When Graduate Hospital was the epicenter of Philly’s punk rock and new wave scene

One night in 1978, standing in Artemis nightclub, Jay Schwartz, then a Temple student, asked famed local nightclub impresario David Carroll who among the talent playing in the local scene had the potential to end up as big stars.

The B-52s and Devo, he said. Both were household names before long.

The year before that, in the summer of 1977, Carroll had founded the Hot Club at 21st and South Streets, considered the headquarters of Philadelphia’s punk rock scene between 1977 and 1980.

In addition to Devo and the B-52s, the Hot Club was the place in Philly to see acts like Elvis Costello, the Dead Boys, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Pere Ubu, the Misfits, and Iggy Pop, in some cases before they were particularly well-known. It hosted major punk and New Wave bands, many of whom made the short trip down from New York.

“The Hot Club was the place. “It was really the epicenter of all this,” Schwartz said.

It opened as a jazz club but switched to punk and new wave before long. The club was felled by a fire for most of 1978 (which is why Schwartz filmed in Artemis, “an interim Hot Club,” instead), and closed for good in late 1980.

Carroll’s forecasting of the B-52s and Devo’s stardom eventually made it to Philadelphia Seen, a video Schwartz made in the 1970s for a Temple class. It will have its first-ever public exhibition on April 25 at the Bok Building, presented by the Lightbox Film Center.

“I’m thrilled that it’s finally coming together and we get to celebrate the Philly punk scene all these years later,” said Jesse Pires, Lightbox’s artistic and executive director. “Compared to New York and D.C., Philly’s punk scene was smaller and everyone knew each other. We all have stories, and I expect much reminiscing.”

Schwartz went on to work as a Philadelphia photographer and correspondent for New York Rocker magazine before being hired as the Hot Club’s publicist. Since 1992, he has been running the Secret Cinema, Philadelphia’s floating repertory cinema series.

While Carroll was older than most of the audience and came from more of a jazz background, he “had a real knack for recognizing what was special about the new wave and its best artists,” Schwartz said.

“If you were into it and going to the [Hot Club], it really felt like you were at the rebirth of rock and roll, and what it must have felt like in the ’50s. It very much felt like it was replacing everything else that was on FM radio,” said Schwartz.

Nancy Barile, author of I’m Not Holding Your Coat: My Bruises-and-All Memoir of Punk Rock Rebellion, also frequented the Hot Club as a teenager.

“Many of us found our community at the Hot Club. And one of the greatest things about the place was that you could see the band on stage and then actually talk to band members outside as they smoked cigarettes, or just hung out. As a young, suburban, Catholic schoolgirl, I thought that was the greatest thing ever,” Berile said.

The club, Schwartz said, “would have probably gone on a lot longer,” but the neighbors who were moving into these new houses were aghast at all these freaky-looking people in the neighborhood.”

The Graduate Hospital neighborhood certainly looks very different today; the bar and restaurant the Ten Stone is now where the Hot Club once stood.

The Bok Building screening is part of the event, “I Belonged to the Blank Generation: Philly’s Punk/New Wave Scene on Screen.” Schwartz’s 1978 footage will play alongside other videos, including Super 8 footage of the Cramps performing at the Hot Club.

A parallel exhibition of Schwartz’s photographs taken inside and outside of the Hot Club and other venues, is currently showing at the SPACE Art Gallery in South Philly.

More than 60 photographs are featured in the exhibition. There’s Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders holding up a soccer ball at the Emerald City in Cherry Hill; Deborah Harry of Blondie and Iggy Pop on stage separately, on the same 1977 night, at the Tower Theater; the Talking Heads outside of the Plastic Fantastic record store in Bryn Mawr; the Ramones on stage at Houston Hall at Penn, and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo on stage at the Hot Club.

In a twist of fate, both Kate Pierson of the B-52s and Devo are soon performing in Philadelphia on the same night, May 1.

“I Belonged to the Blank Generation.” The screening is on Friday, April 25, at 7 p.m. The exhibition runs through May 31, at SPACE Art Gallery, 749 S. Eighth St., Philadelphia.