Winnipeg Boomer

R&B and soul music with bands such as The Soul Brothers and The Brass Sermon. The building was ultimately torn down to make way for the then-Centennial and now- Millennium Library. In March 1967, the Hungry I club opened upstairs at 343 Portage Ave., on the north side midway between Carlton and Hargrave Street, the brainchild of local impresario Frank Weiner and partner Dick Golfman. Weiner operated the Hungry I Agency, the biggest rock-band booking agency in the city. Opening the club in a former dance studio above two retail outlets (Frank later ran his agency from one of the street-level store- fronts) was an opportunity to showcase the agency's stable of bands. The I boasted the first downtown dance-hall licence in 25 years and the first discotheque on Portage Avenue. At capacity, the club could hold 500 people and regulars recall the crowd was drawn gen- erally from downtowners. Bands were featured on weekends and used the club weekdays to rehearse. "It was a great place," enthuses Mongrels' frontman Joey Gregorash. "It was our head- quarters. Even the audience was fantastic." On a good night, the I's wooden floor would heave to a mass of gyrating bodies. The owner of the nearby London Style Shop protested the increased presence of teenagers on the block but found little sup- port from other business establishments. "I can't blame teenagers for any damage or trouble," the owner of Brenner Shoes said at the time. "It would be unfortunate if the Hungry I were closed because of unfounded accusations." Colin Palmer chuckles as he recalls playing the club. "One night some guy yelled out, 'Hey Lenny (Fidkalo), you're a lousy drum- mer.' Lenny jumped off the stage in the middle of a song. We looked around and there he was, wrestling with this guy on the dance floor. Another night the bouncers stopped a guy trying to run off with my gui- tar. They caught him in the back lane." The Cinema Hall opened in 1964 at Colony Street and Memorial Boulevard, drawing its name from the film-distribution company offices along Colony row. It, too, tended to draw a rough downtown crowd. Further north in the city, the old Prosvda Hall on Pritchard Avenue and Arlington Street became the Proteen club on Sunday evenings. Ron Adams recalls a visit: "There were about five of us and we went to see The Galaxies playing. It was a really tough place. We just stood in the middle of the floor, afraid to move. We wanted to leave 30 December 2011 Winnipeg Boomer but couldn't walk out. Then Jumbo Martin recognized one of the guys with us and asked us outside for a beer. We were so relieved to be able to get out of there." Heartland Travel's Don Finkbeiner remem- bers being punched in the face for no apparent reason by a local toughie on his one and only Proteen visit. Paterson's Ranch House at Logan Avenue Dominion Motors, The Beat Retreat opened its doors in late 1967, claiming to have "the greatest psychedelic light show in Winnipeg" (although it never quite lived up to its billing). The short-lived club was dubbed "The Heat Retreat" for the often-oppressive atmosphere when crowded. As Sugar & Spice's Maureen Murphy remembers, "it was so blistering hot in the club that our matching crepe dresses shrank. Kenny, our drummer, had quite the view." Transcona was not immune to the rock 'n' roll fever, either. Two teen clubs opened in the east end in the mid-'60s, the first being The Den at 201 Bond St., across from Dominion Lumber. The Den was tiny com- pared to J's or the Hungry I and patterned itself after the Twilight Zone, right down to the checkered tablecloths. The small stage was barely able to accommodate a drum kit. The Pink Panther was located in a vacant bowling alley in the Regent Park Shopping Centre. Operated by Fred Munster (apparent- ly his real name), it featured a giant portrait of a pink panther on the back wall. Because of its former use, the ceiling sloped down- ward toward the bandstand, necessitating some crouching from drummers. The Orfans' Dutch Schultz used to thrust his drumsticks into the ceiling tiles right above his head at the start of a break, retriev- ing them when the next set got underway. Sunday-evening shows were popular, draw- ing kids from across the city. "We referred to The Pink Panther as our J's Discotheque entrance (top), and an old ad. and Keewatin Street in Weston had been a long-time country music bastion, hosting the likes of Glenn Frain's Buckaroos until the owner saw more potential in rock 'n' roll. Convincing his regular patrons was anoth- er matter, however. Neil Young recalls that, when the Squires played Paterson's, "we had to really work at it to get paid there. There was a band that used to play at night called Bluegrass Bob & the Bobcats but they let us do our thing Saturday or Sunday afternoons." Back over on Fort Street, south of where The Cellar had been and across from second home," says Terry Stiles, whose band Satan & The D-Men appeared frequently at the club, "and the food was great, especially the hamburgers." Nyckles & Dymes guitarist Ralph Gammelseter remembers that, "our manager brought a skinny kid to audition for lead singer at The Pink Panther. The kid was George Belanger (later of Harlequin fame). We hired him after the first song." By the late '60s, most of the teen clubs were no more. Some coffeehouses (the Wing'd Ox, Cro Magnon, Wise I, The Ting) continued offering music in intimate settings, but even community-club dances were few and far between. Booking agencies and costlier equipment needs had put bands out of the price range of both types of venue by then. The final nail in the coffin came in mid- September, 1970, when the drinking age was lowered from 21 to 18 and pubs became the meccas of rock-music fans. John Einarson is a music historian and author of 15 books on music history/biography. He teaches a popular course on rock music his- tory at the University of Winnipeg.

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