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The end of an era - or is it?
posted on 31 Jul 2015 under category History
So, I was a bit alarmed when I first heard the stories going around about The Masquerade, an old mill-turned-concert venue in Atlanta, had been bought by real estate developers. The first posts I’d heard were of the tone that the place would be closing. Now, it’s… well, read for yourself:
Southeast Capital, the Atlanta-based real estate firm that’s owned the mill buildings since 2006, has partnered with SWH Residential to develop a 228-unit apartment complex and 4,500-square-foot restaurant on the Masquerade’s outdoor music park. The development would also sit on two parcels the developers recently purchased from the city. The restaurant would face the Atlanta Beltline, SE Capital’s Jay Clark and SWH Managing Partner John Tirril both say. Work on the mixed-use development is scheduled to begin in October and take 20 months to build, Clark tells Creative Loafing.
So what then happens to the Masquerade? Earlier this month, Coster reported in a post that’s now traveling quickly on social media that SE Capital would make the mill buildings facing North Avenue into a 24,000-square-foot adaptive reuse project. Does that mean the Masquerade would need to vacate the buildings where GWAR hath spilled fake vomit? And Method Man dove from the stage? Even a member of the team behind the development felt a touch of sadness about the prospect of change.
(source)
Well, if my history of reading business-speak is right, the outlook isn’t good. Though they talk about it staying there, but being ‘reused’, and talking about all of the other work that would have to be done to bring it up to code (plumbing and wiring, among many other things), I’m afraid its days are numbered.
And that’s a shame, given how much musical history is there. What an appropriate topic for a throwback thursday post.
Now, keep in mind I’m someone who was barely in the scene for a few years over two decades ago, but I still have more than my fair share of stories about that place. Just to give you an idea of what I’ll be able to revisit only in memory:
- I saw Death there FOUR times - once per tour for each album Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic, and The Sound of Perseverance. And that TSoP show, on December 13, 1998, ended up being the last live show that Chuck Schuldiner ever played, exactly three years to the day before he ended up dying. Back in ‘91, though, after the gig I managed to talk my way onto the tour bus (by accident) and hung out with him for an hour or so. The other guys in the band talked about how Paul Masvidal had gotten drunk and was in Hell (the dance club there) dancing to techno music. One of the musical highlights of my life. Also, on the Symbolic tour, my friend Toby and I hung out with Bobby Koelble and Gene Hoglan, just chatting about music while they were eyeing all the ladies. I remember Gene pondering - “What is it about the south? All the girls here have big tits.”
- For another musical highlight, I managed to interview Testament while they were playing here on the Low tour, and then I used the press pass to get me and a friend backstage after the show, where we proceeded to drink beer and hang out with the band, chatting for hours and hours.
- Another random night I ran into Dave Ellefson on the stairway walking up into Heaven. The band was in town on a press junket or something like that and he and Nick Menza were there just to hear whoever was playing.
- Other big bands I remember seeing there: Overkill, the Galactic Cowboys, Skid Row (they opened for KISS at Philips Arena on their reunion tour, and then headlined at the Masquerade the same night), Napalm Death, At the Gates, Bodycount, Exodus, D.R.I., and one of the saddest Iron Maiden shows ever - it was during the Blaze years, and the only time I’d seen them before this was at Lakewood Amphitheater with Bruce on the Fear of the Dark tour - it was really disappointing to see them cramped on such a small stage after seeing “Live After Death”. Eddie had to duck so he didn’t knock himself over on that off-center beam that hangs down a foot lower than the ceiling.
- Being in a band, of course, I managed to play there a few times myself while I was in Early Warning. Most of the times it was just for all-local bills, but two of our biggest gigs ever were there: we opened for Dream Theater right as they were breaking big with the song “Pull Me Under”, and then we opened for Steve Vai’s band “VAI” when he had Devin Townsend (The Strapping Young Lad himself) fronting for him:
I’m really not trying to say any of this to say how cool *I* am, but I’m just one semi-nobody and I got to experience ALL OF THAT, right there in those four walls.
Those fuckers better not tear it down. Or, worse, gut its soul and leave the empty shell all corporatized to give the illusion that they’re somehow tapped into all of the cool that happened there.