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"My chief connection to the
Corridor was through Kathy Clifford, who was part of the first
Willis Gallery tribe. I came along after that had passed, in 1977,
so I really can't consider myself a part of that group, but many of
those people were frequent visitors to our apartment in the Touraine,
and I got to know them quiet well. Mostly, I hung around Alvin's,
even worked the counter there for a couple of months in 1980 or so,
and cleaned the bar on weekends for a few months around the same
time.
After Kathy and I split in 1980, I
was not really a part of any of the
tribes you list, mostly hanging with Paul Schwarz, Barney, and Mick
Vranich. My main contribution to the Corridor culture was through
playing with Retro (Jim Atkinson, Dan Cicchelli, Martin Bandyke, and
Jerry Siclovan, the last of which you may not be familiar with). We
played the New Miami a number of times, and Alvin's too. Mostly, we
played at Bookie's, and Nunzio's in Lincoln Park. We used to
practice in Alvin's for a while before the bar opened. (Funny thing
about the New Miami: my father used
to go there back
when it was the original Miami. I'm sure he wouldn't have recognized
the place in 1978!)
Later, I was with the group
L-Seven, who brought hardcore music to the corner of Cass and Willis
(not that we actually played hardcore), in the storefront next to
the Willis Gallery (or
maybe one over, I'm not sure), where our band practiced and held
some well-attended rent parties. (We even had a couple of members of
the group Black Flag sit in at a gig.) A few members of that group
lived in the Judith Apartments, on the north side of Willis, east of
Cass, but I don't think that scene was really connected with the
people considered on your website, other than through the connection
with myself, and to some degree, Paul Schwarz and Mick Vranich. (Our
singer's boyfriend was a part of the seminal Detroit hardcore band
Negative
Approach, while they lived at the Judith, and the two of them went
on to some fame with the Laughing
Hyenas, touring Europe a few times and releasing five or six
albums on Touch and Go records, a major hardcore label originally
out of Toledo, but now out of Chicago. One of their bass players
later owned the coffee shop in the old house south of the Bronx Bar,
I believe.)"
Frank Callis frank.callis@akahn.com
05/31/01
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