Interview · moment 5 of 15

Cocaine Cowboys Miami, Guns N' Roses at Limelight, and the Death of Live Music

Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.

7 min

Guest

Ralph recounts his father's real estate money and Miami drug-era connections, seeing early Guns N' Roses/Metallica shows, working as a DJ at overcapacity clubs, and how DJs and Giuliani's zoning laws killed the live music and superclub scene.

In this bit10 moments

10:23The death of live music is really the death of the bar business.
10:50Scrap Bar was a legendary rock club on Bleecker in the West Village where Slash from Guns N' Roses got a blowjob in the back.
11:42Guest had a blowjob during a concert, off to the side of the stage.
12:18When the drinking age switched to 21, it killed the bar scene because 18-year-olds used to fill clubs for three or four years before they could drink.
13:05Tim dropped acid at his eighth-grade graduation ceremony at Lincoln Orchard Middle School before going to the beach to trip.
13:43Guest saw Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and Queens of the Stone Age early on, plus White Snake.
14:16Went to see a show at a venue and there were only twelve people there on a Thursday night.
14:48During the nineties, there was a shift where live music stopped and things transitioned more to DJs.
15:25Guest's dad used to run Rock and Roll Church on Sunday nights at Limelight, but now everyone stays home watching Netflix.
15:56LA Guns played Limelight so packed with seven or eight thousand people that you couldn't move, and the fire department shut it down mid-show before they turned Metallica back on and the place went crazy.

Mentioned here

comedy clubsScrap BarLilith FairGuns N' RosesThe LimelightLong Island Island Park CBGBLA GunsTracy GunsCoyote GrilleSarah McLachlanTracy ChapmanAxl RoseMetallicaWhitesnakeQueens of the Stone Age

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