are What You Is. 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.

Also mentioned on Schitt's Creek season 4, episode 4 where Moira mentions to Alexis and Twayla that they remind her of when she would go to the Mudd Club on the Lower East Side.

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, Feb. 2006, pgs. 266-267, 278-279.
• Van Pee, Yasmine. Boredom is always counterrevolutionary : art in downtown New York nightclubs, 1978-1985 (M.A. thesis, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, 2004).
• Why Are Lines Shorter for Gas Than the Mudd Club in New York? Because Every Night Is Odd There, People magazine, v.12, n.3, July 16, 1979
• Linda Dawn Hammond, Photos from the Mudd Club, 1979.

References

1. Greenberg, Lori. (September 18, 2017). "Exhuming the Classic Mudd Club, 'Scene of the Crime' in the Late '70s".
2. Boch, Richard. The Mudd Club. Feral House. p. 33
3. Gruen, John (ed). ''Keith Haring: The Authorized Biography'', Prentice Hall Press, 1991.
4. (March 27, 2019). "Relive The Party That Launched Jean-Michel Basquiat's Art Career".
5. Musto, Michael. [http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/archives/2008/08/farewell_queen.php "Farewell, Queen of the Mudd Club"], [http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/archives/2008/08/farewell_queen.php] ''Village Voice'' Le Daily Musto Blog, Aug. 17 2008.
6. ''People'', July 16, 1979.
7. Haring, Keith. ''Keith Haring Journals''. Penguin, 1997.
8. Hager, Steve. ''Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene''. St. Martin. 1986.
9. Boch, Richard. (2017). "The Mudd Club". [[Feral House]].
10. Hager, Steve. ''Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene''. St. Matins Press, 1986. p. 31
11. Fretz, Eric. ''Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography'', Greenwood Press, 2010. Chapter 3.
12. Hammond, Linda Dawn. (February 7, 2005). "REBEL REBELLE- PUNKS AND PROVOCATEURS PHOTO EXHIBIT".
13. Boch, Richard. (2017-09-12). "The Mudd Club". Feral House.
14. O'Brien, Glenn. "A Dialogue with Diego Cortez", ''Jean-Michel Basuiat 1981: The Studio of the Street'', Chrata, 2007.
15. Kennedy, Randy. (April 29, 2007). "Touring Warhol's Space, and 32 Other Art-History Sites". The New York Times.
16. [http://s2.webstarts.com/mudd57nwvreunion/index.html Mudd Club / Club 57 / New Wave Vaudeville Reunion website] {{webarchive. link. (2010-09-15)
17. Kurutz, Steven. (2017-08-25). "The Doorman at the Mudd Club Tells All". The New York Times.
18. Boch, Richard.''The Mudd Club'', Feral House, 2017
19. "Judas Priest | Official Store".