Few venues epitomized the fervour of reside music like small, scrappy all-ages venue Chain Response. With an inside coated with band stickers and T-shirts and a cramped, enclosed alley with partitions coated in gum and graffiti, the Anaheim venue on Lincoln Avenue spent practically 30 years as a staple for punk, ska, hardcore, emo and extra that helped put OC on the map for generations of native music followers.
This Friday marks the ultimate exhibits on the venue, which OC Weekly as soon as known as “the CBGBs of the West Coast”. Since 1996, Chain fostered breakout bands like Touché Amoré, Atreyu, Thrice, Throwdown and Eighteen Visions. In the meantime it additionally grew to become a must-stop venue for touring bands like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, Yellowcard, My Chemical Romance and The Used.
However after so a few years of slowly waning attendance numbers, and a significant hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, Chain Response started to sink. Sadly, even the concession of including a bar to the longtime dry venue wasn’t sufficient to maintain the membership worthwhile, and so they made the last-minute announcement through Instagram final week:
“This call wasn’t made quickly. We wrestled with it and have ultimately made the decision to close our doors. We want to thank every band, fan and attendee of our shows. We want to thank the scene that supported us for almost three decades. We want to thank you for the friendships and memories made in our special club. Thank you for supporting us through the years and when we needed it most. CHAIN REACTION FOREVER.”
The closing of a staple in one of many greatest various music communities within the nation is a image of a dismal state of affairs for a once-thriving scene.
“It’s kind of ironic that Chain’s last show will be on my 68th birthday,” Tim Hill, who based the Anaheim membership in 1996, informed The Instances. Hill, who now lives in Oregon, moved to Villa Park on the north finish of Orange County in 1996 from his hometown of Maywood a number of months earlier than opening the venue. On the time he owned and operated a profitable automotive electrical firm that gave him monetary freedom to attempt his hand on the reside music enterprise.
In 1996, he loaned $10,000 to a good friend named Charlie Meloncamp to open a live performance area in Anaheim in alternate for 10% of the income, however it was solely a pair months earlier than his good friend deserted ship.
“Charlie was just a guy who had good ideas, and I was the business guy,” Hill stated. “Even though it was his idea to open the place, he was the one that decided he didn’t want to do it anymore because he realized it wasn’t going to make money. But I didn’t care because I already had money, so it could operate at a loss for a long time and I didn’t need to worry about it.”
The membership’s first live performance was Labor Day weekend in 1996 below the unique title of Public Storage Espresso Lounge, with a stage that on the time was just one foot tall.
“Unfortunately, Charlie had forgotten to get a live entertainment license before the event and the city came in and shut it down, kicking everyone out about an hour into the show, I think after the first or second band. We gave everyone a voucher for the next show so that way they didn’t feel like they got ripped off,” Hill stated.
The subsequent a number of months had been a painstaking course of to acquire the required permits for a reside all-ages venue.
“The location used to be a bar that got shut down because someone got shot in there and the building was red tagged by the city of Anaheim, so the old conditional use permit was taken away and we had to totally start from scratch,” Hill stated. “I had to go in front of City Council to speak a couple times, put flower beds in the parking lot, change the number of parking spots, put in a handicap spot, comply with the signage rules out front, sign tons of forms, etc.” That additionally included getting Anaheim’s police chief on the time to log out on the venue’s conditional use allow, Hill stated.
“It was a big deal. I mean just think about it, you’re gonna have a bunch of underage teenagers come to a concert? All kinds of things can go wrong.” However Hill realized the necessity for an all-ages venue in Orange County. “It was so important for there to be a place like this for all those kids to go.”
Hill labored the field workplace each single occasion after his day job, and as phrase of the all-ages haven unfold, the membership, which was working at a loss, changed into an in a single day success story.
“Chain started making pretty good money. I had figured out a good system,” Hill stated. “When the punk and hardcore bands started coming in — Throwdown, Eighteen Visions — they would go to Showcase Theater and sell the place out, but the guy would only pay them 200 bucks or so. I figured, whatever came in through the door, I would subtract my staff, and whatever was left over, the band would get 60% or so. So basically if people come to see you, you’re getting paid a lot of money. They were smaller bands but the scene was way better. Pretty much every show would sell out. We would be having shows three times a week back then. Sometimes five times a week. Punk shows, ska, hardcore, emo.”
Touche Amoré acting at Chain Response in 2010
(Joe Calixto)
Hill credit the long-term success to offering the scene with a protected area for youngsters to name their headquarters.
“I was absolutely committed to no bar. I just thought it was so cool to have a place that kids could go. Parents would talk to me all the time because they were worried about their 14-year-old child going to a concert by themselves. I would tell them, ‘Just come in with your kid, sit in the back during the show, and decide for yourself if your child can come back.’”
What adopted had been years of numerous packed-house nights, a Rolling Stone Journal writeup in 1999, “secret shows” for bands just like the Offspring, New Discovered Glory and Inexperienced Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong’s aspect challenge Pinhead Gunpowder, and occasional movie star drop-ins.
“I don’t remember the first time I saw him but Jason Schwartzman used to come in all the time,” Hill stated. “He actually played there once with his band Phantom Planet. I smoked a cigar with Gary Busey in the parking lot one night when he had come to a show… Oh, and Billy Ray Cyrus and his wife came once, too. His son is in a band that played there several times and they came through the back door to watch them. Honestly, there were a lot of times I could have sold Chain Reaction for a lot of money, but I wanted to make sure it kept going the way it was. That’s why I sold it to Andy [Serrao].”
Andy Serrao had been one of many reserving brokers for Chain Response since 2006. In 2015 Tim bought the membership to him and retired to his present house in Oregon.
“We had been doing it for such a long time already. Keep in mind, most of those years I was working 18-hour days, going straight to Chain to work the box office and I would stay until all the kids would leave anywhere between midnight to 1 a.m. and I had to get up and be at work at 7 in the morning the next day. Andy was one of the guys who booked local bands for us for a long time. One day I just asked him if he wanted to buy Chain and we worked out a deal. It was pretty simple.”
Hardcore band Touché Amoré performed a dozen exhibits at Chain Response from 2009 to 2019, together with their first ever headlining set with Joyce Manor opening in Might 2010, so lead singer Jeremy Bolm is pretty much as good as any in relation to a dependable supply on the topic.
“Just like with most venues, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I actually keep a book of every ticket stub for every show I’ve ever been to, so I still have the stub from the first time I ever went to Chain. It was Sept. 22, 2001. The bands were Eighteen Visions and Taken.”
Proper earlier than the COVID-19 lockdown, Touché Amoré performed what could be their closing cease at Chain Response on tour for the tenth anniversary of their first document, “…To the Beat of a Dead Horse.”
“We knew for the West Coast, we had to do the obvious three when it comes to what people think about when they think about legendary venues on the West Coast: Che Cafe, Gilman and Chain,” Bolm stated.
Since saying the demise of the location, folks from all states and even different nations have been broadcasting their heartbreak on-line on boards like Reddit.
“I’m from San Diego so Chain was a staple. My husband is from upstate NY and told me when he was a kid his dream was to play a show at Chain,” one Reddit person commented.
“I’m all the way in Florida and have never been anywhere near SoCal and even I know how legendary that venue is. RIP to a real one,” lamented one other.
Greg Katz from the band Cheekface grew up in Irvine and put into phrases precisely how formative Chain Response was for his identification within the scene.
“Chain taught me how to love independent music. It taught me how to be part of an indie scene. I learned to love local bands and to support touring bands. The t-shirts on the wall were a kind of road map to other bands you might like. The back alley outside of the venue crystalized a lot of my long term friendships.
“It’s really sad that it’s leaving Orange County without an obvious replacement. And it probably signals the end of an era for support of true independent music in OC. Of course there are other venues, but there is not another Chain Reaction.”
