The Record Store Years 27) Early Adventures: The First (and Only) Cellophane Square Concert

A memoir of 25 years (1975-2000) spent working in the world of records & music in Seattle, with occasional side trips into writings on Led Zeppelin and other adventures from my musical life.

By 1979 the local music scene was blossoming, but there were still very few places for young, original-material bands to play. The notorious Seattle law known as the ‘Teen Dance Ordinance,’ wouldn’t come in until 1985 (more on that later), but even prior to that most of the venues for local live music were bars booking cover bands, and Washington State’s draconian liquor laws prohibited anyone under 21 from attending those shows anyway. A few now-legendary punk clubs like The Bird and Wrex managed to stage some great gigs, but they were all harassed by the authorities and in most cases shut down after only a few shows.

Since I knew many of the young bands as customers and so many were frustrated by having nowhere to play, early in 1979 Cellophane Square decided to get into the concert promotion business. None of us had any experience putting on concerts short of playing in bands ourselves, but the owners gave the concept their blessing and I forged ahead with support from Susan, Dick and the rest of the staff.

I lined up the bands, rented a great old events venue on Capitol Hill called Washington Hall, found a sound guy with a PA, printed up flyers and posters, sent out a press release and comp tickets to the newspapers and radio stations, hired security, and obsessively crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i.’ I even created some backstage passes out of name tag stickers, and made sure there was a cooler backstage with beer and soda for the bands. I made lists, took copious notes, and tucked everything into a manila folder optimistically labelled “Henry-Cheaters-Radios/Concert #1”

Above: Susan, Lesley and yours truly handling the throngs at the front entry. Have I dotted every ‘i’? (photo by Marty Perez)

The big night came and went with no issues, except for the fact that when we tallied up the numbers we had spent $865 putting the thing on for only $247 in paying customers (less than 100 people showed up) – a net loss of over $600. Needless to say, Cellophane Square’s first concert was also its last.

In hindsight, the whole endeavor was doomed by my own naivete. To begin with, the three bands I chose were picked because we were friends with various members, not because they had any significant draw or fan base. In addition, there was some serious incompatibility between their styles – Henry Boy was a full-on, we-are-rock-stars, Bowie-cum-Cheap Trick power pop band, and The Cheaters (and The Radios) were very punk – a bit more sophisticated musically than most punk bands, but with a healthy dose of “fuck the dinosaurs” attitude none the less. It wasn’t like anyone in the bands had a problem with each other, but in my broad music taste and enthusiasm for my friends’ bands I don’t think it ever occurred to me that Henry Boy would appeal to a completely different crowd than the other two.

Despite competition from a ‘big’ rock show at the Coliseum (The Moody Blues in decline), the music critics from both of Seattle’s daily newspapers made our show in time to catch some of Henry Boy’s set. Patrick McDonald from the Times and George Arthur from the Post Intelligencer both said pretty much the same thing, that Henry Boy had potential and the show was poorly attended. Neither mentioned Cellophane Square and Arthur even described the show as ‘self-promoted,’ which I guess wasn’t too far from the truth!

Above: The Cheaters onstage at Washington Hall. Left to right: Kurt Bloch, Scott Dittman, Al Bloch (photo by Marty Perez)

Despite the financial failure of the event, it was fun time for everyone involved and some good things came out of it. Most significantly for me, it was the first time I met Conrad Uno. Someone had given me his number as a sound guy, and I hired him for $100 to bring and set up the PA and do sound for the show. To call Conrad (or ‘Uno’, as most people know him) easy-going would be a gross understatement. I think he was slightly amused at my military-like organization, but he did a great job with the sound and it was the beginning of a long business relationship and friendship between the two of us. Uno went on to found Popllama Records and Egg Studio, and played an important role in the careers of The Young Fresh Fellows, The Posies, The Presidents of The United States of America, Mudhoney and many other Northwest bands. He is deservedly considered a behind-the-scenes legend in the Seattle music scene, and will no doubt pop up again in a future chapter of this memoir.

Being the archivist and music nut that I am, naturally I decided to lug my heavy TEAC 3340 reel-to-reel tape machine to the show and capture a multi-track live recording of the bands. Uno accommodated with a line feed from the board, and I patched together enough XLR cables to get three microphones on the stage. The results were predictably punk in terms of sound quality, but it’s a fun document of the day and it’s been shared with Kurt in recent years to reside digitally in the Cheaters archives.

Some of the musicians from that night at Washington Hall went on to bigger things. The Cheaters line-up included Kurt Bloch and Kim Warnick, who founded The Fastbacks not long after the Cellophane concert. Kurt also replaced original guitarist Chuck Carroll when Chuck left The Young Fresh Fellows in 1989, and still plays with them today, as well as being involved with many other bands as player, producer and mentor. Kim Warnick also played in Visqueen during the ‘00s, and had a short stint as an employee at Cellophane Square in the ‘90s. The Cheater’s bass player was Kurt’s brother Al Bloch, and he had later local success with a band called The Bombardiers and eventually succumbed to the lure of Los Angeles, where he played with Concrete Blonde for a time.

For more details on The Cheaters, stay tuned to the website splittoothmedia.com - Brett and Craig Wright, two excellent writers on the site, are currently working on an ‘Oral History’ of the band and have interviewed me, Kurt Bloch, and other principals from the Seattle music scene for the piece. They recently wrote a great oral history of The Young Fresh Fellows early days and first album at www.splittoothmedia.com/young-fresh-fellows-fab-sounds , and also published an in-depth, career spanning interview with The Fastbacks for the release of their 2024 album For WHAT Reason! www.splittoothmedia.com/fastbacks-for-what-reason .

Above: Henry Boy onstage at Washington Hall. (photo by Marty Perez)

Henry Boy also spent some time in Los Angeles with a degree of success, playing in some well-known clubs of the day and flirting with major label interest which sadly never came to anything. He has remained a fixture on the Seattle music scene and a friend to Cellophane Square to this day.

Many Seattle musicians of the day ended up moving to L.A. since it was virtually impossible to launch any kind of national career from Seattle before the Grunge explosion. Notable Seattle ex-pats in the L.A. area included the late Dave Drewry, Jim Basnight, Chris Crass [Utting] and Duff McKagan – Duff did particularly well, landing the bassist spot in a little band called Guns ‘n’ Roses and returning to Seattle years later as a bona-fide, battle-scarred Rock Star.

NEXT: Early Adventures: Road Trip To Rockpile

Below: Two more pics from the Washington Hall concert: Kurt Bloch getting down, Kim Warnick playing in The Radios (photos by Marty Perez), and a flyer for another Cheaters gig from 1979 – the band photo was taken in Cellophane Square’s pinball room.