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Where will acts like Guided By Voices — not to mention drunks like C-Notes — take refuge when the Spider shuts its doors?

The Lime Spider announced last week that it would close its doors in September . It’s difficult to measure the degree to which this news sucks.
For six years, the club has been a mainstay for Akron’s independent music scene. Its stage has played home to scores of local and national acts, including Guided By Voices, Houseguest, Machine Go Boom, the National, Calvin Johnson, the Black Angels, Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, Deerhoof, Jerry Casale of Devo, the Difficult, Tin Huey, the Black Keys, Beaten Awake, Party of Helicopters, Teeth of the Hydra, Pat Sweeney, Jonathan Richman, Mary Timony, and the Strange Division. The list goes on, and doesn’t even include the many more unmentionable drunks to whom the bar has kindly played host.
Danny Basone, the bar’s owner, told Akron Beacon Journal’s Malcolm X Abram that the club had fallen on hard times. Basone says he’d been dealing with declining audiences, break-ins, and low bank funds for a while, and that it was finally time to move on:

‘‘Our whole thing is in the last year, the music scene has taking a (decline) in my opinion, and the small national bands we were getting are now just going directly to Cleveland,” Basone said Thursday afternoon at the club, shortly after discovering the bar had been broken into again. ‘‘The last straw has basically been getting turned down for holds on shows or seeing that the Beachland got a show we were holding.”

Before the Lime Spider opened, Akron had few venues fit for cutting-edge indie acts from around the globe. Thanks to Basone and his crew, the Akron music scene also had a proper place to foster its burgeoning bands.
Which leaves everyone wondering where the scene will call home come September. The Matinee, located in Akron’s Highland Square, has been putting on shows every Wednesday in recent months, but they don’t have the sound system nor the capacity that the Spider boasts. Others are pointing to Anabelle’s, another Highland Square haunt, whose new owners are busy cleaning up its basement in hopes of becoming the new refuge for Akron acts.
Meanwhile, the Lime Spider’s planning its last official show, scheduled for September 8, with a that bill includes Radar Secret Service. Until then, sweet Spider, we’re preparing for a long, emotional, SoCo-aided farewell. Needless to say, we will sorely miss your $1.75 Pabst Tall Boys, DJ Forrest on the patio, and members of Beaten Awake passed out in your stairwell. – Denise Grollmus

This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2007.

8 replies on “A Sad, Sad Day for Akron’s Music Scene”

  1. Damn. Bad news all around. It’s getting way too hard to draw audiences with local/small national acts in any market, and even harder in NEO with everybody cutting each others’ throats, the bands throats, the fans throats just to make their ends. Bad management? Bad bands masquerading as good bands? Not often, but it happens. The smoking ban is a pain in the ass, but if people are that weak- and this is advice from another smoker- maybe they should just turn in their Bics and stay home watching American Idol or Dead Rockband Makeover.
    Could it be the fact that we have little or no local/indie music on the radio, which is still the only delivery method that impresses anybody around here? If you want a happy healthy club scene, you have to have some cooperation from the local media in getting people excited about going to see bands they might not even hear of otherwise.
    Hate to see anyone lose out. As a former denizen of Highland Square I’ve been drunk in Annie’s basement alot. A little small but if the new owners do clean it up it could be a very interesting alternative.
    BbBrownfield
    PS- you should have mentioned Hammer Damage, IMHO the best band never to break out of Akron. Even if it was just a reunion weekend. Yeah, I’m that friggin’ old.

  5. Lots of venues biting the dust since Issue 5.
    Guess musicians will just have to go underground to sustain the live gig.
    Lots of good music came out of Prohibition times.
    (the silver lining….also Prohibition didn’t last forever…..the platinum lining..;-)…….)

  6. I’ve heard Matinee and Annabelle’s mentioned
    but both are real small in comparison to the Spider…how about Thursday’s. I don’t know how well a band would sound in there but it is alot bigger.

  7. There’s also Mocha Maiden, which has lots of room, but could be re-arranged to allow for even better viewing of shows. Parking there is not so good though. –
    I love Lime Spider though! what a shame!

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