Article: Numbers celebrates 25 years of cutting edge music

I kind of took this place for granted for a long time...


June 25, 2003, 6:59AM

Numbers counts to 25 in a celebration of music
By MICHAEL D. CLARK
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

"No valet parking, no cocktail waitresses, no dress code and no attitude."

For years the Montrose club Numbers printed that slogan on T-shirts, matchbooks and other tchotchkes, trumpeting the club's utter lack of frills. What it lacks in glamour, however, it has more than made up for in a quarter-century of devotion to cutting-edge modern-rock music.

Today, the club that introduced Houston to bands like R.E.M. and the Cure begins celebrating 25 years of rock 'n' roll memories with a silver-anniversary dance party. Following are 25 nights (get it?) of other special events scheduled through July 31.

Since Numbers opened its doors in 1978, dozens of other Houston clubs have come and gone. Remember 6400, NRG, Excess, Ocean Club, Hippo Hyperia? Numbers owner Robert Burtenshaw, aka DJ Robot, admits that each had a glossier profile than his club. He also believes that the focus on outward sheen often led to their demise.

"Some rich kid who hung out here would see what we were doing and open his own club," Burtenshaw says. "Sometimes they didn't last a year."

Numbers' black walls, open ceilings and laughably scary bathrooms are not eye candy. Burtenshaw and Bruce Godwin, a former co-owner who has also served as a DJ and promotions manager; manager Rudi Bunch; and assistant manager and longtime DJ Wes Wallace have persisted by being Houston's affordable, proudly dingy hub for modern rock. They have stayed on the edge of "alternative rock" even as the label lost its meaning.

"Alternative now is blink-182 and all the MTV and radio bands," says Wallace. "Back in (the mid-'80s), alternative was the Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and things that radio didn't play and MTV didn't show.

"Alternative is now the mainstream. Nirvana changed everything."

Nirvana is one of the few superstars of grunge, new wave, post-punk and the indie underground that didn't set up on Numbers' corner-set stage during the band's formative years.

R.E.M. played the club in 1981, more than a year before its debut album, Murmur, came out. The Cure made its way to Montrose in 1985, and Jane's Addiction, this year's Lollapalooza headliner, followed two years later.


Bill Olive / Special to the Chronicle
The backstage dressing rooms at Numbers have seen hundreds of local and national acts.
By 1991 Nine Inch Nails had sprung its Terrible Lies on Houston, and Ministry had built an apocalyptic cage on the stage. GWAR covered the walls with fake blood and "other bodily fluids," and the Red Hot Chili Peppers smeared the dressing room -- and themselves -- in ketchup and mustard.

"People forget that Sheryl Crow played here before she was a star. She opened for the Blues Travelers," Godwin says. "I wandered around with her trying to find food for her dog."

DJ dance nights have been as important to the business as live music, according to Burtenshaw. One Tuesday a month is reserved for swing dancing. Wednesdays belong to classic remixes, Thursdays to the industrial, Gothic and electro body music fans. Fridays and Saturdays are like stepping back into the '80s, with New Order and the Pet Shop Boys.

From its earliest concerts -- Siouxsie and the Banshees and Grace Jones in 1980 -- Numbers has earned a spot in the history of Houston modern rock, even if it didn't always feed the bottom line.

"We never turned down a band we didn't like. We've lost a lot of money on bands we really liked," Burtenshaw says with a laugh.

Wallace says, "We also made a lot of money on bands that we hated, too."

The club has sometimes garnered national attention. In the mid-'90s, it got one of only four dates played by a white-hot Nine Inch Nails as a thank-you to venues that supported them early on.

Perhaps Numbers is best remembered as the location of the last live performance by Blind Melon and lead singer Shannon Hoon, on Nov. 20, 1995. Shortly after the band arrived in New Orleans for its next gig, Hoon was found dead of a drug overdose.

Godwin, who was at the show, says the singer's troubles started long before Blind Melon arrived in Houston.

"He was out of it here. It was a disastrous show where he forgot lyrics and stopped songs in the middle. In the dressing room later the band was screaming at him," he says. "Twelve hours later he was dead."

For the few tragic tales, however, there are many happy ones about the early careers of Alanis Morissette, the Foo Fighters, Garbage, Green Day and Macy Gray. In March of 2002, two unknowns named Norah Jones and John Mayer took the Numbers stage and played to crowds that didn't come near the room's 850-person capacity.

Now Mayer and Jones are Grammy winners who have graduated to bigger arenas. Mayer will appear at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on July 25, and Jones has a sold-out show at the Hobby Center on July 20. As their fame grows, so will the number of people who claim to have seen them play the dark, amenity-less club on Westheimer.

"There will be thousands claiming, `I saw them way back when they played Numbers,' " Godwin says. "There always are."

 

Depends on who's playing.

I used to go there as a kid in the 80's. I'd watch awkwardly from the sidelines as my friends danced. I went back a few years ago to see Ben Folds Five. All this time I had no idea it was such a great venue for live music.

 

Nope. He's on tour with Tori Amos and they're hitting the east coast and the west coast. Not Texas.