Sudsy Malone's Rock 'n Roll Laundry & Bar was a small music club and bar in Cincinnati that opened in 1986 and gained national renown for hosting many famous indie and alternative rock bands over the decades. It started as a laundromat that added live music performances, with bands playing loudly to be heard over the noise of the washers and dryers. The Thangs were one of the first bands to play regularly there and helped establish its identity as a venue focused on original rock music. Sudsy's unique atmosphere of music, drinks, laundry and camaraderie created an important community space for both local and touring musicians before its closing in 2008.
Sudsy Malone's Rock 'n Roll Laundry & Bar was a small music club and bar in Cincinnati that opened in 1986 and gained national renown for hosting many famous indie and alternative rock bands over the decades. It started as a laundromat that added live music performances, with bands playing loudly to be heard over the noise of the washers and dryers. The Thangs were one of the first bands to play regularly there and helped establish its identity as a venue focused on original rock music. Sudsy's unique atmosphere of music, drinks, laundry and camaraderie created an important community space for both local and touring musicians before its closing in 2008.
Sudsy Malone's Rock 'n Roll Laundry & Bar was a small music club and bar in Cincinnati that opened in 1986 and gained national renown for hosting many famous indie and alternative rock bands over the decades. It started as a laundromat that added live music performances, with bands playing loudly to be heard over the noise of the washers and dryers. The Thangs were one of the first bands to play regularly there and helped establish its identity as a venue focused on original rock music. Sudsy's unique atmosphere of music, drinks, laundry and camaraderie created an important community space for both local and touring musicians before its closing in 2008.
Sudsy Malone's Rock 'n Roll Laundry & Bar was a small music club and bar in Cincinnati that opened in 1986 and gained national renown for hosting many famous indie and alternative rock bands over the decades. It started as a laundromat that added live music performances, with bands playing loudly to be heard over the noise of the washers and dryers. The Thangs were one of the first bands to play regularly there and helped establish its identity as a venue focused on original rock music. Sudsy's unique atmosphere of music, drinks, laundry and camaraderie created an important community space for both local and touring musicians before its closing in 2008.
cians got their start there. It was a Mecca Emporium opened.
Sharp had sketched a
for new music during a decade when rock coin-flipping, beer-swilling, pin-striped music was changing and just before every- cartoon gangster, the eponymous Sudsy thing about the music industry would com- Malone, whose image hung outside the pletely turn upside down. door for more than two decades. Sudsy’s stood across from Bogart’s on Music of the incredibly loud, electric Short Vine Street in Corryville. You en- variety took over Sudsy’s within a few years tered to the right of a low, carpeted stage, thanks to a band called The Thangs. Guitar- scuffed and duct-taped, gouged by fall- ist Patrick Hennessy, who still plays in vet- ing cymbals. Speakers towered around it, eran Cincinnati punk outfit The Tigerlilies, hung from the ceiling. The dim bar ran the was there one Friday night watching a lone length of the front room in front of a mo- guitarist get drowned out by the happy- saic of band photos. Washers and dryers hour crowd. Hennessy loaned him one of were lined up in back. The Thangs’s amplifiers in exchange for When bands played, it was so loud that permission to play the following weekend. the air felt pressurized, particles vibrating The next weekend the band loaded in its LAUNDROMATS ARE USUALLY PLACES in sparse spotlights. And there was a lot gear, including “these crazy huge speakers you want to forget. Wash, dry, repeat. Yet swirling in that atmosphere: smoke, deter- we bought from some band from the ’70s,” when Sudsy Malone’s Rock ’n Roll Laun- gent, beer, whiskey, dryer lint, sweat, and Hennessy says. “And it was packed.” The dry & Bar closed in 2008, the mourning brand new songs that are still being sung owner, John Cioffi, asked them to come began. It’s been collectively remembered 30 years later. back the next night. The Thangs eventual- with unusual intensity ever since, and not But small clubs come and go, right? ly played Sudsy’s every weekend for nearly for its coin-operated Maytags. What makes Sudsy’s stick in the memories two months and recruited friends’ bands to Sudsy’s, as we knew it, was also a bar of so many fans? The answers shine a light open. Cioffi thanked them for playing but and music club that grew in the 1990s to on the vital importance of small stages ev- complained his ears were ringing. “That’s national and legendary renown. The Afghan erywhere and on the power of live, original not your ears,” Hennessy’s brother and Whigs, Beck, Better Than Ezra, Jack White, music to connect people to one another and bandmate, Steve, shot back. “That’s the Stereolab, Sleater-Kinney, Modest Mouse, to a collective “home.” sound of your cash register.” Neutral Milk Hotel, Yo La Tengo, Guided By Sudsy Malone’s Rock ’n Roll Laundry & Voices, Jeff Buckley, Spoon, Girls Against “WE’RE TRYING TO GO ONE STEP FUR- Bar was born. There were many small clubs Boys, G. Love & Special Sauce, Cat Power, ther and develop a character,” ballet dancer clustered around Bogart’s, but it was one The Jesus Lizard, the Jon Spencer Blues Ex- and founding partner Michael Sharp told of the few featuring original music, Hen- plosion, and Over the Rhine all played its The Cincinnati Post in July 1986, when nessey says. small stage. Hundreds of great local musi- Sudsy Malone’s Laundry and Libation Wesley Pence and Randy Cheek fre-
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