Address | 11784 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles United States |
---|---|
Capacity | 250 |
Opened | July 1977 |
Closed | March 1990 |
Club 88 was an all-ages[1] live music venue[2] that was a key part of the early Los Angeles punk scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many seminal punk and New Wave groups got their start playing shows there.[3]
Club 88 — named after a popular Tokyo nightclub from the early 1960s[3] — was founded in July 1977 by Wayne Mayotte in a rundown former strip club located on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles's Westside.[4][5] Mayotte, a 57-year-old recently retired engineer at the time, intended to curate jazz lineups, but he quickly found a following hosting acts from the burgeoning New Wave and punk scenes. Notable acts that took the stage during the club's run include The Blasters,[6] The Motels,[7] Black Flag,[8] the Go-Go's, Social Distortion, Minutemen, the Gun Club, Firehose, Saint Vitus, Jawbreaker, Red Kross, Berlin, and X.[3] Also, the Broken Heroes (the greatest band you never heard.)
The venue closed its doors in March 1990 after the building that housed it was sold.[9] It was one of many L.A. punk venues that closed its doors around this time, including Club Lingerie (1991) and Madame Wong's West (1991). The building has since been torn down.