My friend Steve introduced me to punk rock in the early 1980s, and I went to a few shows and picked up flyers and copies of The Gagging Dog punk zine. This represents a very thin slice of Phoenix punk history, with a few non-punk inclusions towards the end. The flyers aren’t a good representation of my experience, since I usually picked up flyers at shows but then didn’t go to the shows advertised in those flyers, with some exceptions (e.g., the first two flyers were for the first two shows I did attend, and the Siouxsie flyer was advertising a film she was in and was given out at her show).
Below the flyers, I list the shows I did attend, list some of the key Phoenix key punk venues, and provide some links to other sources of historical information. My experience was largely of the “Tony Victor” (Tony Beram) era which started in 1980 and includes “Mersey Productions,” “HC Presents,” and “Billy Boy Presents” events on the flyers.
Bad Religion, Scratch Acid, Boot Beast Carnival, Desecration; Fishbone, Rabid Rabbit; Social Distortion, Descendents; Adolescents, Dr. Know; GBH, Agnostic Front, Desecration; Agent Orange
JFA, Agression, Kludged; Social Unrest, O.N.S.; The Kill; Doggy Style, Ministry of Truth, The Front; Agent Orange, Rabid Rabbit
Here are the ones I actually attended (1983-1986). I did attend the 1991 SubGenius Devival in Tucson advertised in the last flyer above but omit it from this list. (There was an active Phoenix SubGenius community associated with the computer BBS scene circa 1985-86.)
| Date | Bands | Venue | City |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 12, 1983 | Vandals, No Crisis, Social Comotion | Mad Gardens | Phoenix |
| April 16, 1983 | Crucifix, Channel 3, Junior Achievement | Mad Gardens | Phoenix |
| September 3, 1983 | Circle Jerks, America’s Hardcore, White Flag | Mad Gardens | Phoenix |
| May 28, 1984 | (unknown), Our Neighbors Suck (O.N.S.) | Mason Jar | Phoenix |
| October 31, 1984 | Junior Achievement and the film “Suburbia” | Valley Art Theatre | Tempe |
| April 13, 1985 | Saccharine Trust, The Harvest | Mason Jar | Phoenix |
| July 5, 1985 | The Out! Crowd, The Harvest | Mason Jar | Phoenix |
| December 11, 1985 | Dead Kennedys, S.T.D., Mighty Sphincter | Party Gardens | Phoenix |
| February 9, 1986 | The Harvest, Bootbeast Carnival | The Bootlegger | Phoenix |
| February 19, 1986 | Flesh for Lulu, The Harvest | Mason Jar | Phoenix |
| March 2, 1986 | Sun City Girls, Joke Flower, Maybe Mental | Mason Jar | Phoenix |
| June 12, 1986 | Siouxsie and the Banshees, Love and Rockets | Mesa Centennial Hall | Mesa |
| August 31, 1986 | The Smiths, Phranc | Mesa Amphitheatre | Mesa |
Selected venues. There are lots of locations that had one-off or occasional punk shows of which I’ve included a few, but most of these are just the mainstays for 1982-1988 (and some beyond).
| Venue | Location | City | Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calderon Ballroom | 1610 E. Buckeye Rd. | Phoenix | (opened 1953) 1982 (closed 1984) |
| The Salty Dog | 2865 N. 16th St. | Phoenix | 1982 |
| Madison Square Gardens | 3750 E. Van Buren St. | Phoenix | 1981-1984 |
| AAA Gardeners Club | 15th St. & Van Buren St. | Phoenix | 1983-1985 |
| DecaDance | 4001 E. Van Buren St. | Phoenix | 1983-1988 |
| Mason Jar (now The Rebel Lounge) | 2303 E. Indian School Rd. | Phoenix | 1979-2005 (whole history) |
| The Temple | 801 N. Central Ave. | Phoenix | 1984 |
| Knights of Pythias Hall | 619 S. Ash Ave. | Tempe | 1984 |
| Purple Turtle (now The Rhythm Room) | 1019 E. Indian School Rd. | Phoenix | 1984 |
| Electric Rhino | 1013 N. 3rd Ave. (3rd Ave. & Roosevelt) | Phoenix | 1985 |
| Vivian’s | 441 W. Monroe St. | Phoenix | 1984-1986 |
| Party Gardens (formerly Royal London Wax Museum) | 5555 E. Van Buren St. | Phoenix | 1985-1995 |
| The Bootlegger | 13637 N. 32nd St. | Phoenix | 1985-1986 |
| Impulse Club (competitor to the Mason Jar) | 2336 E. Indian School Rd. | Phoenix | 1985-1986 |
| The Metro (formerly Knotty Pines Restaurant) | 5025 N. 7th Ave. | Phoenix | 1986-1987 |
| VFW Hall | 4833 E. Thomas Rd. | Phoenix | 1988 |
| Silver Dollar Club | 417 E. Madison St. | Phoenix | 1990-1993 |
Tony Beram’s Club Placebo (119 W. McDowell) holds panel discussions and performances reviewing the history of Phoenix groups and individual performers.
Jason Woodbury’s “More Oral History of Phoenix Skate Punk” from October 14, 2011, Chris Coplan’s Down and Out: Four Venues From the Phoenix Punk Heyday" from October 25, 2019, and Benjamin Leatherman’s “The Silver Dollar: An Oral History of Downtown Phoenix’s Notorious ’90s Nightclub” in Phoenix New Times discuss some of the punk venues of the era (with the latter two largely on the Silver Dollar Club, which I never experienced).
The Mason Jar and the Impulse Club feature in this 15-min ABC Eyewitness News 3 segment about the Phoenix punk scene from 1985, “Johnny’s Gone Punk."
This White Flag performance from 1983 is at Mad Gardens and may or may not be the September 3 one referenced above.
Chris Coplan wrote a two part history of Phoenix punk in the eighties here (part 1) and here (part 2).
Other Phoenix-area punk flyers:
- Cornell University Library Digital Collections, Aaron Cometbus Punk & Underground Press Collection
- AZ Kaos Pinterest page "Old AZ Punk Rock Flyers"
- The Tempe History Museum has 40 mid-1980s punk flyers in their collection.
- The "Punk in Phoenix" Facebook group has images of hundreds of flyers.
DC punk collection including fliers:
- University of Maryland, Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library (includes the Ian Mackaye digital collection of punk fanzines, with over 1,000 zines from 1978 to 2020)