Of all the legendary nightclubs I’ve been too, I’ve had the most problems with Maxwell’s, the Hoboken club that raised out of the New York pop scene of the 1980s and presented up and coming, and sometimes bigger than that, rock bands on the edge of Hoboken.
That was before Hoboken became the gentrified middle class professional hub it is, back in the 80s it was an artistic hub and many rock bands migrated there for cheap rents and cheap nightlife. Glenn Morrow of the Individuals could have been dubbed the mayor of the scene and people like the Bongos, the Individuals, all that crew, hung out there.
In other words, a type of hipness clung to it the way a type of hipness clung to CBGB’s.
I went maybe six times? And it was a nightmare to get to and fro. Especially fro if you were drunk and tired and broke and had to walk half an hour to the path train for the first leg home.
But then, I am not into pain at all so just the thought of visiting Hoboken makes me nauseous. If I lived there I’d have been a regular. Or maybe not, since the landscape in the City has changed so much. Booker and co-owner Todd Abramson said to the Star Ledger’s Tris McCall “We were offered a renewal with rates that weren’t necessarily onerous. But after much thought, given the changing nature of Hoboken and the difficulties of trying to run a business in this town, we decided it was time.”
So the relentless movement of time takes another casualty but hand it to Todd (and co-owner Steve Shelley, Sonic Youth drummer) for leaving before their time was up. Opened in 1979, that’s a pretty good run for your money.
But it is also depressing, even for somebody as indifferent as I am because it feels like death: like appearance and then disappearance, all the concepts that can bother a person about the impermanence of existence.
July 31st, 2013 will see the final concert.