If you lived in Tampa Bay in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you might remember the Pearl Jam show at Jannus Landing in 1992 when Eddie Vedder did a backflip off the top of the venue’s center pole. Or maybe you were at the Green Day performance at the Florida State Fairgrounds in 1994, weeks after their breakthrough album, Dookie, hit record stores.
Name any emerging punk, hardcore or alternative act from that time, and No Clubs Presents probably booked them in and around Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg. Thank founders Tony Rifugiato and Dave Hundley for the work, which continues to this day.
Forty years after hosting their first gig, “Tony and Dave” are getting their due with No Clubs Presents: Live Since ’85, an amalgam of concert posters, fliers and photos at The Factory St. Pete in St. Petersburg. The exhibition offers a rare look back at the cultural labors that helped to build and define a scene. The 40-year milestone “felt like the right time to have everyone in the same room together,” exhibit curator Robbie Williams tells PureHoney.
Tony and Dave presented their first concert on Dec. 20, 1985: Suicidal Tendencies at the Cuban Club in Ybor City. At the time, few venues in the area were equipped — technically or temperamentally — to host club gigs for touring punk and thrash bands. But the show sold out, and No Clubs was born — its name a nod to a challenging environment that was about to change for the better.
The duo booked 340 shows just in the first decade, among them 7 Seconds (a record 10 times), Beastie Boys, Circle Jerks and Red Hot Chili Peppers at venues with 2,000 seats or less. Record store owner Tony and circus advance man Dave had different musical tastes but clicked as a team. Tony’s knack for knowing which bands would draw in the kids complemented Dave’s diverse production background.
“If there were any problems, we quelled them quickly or didn’t allow them to interfere,” Dave tells PureHoney. “We had brought a level of professionalism into more than one area, and we made sure everybody got paid.”
Working with venue owners and other businesses, they built a live-music ecosystem that emphasized “camaraderie,” Dave says. They even rented buses for teens in the outer suburbs to make it to shows for $20 a pop. And when the alternative bubble burst, No Clubs pivoted, booking reggae and world-beat artists such as Jimmy Cliff and King Sunny Adé, and adding a converted 1920s movie theater, The Orpheum, to their circuit of venues.
Inside The Factory St. Pete, each wall of the No Clubs retrospective covers a chapter of the promoter’s long timeline, including shows at the historic State Theatre (now the Floridian Social Club); the founding of the No Clubs Records label and a regional nightlife magazine, Focus; and Tony’s Daddy Kool Records store, also founded in 1985.
The exhibit began as an archive project helmed by Williams, a former No Clubs flier artist. “Tony and Dave remember a lot of things,” he says, “but 40 years is a long time to remember every detail.”
With a laptop and scanner tucked into his backpack, Williams traveled the Bay area, rifling through old friends’ garages for fliers and other concert keepsakes, doing the kind of archival digging that turned up — among other elusive items — a newspaper article and a long-lost flier previewing a Fela Kuti and Egypt 80 concert on Sept. 17, 1989.
The exhibit opened on January 3 with around 500 people in attendance, among them members of an ’80s local hardcore punk band, Belching Penguin, who hadn’t been in the same room for decades. People sat with their kids, telling tales of getting too drunk at the Social Distortion show in 1990 or stage diving with nobody to catch them. It was also the first time Tony and Dave saw everything from the last 40 years gathered in one place.
“To make yourself vulnerable for a second and look at what you’ve done takes some strength,” Williams says. “This is our love letter to them. We’ve all cherished them as much as we’ve cherished the music.”
“No Clubs Presents: Live Since ’85” runs through Saturday, Feb. 28 at The Factory St. Pete in St. Petersburg. Admission is free. noclubs.com ~ Olivia Feldman
