Everyone will have their own favorite memories to pull
from the blur that were The EJ's Years: recollections of
the gold-flaked stripper pole, B-movie monster toy collection,
Monday-night Hong Kong chopsocky vids, hotly contested foosball
matches, hungover brunches, beer-ruined shoes, Poison Idea
rocking the jukebox, whatever.
But if EJ's meant anything to Portland, it wasn't thanks
to the club's particulars--it was just a silly fucking swillhole,
folks. Nah, what made it one of the city's best venues was
its gloriously immature sense of stupidity.
It was a punk-rock romper room where twentysomethings could
arrest their adolescence to the rip'n'roar of trashy rock
and roll, where juvenile behavior was the norm and acting
like a responsible adult was frowned upon like a coke orgy
in the Mormon Tabernacle. For the regulars, EJ's was a religion,
complete with its own commandments (e.g., "Thou shalt not
drink frou-frou brews") and an altar in the shape of a stage.
And while our choirboy and -girl remembrances are a little
short on the usual buggery and communion wine, they're ours,
damn it. Here are some of them:
EVERYTHING I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING A PATHETIC EXCUSE
FOR A GROWN-UP I LEARNED AT EJ'S:
1) Nice clothes suck. Don't even bother with that
silky Dolce & Gabanna blouse, Slick Boy, 'cuz someone's
gonna slosh the collar with PBR, shred the sleeve by grabbing
it as he collapses to the moshpit floor, and permanently
imprint it with boozy grime when you follow him down in
a heap. The grubbier the T-shirt and jeans, the better.
2) You don't really know someone until you've pissed
next to him. With a stall door that didn't stay closed
and a literal hole in the wall breathing cold air on your
privates, the bathroom was no place for the squeamish. But
it was The Great Equalizer, all snobbery erased by our demanding
bladders. The atmosphere was so friendly that one night
the lads from BlackJack, bored with the band onstage, decided
to hang out in the bathroom instead. Anyone who entered
was met with a rousing huzzah!--and soon everyone
decided they, too, were having more fun in le pissoir
than the club proper. Outside, the band passed quizzical
looks between each other as the huzzah!s and
bathroom laughter grew louder than their own amplified racket.
3) Beer is good food. Sure, EJ's made a rather palsied
attempt at a bar menu. But when they instituted the all-you-can-chug
$5 Pabst happy hour, dinner was often usurped by drinking.
Beer's chock full of calories--who's got room for vittles?
4) Jobs are overrated. Don't give me that "work
ethic" crap. If you can eat, drink and be merry at a spirit-bolstering
show for a piddly $25 a night, you don't have to slave away
at the cubicle farm to earn enough dough for a lifestyle
of debauch. That part-time shit job'll be fine. And rent?
What, you think EJ's regulars need anything more than a
grubby crash pad for hangover-placating naps?
5) There is no tomorrow. Little Orphan Annie may've
loved tomorrow, but EJ's denizens saw it as death. EJ's
was a temporal zone trapped in an everpresent Now, and when
the beercup blizzards were sweeping over a particularly
vicious punk band, tonight became the only thing
that mattered. True, tomorrow would torture you later when
it decided to show up like an ex-girlfriend with a bad case
of the clap. But it was always worth it. So while Freudians
may see our shortsighted search for drunken nirvana as a
sign of childishness, we viewed it as a healthy rejection
of adulthood's soul-sucking demands. Never grow up. If there's
a place like EJ's around, why bother?
--John Graham
REVENGE OF THE DUFUS SQUAWKERS
We can all agree that there are some things we all do not
understand.
Election 2000.
Tri Met (what kind of public transportation service offers
not a single bus line after last call?).
And the intersection of Northeast Glisan and Sandy.
By all rights, there should be a monument erected on that
stretch of ol' Randy, or at least a pile of white crosses
and wreaths to commemorate scores of drunk hipsters killed
making the pilgrimage from EJ's to Club 21 (a.k.a. Veinte
y Uno, a.k.a. the Chalet, a.k.a. the Elf Bar). Given the
amount of unsteady pedestrian traffic that intersection
has seen, one would think bets on the monthly death toll
would be a citywide sport. But no, reason has been defied.
EJ's has witnessed no such serial flattenings.
Somehow, that scenester conduit has earned the Lord's blessing.
Who knows what will happen to the space once EJ's is gone;
my feeling is that it is meant to be a sacred place of worship.
Which, I guess, isn't far off the mark from the site's past
incarnations as skin den and rock palace, anyways.
I do have one very fond memory of this town's "House of
Rock." A little more than a year ago, I submitted the first
of what turned out to be an ongoing series of lame show
listings for this paper, a little hype for an EJ's show
involving the Silverkings, the Fireballs of Freedom and
the Screws. In that fateful preview, I succinctly summed
up the staggeringly crude efforts of the Silverkings as
the work of "dufus squawkers."
Little did I know how much I had slighted a band I so admired.
Though other matters (i.e. Club 21) prevented me from catching
the Silverkings' opening slot, I was quick to learn upon
my arrival at EJ's that my editorializing had caused boy-neanderthal
Joe Silverking to rail against me onstage. Stripping down
and then ripping up his signature "Swing with the Retarded"
T-shirt, Joe announced that that would be the final Silverkings
show ever. And so it was. In two words, I had destroyed
my favorite Portland band, inspired a great man to an act
of public indecency and had my good name sullied in a public
forum. God, I thought that was cool.
Later that night, after the Fireballs of Freedom had tucked
away another awesome set of interplanetary rock-jazz, the
Screws took the stage, fronted by Detroit grime master Mick
Collins. Referring to our favorite prog-rockin' homeboys,
Mick delivered my favorite EJ's quotation (that I can remember):
"We may not be Yes, but we are punk rock."
Much the same could be said of soon-to-be-departed EJ's,
a class act of no class at all. It was never LaLuna, or
the Crystal or Satyricon (post-plastic surgery disaster),
but EJ's was always punk rock.
And we'll miss it when it's gone.
--Sam Soule
MEMORIES. SO MANY MEMORIES.
Wouldn't you know it. I finally move to an apartment a
few blocks from one of my favorite clubs, and within months,
the place shuts down. I'll mourn the loss of trusty, crusty
EJ's. Here are just a few reasons why:
* All the free second-hand smoke you care to breathe!
Who can forget that suffocating fog hanging heavy in one
of the least ventilated buildings in town? There was no
need to waste precious cash on smokes before going to EJ's
shows--which meant more money for cheap beer.
* Free stretching and strengthening workout in the ladies'
room!
The constant lack of working locks on bathroom stall doors
called for strategic peeing-while-barricading-the-door moves
that surely improved the strength and coordination of those
within. (Plus, it resulted in occasional peekaboo shows
for ladies waiting in line.)
* Art--for the People!
Who needed Pearl District gallery crawls when you could
view haunting paintings of angry dinosaurs and other harebrained
renderings on the wall behind the stage? (And as for the
bathroom graffiti--unparalleled!)
* Ms. Pac-Man +
Roaring Fire = Heaven
The perfect activity between sets, playing sit-down Ms.
Pac-Man saved me from wandering into the Club 21 vortex
(where do the time and money go?) more than once. Teamed
with a roaring fire a couple of feet away and a fine boy
across the table, gobbling ghosts and dots was downright
dreamy.
* The Stage (or Notable Lack Thereof)
Sure, it was shabby, but it was nice to be virtually eye
level with musicians onstage, watching the sweat fly from
their brow to yours. Plus, it's harder to be a snob when
you're not elevated above the crowd while performing, even
if you are in some Tortoise "side project."
* Oh, the Convenience!
Wasn't it nice to combine your hemorrhoid clinic appointments,
karate lessons, jewelry shopping, loan dealings and rock
shows all in one block?
* Friendly Neighbors!
Some neighbors complained about loud noise from the club,
but they probably wouldn't be too happy to know that half
of us were pissing in their yards for years, either. No
wonder those flowers came up so well.
--Liz Brown
DO YOU LIKE TO WRITE? HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO WRITE FOR
A LIVING?
Any bar is a land of illusions: the fantasy of the archetypal
Hot Night Out that draws patrons to the door, the chimera
of sexual attraction that spawns so many sauce-blurred couplings.
If a bar gives way to those with the loudest amps, it is
particularly hard to keep roots in reality. Alcohol and
40 years of pop cultural programming will surely combine
to produce all sorts of transitory rock'n'roll epiphanies.
Take my temporary access to the gushing springs of raw
literary inspiration, which opened like a sun-kissed blind
canyon one spring night at EJ's.
The Bell Rays, the Los Angeles soul-punk supernova that's
hotter than a sexed-up dog in August, took the stage. Lisa
Kekaula, the band's singer, regarded the crowd from beneath
a vast Afro with something between a snarl and sneer. She
owned us, and she damn well knew it. And then the Bell Rays
started to play, and lawdy did the mercury rise.
A guitarist and bassist who looked like they fought with
pool cues for extra pocket change slapped down straight
molten rock--nothing special maybe, a lot of MC5, a lot
of Ramones, but dead-on and delivered with fury. If you
saw these two sprawled on a trailer's makeshift porch with
aluminum dead soldiers scattered around them, your eyes
would just keep going, trying to glide cooly past without
meeting their burnt-out stare. Here, though, they were fucking
artists, damn it. Drummer Ray Chin, an Asian flyweight with
frenzy in his eye, kicked their greasy mess forward at white-knuckle
speed, while Kekaula screamed pure flames of soul.
As has so often been the case, alcohol helped me see the
Truth: This was it, the ultimate rock band, the band that
could finally reconcile the music's roadhouse past with
a post-modern society far gone into helter-skelter mode,
a band that could finally pull off the weird racial and
cultural alchemy that has always been the implicit promise/threat
of rock'n'roll, the band fit to forge an iron treaty between
the music's black roots and white working-class animus--and
here they were laying it down at this classic dirt
palace of a rock dive.
Yeah, I was thinking shit like that. And, as soon as the
band finished in one of those proverbial blazes of glory,
I was out the door to make a sorely ill-advised drive home
and write all that brilliance down. I am a writer, after
all. At least according to the IRS.
I made it home, yet more evidence in the mounting case
proving that God looks out for little kids and idiots. I
found a notebook, a pen, and settled in for what I imagined
might be a Bukowskian moment of literary greatness.
I wrote a lot that night, and the next morning I could
still decipher the title: THEY ARE THE BELL RAYS AND THEY
ARE AMERICA. The rest, however, was an atrocity of illegible
drunk handwriting; I quickly destroyed it and didn't tell
anyone.
In the end, though, that's what was great about a place
like EJ's: you could fuck up there, your mouth could write
vast checks your ass couldn't cash in a million years, you
could try to turn all that Dutch courage you drank into
real brilliance. And every once in awhile, you felt like
a genius there, even if it didn't last.
--Zach Dundas
PISSED UP AND IN THE BIZ
Now, most of this is exactly how I remember it. Of course,
my mind is a bit dodgy these days, and alcohol played a
big part in my memories. But oh, who could forget that winter
of enchantment--1996--and the two years of tender comradeship
that followed for myself and Nine Volt Mile, courtesy of
EJ's?
I remember trying desperately to focus on the toilet. Not
that the floor was helping keep my shoes urine-free, but
somehow the risk of drunkenly tumbling headfirst into a
maelstrom of human waste encouraged me to stay upright.
This place is a fuckin' mess was the first thing the
chemicals in my brain were trying to tell me. I've been
in some shitholes in my life, and this place definitely
ranked in my top 10. So why the bloody hell was I in here?
Ah, yes--Nine Volt Mile, some rockerboy mates of mine,
had invited me to come and watch them bounce and strut their
stuff across the stage for one of their first gigs. There
wasn't much of a crowd that night--half-full, maybe--but
the volume was all it should have been and more. Standing
close to the beer nook, the best I could do as my ears bled
happily along to the music was drink more. Yes. I think
I could feel my liver through my shirt at that point, but
nothing was going to keep an honest fellow from the People's
Republic of North London from having a good time with these
cah-razy Americans and their cheap PBR.
A friend of ours had taken it upon herself to get the punters'
names on a mailing list for the band, buzzing 'round the
room and thrusting a pen into drunken hands like Tinkerbell
campaigning for PCP legalization. After the show, Jason,
lead singer and owner of a set of pipes not to be trifled
with, lurched across the dancefloor and directed us towards
one of the sticky booths around the other side of the back
wall.
More beer! we demanded. Damn, no table service. Have to
send one of the monkeys. After getting another round in,
we were joined by the rest of the band.
"Oi, Nesmith, piss off!" Dirk Sullivan, guitar god, shouted,
as the lads glared at me, huddled in the corner blearily
caressing my glass. "So what do you think?" he asked me.
"You up for it?"
For the love of Christ. Up for what? "Up
for what?" I asked.
"Do you think you could handle being our manager? The geezer,
the dog's bollocks?"
I started to sweat. My eyes bulged out of my head and felt
like they were picking up crumbs in my lap. My hands were
trembling. CHRIST--they all looked like gargoyles,
licking their chops and eying me up for a right old gothic
knees-up. My mind was screaming....
"Yeah, all right then," I answered. Nice one, centurion.
--Matthew Moss
THE OLDEST KIND OF HOSPITALITY
Not everyone's fondest memories of Northeast Sandy's palace
of grease revolves around bands. Mine? The flashing strobe
light. The smoke machine. The brass pole. The naked women.
Long before Satyricon expanded to include Fellini's (thus
becoming a yuppie bar), back when the Pine Street was the
Pine Street for the first time and before Portland
became the host of more strip clubs per capita than any
other city, E.J.'s was my favorite place to go see naked
women.
The charm of E.J.'s--if it's possible for strip clubs to
have charm--was that the underground vibe that defined
it as a rock club was present even when the stage had a
rack around it. More often than not, it seemed like the
girls didn't even take their clothes off and the club itself
was just idly passing time until it could become home to
the local punk scene. I fell in love there (seriously) and
actually made a few good friends (all of them strippers).
I liked to think of E.J.'s as a sleazy Cheers with naked
chicks.
Later, of course, I saw some great shows at E.J.'s. The
soul juggernaut known as Black Angel played one of its first
shows there, and it was the first place I ever saw the Bell
Rays. But for me, the building at 22nd and Sandy will always
be the place where everybody knew my name--and if you tipped
well, they took their clothes off.
--David Walker
|
