Tom Hearn Photos
The Cadavers.
Before punk was a word people tried to define, before it was a movement and state of mind, there were the live shows that brought music to many who were hungry for more than what they were getting from sharing albums with their friends. Among those many were the few who carried it out of basements and back rooms and into people’s memories.
Larry Loud, local punk legend, was a teenager in Bridgeport when he played a show with his band in 1978 that would later be heralded as the first original punk music show in Connecticut. That show will be celebrated this Saturday night, March 4, at Cafe Nine with Loud’s band The Cadavers, the New York-based Live Ones, and Bridgeport’s own Bad Attitude.
“It feels like somebody died in here … pretty much that was the first comment to come to mind after entering the Club Esquire,” wrote Loud about the night of Mar. 3, 1978. “It had a menacing presence — it was like stepping back in time to the days of gangsters and prohibition.”
Club Esquire was a bar in the basement of the Hotel St. George, which Loud described as “a carryover from the depression era of 1930s Bridgeport into the war years.”
“It basically was the house of the rising sun for Bridgeport in the rock and roll text,” he added.
Loud recalled it being “a rather disjointed time” in history, marked by the Iran hostage crisis, the Son of Sam murders, and many other harrowing events. The music was a response to that.
“Everybody was kind of under a great amount of scrutiny, and everybody was trying to get over themselves and reinvent themselves,” he said.
Loud was already under the influence of bands like MC5 and Iggy Pop, who he recalled learning about via his brother and the Columbia Record Club. The Sex Pistols “commanded headlines while interjecting an end of world scenario and violent self-destructive lifestyle.” But he and a host of others were then forever changed by seeing another band live at their high school in Fairfield in 1976: The Ramones.
“People couldn’t get over it, to see something so disturbing at your own high school as the Ramones in their embryonic stage,” said Loud. “You could see it as ‘we can do that too’ or ‘it’s the worst possible thing I have ever heard in my life.’”
Loud and his friends Sean and Leonard chose the former, and started The Cadavers while they were still in high school. Loud had already played guitar in two rock cover bands by that time, but The Cadavers were his first foray into the punk scene. The show at Club Esquire was a turning point for him and many who were involved.
“It fell into place so quick you wouldn’t know,” he said. It was all based on one phone call Loud received from the late Keith Amo of the band Epitome.
“They were a little bit more prepared for battle than we were,” Loud recalled of that band, who had their own outfits that included jumpsuits and wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses “before anybody ever really saw anything like it, right at the same time as Devo.”
Raw Power — featuring guitar player Terri Smith, who is now in Bad Attitude, one of the bands playing at Cafe Nine this Saturday — was the third band to perform at the Club Esquire show. All three of the bands were from Connecticut, though this was not anyone’s first show “by any means,” Loud said.
Tom Hearn Photo
Loud in 1978.
So, why is the 1978 show referenced as the first local punk show in the state?
“We were conducting an experiment, in the sense we were breaking ranks as far as not being cover bands playing other people’s music,” said Loud. “You look at three emotions in life: there’s love, there’s hate, and there’s questionability. We realized it was easier to make people hate us and carry a nasty reputation than it was to be loved and adored by playing other people’s music. If were gonna play a game, let’s play, throw me the guitar, we’re gonna play this game. We had to change our names because it was a dangerous thing.”
People found out about the show through word of mouth, according to Loud, and when they hung out together listening to albums. He recalled “nothing was seen as being too off the wall” at that moment, when there was “some real questionability about this punk thing.”
“What is it? The end of the world? That’s the way they’re reporting it on ABC,” he said. “Whatever is coming out of England is virtually scaring the living daylights out of people.”
Yet there were a lot of people willing to take their chances to be a part of it, as Loud noted the club, also referred to as The Snake Pit, was packed on that late winter night for the three-band bill.
“I don’t even know how deep the cross section of people was because there was no room to move, really,” he said.
According to Loud, a dress rehearsal for the show even drew a large crowd, and still, they could not anticipate the response they would receive.
“Presenting our music to the public had us second-guessing our worth more so than anything,” he said. “We were totally nervous … we took to the stage with a ‘get me out of this place’ attitude and played our 10 song set … and over it went!”
People wanted more from The Cadavers, including recordings, but for the time being the band was only playing live. Loud would continue with that band on and off throughout the years as well as other bands, playing throughout Connecticut and beyond. He met up with current Cadavers bandmate and bassist Teo Baldwin in the ’80s when the New Haven native was a “punk rock skateboard kid” hanging out at Atticus where Loud was working.
“I was a big follower of his band Last Supper,” said Baldwin about Loud. “Eventually I glommed on and would go to shows and help him set up.”
The two would eventually play a couple of shows together in a band called The Incorrigibles around 2014, but would not come together as The Cadavers until much later when Ross Hallen, a longtime bandmate of Loud’s, passed away and a tribute show was held in his honor at Cafe Nine. The two, along with drummer Chris Carson — who had also played in Last Supper as well as the bands ADX and Kinetic Sect — played a few songs as part of that show in March 2020. For Baldwin, it was new territory.
“That was the first time I played bass in a band,” he said. “I was normally a guitar player. Not a very good one.” He laughed and added, “I’m having a great time.”
According to Baldwin, after the tribute show Loud told him he wanted to bring back the old Cadavers songs, saying that he thought “now’s a good time.”
“Because it’s cool to be a punk these days no matter how old you are,” added Loud. “You know, it’s an acceptable lifestyle.”
The Cadavers — which now consists of Loud, Baldwin, and Carson — plan on playing “very select oldies” at the Saturday night show. Loud has discovered a new appreciation for the songs since working on them with this latest iteration of this band.
“Hearing some of the stuff is having an effect on me,” he said. “I mean, I well up in tears thinking about growing up in my dysfunctional household listening to this stuff.” The music is “proof to myself that I did some of my best emotional songwriting when I was like 15 through 21 years old, and then I had to deviate in order to respond to a business that was just not responding to anybody except the Madonnas of the world.”
Loud recalled the influences that brought him to that songwriting, having had “the inside to the Stooges and the MC5” via his older brother and the Columbia Recording House Record Club.
“You’d be solicited with packages you didn’t order, and one day Iggy and the Stooges showed up and the next day the MC5 showed up.… I was 10 years old and that changed my life right there, because Led Zeppelin was my favorite band and you couldn’t disown the greats, but at the same time you had to coexist with learning primal therapy and doing it on a performance level.”
Baldwin recalled his influences as well, including a high-school girlfriend that played him Generation X records back in 1980. He began trying to get into clubs like Brothers in West Haven and Ron’s Place in New Haven, and eventually Toad’s and the Anthrax in Stamford and Norwalk, where he saw many bands that changed his life.
“And then you see The Ramones and I’m like, ‘well, maybe I could possibly try to do this too,’” he said.
After high school Baldwin became well known in the local punk scene playing guitar in a number of bands, including The Whipping Boys, The Incorrigibles, and Malachi Crunch. Baldwin also continues to be a staple of the scene as a live music fan, regularly attending a variety of local shows. He has nothing but glowing reviews of the current scene.
“I think it’s fantastic to see kids out of their phones and video games and trying to carry the torch for this,” he said. “It’s inspiring to us. I think it’s fair to say, we see it, we’ve done it, we want to continue to be a part of it.”
Loud agreed with Baldwin, who shouted out newer bands like The Problem With Kids Today and Qween Kong. “I think it’s terrific,” he said.
“I have friends who haven’t been out for a while and I say to them, ‘why don’t you just come out and see this band?’ And they’re like, ‘oh my God, that’s still happening and it’s still really cool,’” added Baldwin. He also cited Paul Mayer at Cafe Nine and Carlos Wells at The State House as “really important people that keep continuing it.”
He also referenced veteran performers including Bill Beckett, Frank Critelli, and Jenn Dauphinais, along with “all those great young bands coming up like Dan Soto and Dust Hat” for continuing to have an influence on the local scene, adding that he is enjoying the “mixing” of “genres within genres” that he is seeing more now than he did before.
Loud and Baldwin hope both young and old come together to mix it up and celebrate this Saturday, as they still have much to share with others, including a soon-to-be-released six-song EP titled Ruthless, Toothless, and Rockin’.
“We’re the grandpoppies now,” Baldwin added with laugh.
Tickets are available for the Mar. 4 show at Cafe Nine, featuring The Cadavers, Live Ones, and Bad Attitude.