The CC Club

In 1996 a friend and I quit our jobs and backpacked around Europe for a few months.  One night in Prague we went to a rock club in an old military building called The Bunker.  In concert that night, from England, legendary old-school punk band, The UK Subs. We arrived early and found ourselves chatting for quite some time with the lead singer of the band, Charlie Harper (a very nice guy by the way).  At one point Charlie asked me where I was from, and when I responded, "Minneapolis," he enthusiastically jumped forward (in his heavy English accent) with "Minneapolis! a lot of great sh** comes out of that town."

By the end of the1970's Bob Dylan had "made it," Prince was about to "make it," and the Minneapolis music scene was erupting.  The Suicide Commandos, The Suburbs, The Wallets, Husker Du, Soul Asylum, Gary Louris/The Jayhwaks, and The Replacements (to name a few) were about to turn things upside down in our city.  At a time the rest of the world was doing the disco, on the Uptown corner of 26th and Lyndale, Oar Folkjokeopus, had become a record store and hangout to the smoldering punk underground of the Midwest.  All the musicians hung out at Oar Folk (as it was known until it closed in 2001 and became Treehouse Records). And most then made way, kiddy-corner from Oar Folk, to a little bar by the name of the The CC Club, another hangout to that scene.  Peter Jasperson, former Oar Folk employee and Twin/Tone record founder, once said, "if a bomb was dropped on that corner (26th and Lyndale) it would've wiped out 90% of the local music scene!"      

The CC Club is still going, though I haven't been in many years, because it is one of those places geared to quantity, and I can't drink like that anymore.  Though I was never "a regular," I do have fond memories of the place.  So, now finished, the second in "the Dive Bar series," The CC Club, in glass.  

 

Charlie Harper was right, a lot of  "great sh*t" does come out of Minneapolis, Bob Dylan, Prince, and Paul Westerberg, musical geniuses.  And nothing quite sums up the CC Club like the Paul Westerberg song, Here Comes a Regular, supposedly penned one day while sitting at the CC (something he famously often did).