To those of us who moved to Austin in the ‘80s and had to hear about how we missed the Armadillo World Headquarters: think of how much worse that would have been if we didn’t have our own ‘Dillo in Liberty Lunch! This city-owned venue was bulldozed in 1999 to make room for Computer Sciences Corp. headquarters. The rent in this prime downtown location was only $600 a month, so the Lunch’s days were numbered. For 24 years!
Maybe because it was permanently temporary, I still remember everything. Not just the lineups, like the triple bill of My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr. and Babes In Toyland, which were unforgettable. I remember how the best place to see the band was stage right, where the pot smoke from the patio hit the jet stream of sound. The best doorman for the bands and the worst for the pest list was the guy who used to perform weird folk as Blanche. He was stone-faced as a Palace guard, but couldn’t quite mask delight when he made someone from the Austin Chronicle pay cover.
Physically, there wasn’t much to the room, which had a big stage so flimsy that Run-DMC had to perform like statues in ‘85 because every time they moved the record skipped. No place to sit. No place to shit, at least in private. Acts had to use the gross prison bathrooms because there wasn’t running water backstage. “Are you going to play ‘Stinkpot?’ a fan asked a squatting member of Soulhat one night. “I’m playing it now.”
-- Michael Corcoran
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All photos by Bill Leissner
Video editing by Tom Kessler
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