The Birchmere in Alexandria, Va., is a very nice place to hear music. It’s what they call a “listening room,” with little signs on the tables firmly requesting that customers not chitchat during performances.
But on May 19, the Birchmere will host a reunion of people who loved a bar in Georgetown that The Washington Post once called “raunchy”: Desperado’s.
How’s that going to work?
"I'm a believer that after the first few people come to any party, it takes on a life of its own," said Julie Wilson, who booked bands at Desperado's and is helping plan the reunion event, which also honors the Wax Museum, another shuttered club that shared some of Desperado's DNA.
Bands will perform in the Birchmere’s main room, and Julie said people will probably weave between there and the club’s large lobby area as they greet friends they haven’t seen since the two clubs closed in the 1980s.
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And anyway, Julie said, Desperado’s wasn’t really raunchy. It just wasn’t “as pretty a place as where all the young people go now.”
Desperado's was at 3350 M St. NW, in the last building before you hit Key Bridge. The Wax Museum was in Southwest, three blocks off the Mall. Next Friday's reunion will feature bands that were fixtures at both venues: Billy Price & The Original Keystone Rhythm Band, the Bob Margolin Blues Band, the Good Humor Band and the Skip Castro Band. (For tickets — $25 and selling out fast — visit birchmere.com.)
Desperado's was across the street from the vaunted Cellar Door, a location that allowed for one of the coolest stunts in D.C. music history. During a gig at Desperado's in August 1978, Nighthawks' guitarist Jimmy Thackery walked out the front door while playing "Madison Blues." There, he met George Thorogood, who was playing the same song at the Cellar Door with his Destroyers.
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The two swapped licks in the middle of M Street in front of bemused motorists, traded guitar cables, then finished the song with the other’s band.
It was not all sunshine and joy at Desperado's. In 1979, a Desperado's doorman named Paul Cooper announced he was taking a new job and invited people to a going-away party there.
It turned out to be going-away party for some of the attendees. Cooper was a police officer who had bought cocaine during the three months he worked undercover at Desperado’s. Seven of the invited party guests were arrested on drug charges. No one in management was indicted.
“We didn’t have the mafia there,” Julie said. “It was just stupid kids. ... It was a painful episode, but it didn’t stop the music.”
Desperado’s closed in 1982. Today the building houses the Embassy of Ukraine. That same year, the 1,000-seat Wax Museum opened — in a former wax museum that had also once hosted a dolphin act. (The dolphins got sick and were removed.)
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Arlo Guthrie headlined the first Wax Museum show. In his story about the club's debut, The Post's Richard Harrington conjured up the "We Love the '80s" vibe of that era with his description of Tom Paxton's opening set of songs, which took aim at "joggers, Abscam, Rubik's Cube and smart bombs."
In its first months, the club featured such acts as George Jones, Al Di Meola, Leon Russell, the Four Tops, Rickie Lee Jones, Tina Turner and the Pointer Sisters
I never went to Desperado’s, but I remember the Wax Museum — barfed in its bathroom, in fact.
Much of the staff had worked at Desperado's, and the club's operations manager was Rich Vendig, who had owned the M Street club. The Wax Museum closed on Nov. 3, 1984.
As I dug through The Post’s old stories about the music scene then, I came across many familiar names: the Bayou, just a few blocks away; Louie’s Rock City in Baileys Crossroads; the Ibex on Georgia Avenue NW; the Gentry on Eighth Street SE; Bethesda’s Psyche Delly, of course. There were a few I didn’t remember, such as Greenwood’s County Line in Arlington.
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I also found an informative article from 1982 about the exigencies of running a club in Washington. I look back at that time as a golden age, but there was grousing even then. National touring acts were demanding higher fees. Local acts were having trouble drawing crowds. New wave fans didn't drink as much as the fans of blues and boogie bands.
A talent booker for the 9:30 Club said some of the financial damage was self-inflicted. Some club owners were offering acts the maximum money they would get from a total sellout, even if it was unlikely that all the tickets would be sold.
“That’s foolish and unnecessarily drives up the price of groups,” the booker said. “It’s a problem with people who are inexperienced and want to do a group for prestige.”
That was Seth Hurwitz, co-founder of concert giant I.M.P. Productions.
Seth’s clubs are still standing. Many others exist only in memories and photographs.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly.
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