You’d be forgiven for missing the date, but a notable anniversary in St. Louis music history passed over the weekend. On April 19, 1984, four bands played The Bernard Pub, the legendary punk club at 4063 Lafayette, on the city’s near-South Side. Located on the edge of the rough-and-ready McRee Town neighborhood, the action at the Bernard Pub that night wasn’t taking place outside the venue, as it often was; instead, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department decided that it was a good night to raid the venue and to arrest some concertgoers for slam-dancing and general, underage merrymaking.
The event had a lot of strange components to it, starting with the simple fact that it had no precedent for occurring at all. Four bands were onstage that evening: The Offenders from Austin, TX; and three local support bands in Bulimic Skulls, Rest in Pieces and White Suburban Youth. Two of those groups were debuting and there wasn’t anything to suggest that violence was going to break out, beyond the energy created in the self-contained/regulated pit. Looking back, it feels as if local law enforcement was ready to send a message to the growing local punk community. The dubbing of it as “The Punk Disco Raid,” in local press circles seems charmingly ironic today, but on that evening… things got real.
Bill Boll was in the room that night. Not playing, but attending the gig. The events of the evening had such an impact on him that he wrote a song about it, “36 Minors,” a nod to the number of kids arrested that evening. A filmmaker as well as a songwriter, he’s done a belated video to accompany the song. When the stlbeacon.org’s “Second Set” column debuted a couple years back, one of the first stories captured was that of Boll’s song. At the time, here’s what he had to say:
"The mid-'80s were a weird time for punk in St. Louis," Boll remembers. "Just a few years earlier, the local punk scene was incredibly small and completely out of the mainstream. A spiky haircut and a trenchcoat was considered so radical, you'd draw stares everywhere you'd go. By 1984, there were more and more kids at SLU who dressed like they listened to the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys. But there were very few venues that played punk shows regularly, and they were all notorious places.
"The Bernard was in a really bad neighborhood near SLU," he continues. "Cars were always getting broken into, getting their windows smashed and their trunks pried open. People still went there because no one else was playing punk shows. Nobody had ever heard of the Offenders, but White Suburban Youth were opening that night, and the show was at the start of Easter break, so it drew a big crowd. I went with a few friends from SLU, including one girl who was going into the convent that fall! We all got busted even though a lot of us weren't drinking. I hadn't started drinking yet. Years later, John Green (the manager) told me that the city just wanted to shut him down because of noise complaints from the neighbors."
More recently, punk rock archivist/musician Rob Wagoner set up a Facebook group to memorialize the evening. The page has attracted a mix of folks, some who attended and the rest of us who just heard about it and wished we were there.
Writer, KDHX host and record store manager Steve Pick was a lucky attendee, in that he saw the show but didn’t wind up in a paddy wagon. He drummed in Bulimic Skulls that night and was one of the first folks to check in with a story for the FB group:
I drummed in opening band the Bulimic Skulls. We formed the band about three nights before the gig. I had never drummed before in my life, and never again after, but hey, it was punk rock. We'd try anything. I actually left before the Offenders played, so I missed all the real action, but I do remember seeing Rest in Pieces and White Suburban Youth for the first time. The next day, I was at work, and somebody called to tell me of the raid. Probably Dana Ong, who definitely called me and told me we had another gig that afternoon, only this time our singer couldn't make it, and Fritz Krieg would take my place as drummer so I could be vocalist. That was when I met Fritz and Rob Wagoner. I made up lyrics at that outdoor gig at Webster, and afterwards, Dana told me we could play a party that night, only this time our guitarist couldn't make it, and Rob would take over that part. So, while everybody else was being arrested, I was in three punk bands within a 24 hour-period.
Along with Wagoner, Tim Jamison’s kept the punk flame lit in St. Louis for many years. They’ve shared membership in the long-running Ultraman and were both in the Punk Disco Raid’s third band, White Suburban Youth. Jamison posted up a nice, long, detailed series of anecdotes about the night. Even if some of the names aren’t familiar to you, the vibe and mood is the evening is captured thoroughly in his words:
I wasn’t nervous before we went on and didn’t really think about what it was I was about to do until the second I got on stage. This sense of panic or stage fright lasted about two seconds and never returned, thankfully. I looked out and it was people that I at least recognized or knew from hanging out at New Values and the handful of shows I had been to the year before. Once we started playing the adrenalin kicked in and that was it. I can’t say I remember our set other than the photos. Now that I think about it my memory is of the photos. I don’t remember looking out from the stage like I do later shows, an odd thing to realize right now.
My next real memory is watching The Offenders. After a couple of songs Lisa Glad was verbally sparring with JJ and then he mooned the crowd. He might have even come off the stage at one point when he was exchanging heckles with her. Not long after that maybe into the fourth or fifth song I saw a cop in uniform walk through the pit. I knew that was a bad sign and then the PA was shut off but they kept playing, then there were more cops in the room and they stopped. The cops told us that if you were over 21 line up here, you’re leaving, and if you’re under 21 line up here, you’re going to jail. I think there must have been a few minutes either before or after being told this, because I do remember asking Rob Meirhoffer if he thought we were going to jail. As you can see on this FB page there is a photo of me talking to a uniformed cop. I’m pretty sure I’m asking the same question and being told that if you’re in a band you weren’t being arrested. That was a relief, and as word spread of this news everyone was in a band. People were grabbing anything they could to show they were in the band or running out the back or up into the apartments above and a window.
I don’t remember leaving, but I do remember getting home and meeting my dad at the door as he was just getting off work to tell him what happened when he asked how it went. A couple of days later my mom said, “Hey, you made the paper,” as the Post and Globe both ran small stories about the bust. My favorite of which was by John Auble.
Those articles really had us worked up too. But really, of course it made for a great first show story.
Well, it’s still a good story. You can learn more by peeking in at the group’s Facebook page. It’s a near-perfect digital time capsule, full of photos, newspaper clips and a pinch of video, though the funny, irreverent stories are the central hook. Read ‘em, rockin’ kids, learn yourselves up.
