CLEVELAND, Ohio — So the Phantasy Entertainment Complex is on the block. My big memory is going there to watch the debut of a newly signed band named Nine Inch Nails. The lead singer was a kid named Trent Reznor who worked at the club doing light and sound. I interviewed him in a dressing room backstage for the Friday magazine.
He was smart and very nice. I remember thinking that this guy just might go places. Little did I know. (Here are some of the other bands that played there over the years.)
I asked for memories of the Phantasy via Facebook. Here’s some of what I got in response.
“1983 Jimmy’s Hyena Club’s New Year’s Eve Party at the Phantasy. I gave out 250 bottles of champagne; start of the Hyena Club going from after hour parties on West 6th that lasted days.”
— Jim O’Bryan, Lakewood
“I saw Fishbone there around 1985. They had just started getting some traction outside of L.A. as a ska-punk hybrid and basically amounted to a stageful of musicians taking turns blowing awesome horn riffs and flailing and staggering across the stage while everyone danced in a frenzy.
“Somewhat light on material at the time, they momentarily slowed the crowd down by playing an unfamiliar song. As the rhythm section started and the horns kicked in, Angelo Moore swaggered to the mic and started singing something like, ‘I take you out to dinner / I take you to a show / I wanna take you home / But you say you want to go / Why won’t you…’ and with that every member of the band grabbed a mic and finished the line with ‘…stay and be f-ed?!’ The crowd fell to the floor laughing and then started dancing when they recovered.
“Two years later I saw Fishbone opening for the Beastie Boys at Public Hall. During the Beasties set, I saw Angelo walking with his cane and bowler hat around the audience, clearly looking to be recognized. I approached him and asked him why they didn’t play “Stay and Be F-ed”. His eyes lit up and he gushed, “Hey! You were at that place with the pirate ship!” He went on to say that they’ve never recorded it because they thought it would upset the label.
“Good times …”
— Kevin McNamara, 49, Olmsted Falls
“Every Lucky Pierre show in the ’80s.”
— Lisa Mack Thornburg
“What I remember most about the Phantasy was the Nite Club and the family type of scene that developed around it in the ’80s. You always hear about how the Troubador fueled the L.A. Scene in the ’70s, well the same was very true of the Phantasy Nite Club and the Cleveland music scene scene in the ’80s. I was writing for Scene then, but all my friends were in local bands and we all just hung there for years. The Adults, the Silence, Exotic Birds, Separate Checks, Death of Samantha, The Floyd Band and Shannon Dolan’s numerous bands were just some of these groups. When he wasn’t onstage, Trent Reznor would also run sound and lights for some of the bands. It was a really special scene, and I’m not sure Cleveland has that, exactly, anymore.”
— Ken Rademaker, Lakewood
“Funny thing about the Phantasy is that the best times are the ones you probably can’t remember clearly. For instance, I saw somebody there the night I got laid off from the most normal job I ever had. I quit smoking the next day. Saw The Cramps there, and, again, only remember screaming at Ivy and going to the Nite Club after. Sort of. See what I mean? And I’m a fully functional, predominantly sober individual. I can only imagine, no, really, I can only imagine the stories that can’t be told.”
— Melissa McDonald Pereksta
“Gerry Harrison and the Casual Gods. So many shows.”
— Betsy Towns, 52, Chagrin Falls
“I saw the first ‘Star Wars’ movie there when it was the Detroit Theater.”
— Sarah Crump
“I sit here looking at two stubs from The Phantasy. One is from the Anthrax show on 6/11/87. I was seventeen years old, and a few things about that show stand out in my mind. Number one was the temperature. It had to be 110 degrees in there that night, and kids were lighting smoke bombs because it was less than a month ’til July 4th. I could barely breathe. So what did I do? I grabbed the first thing that was passed to me and smoked it. Turns out it was a clove cigarette! It didn’t make me feel cosmopolitan, however. It made me feel like I was going to throw up. The next time I saw Anthrax was at Public Hall, and the onstage banter included a diatribe about how hot it was at The Phantasy.
“The second thing I remember about that Anthrax show was that there was nowhere to mosh, so kids started moshing on the seats. People were falling all over the place, and I remember a friend using the long hair of a passed-out girl in the row in front of us to pull himself up off the floor. I also remember seeing a kid being dragged down the aisle with a boot print on his face.
“The other ticket stub I have is from a Living Colour show (4/18/89.) I was nineteen. I had seen the video for ‘Cult Of Personality’ on late night MTV, and when I heard they were coming to The Phantasy, I bought tickets for my siblings and myself. I remember lead singe, Corey Glover stage diving, and then getting passed around like a sack of potatoes. His jeans got torn off of his body, but he was wearing a pair of David Lee Roth style spandex pants underneath in case of such an emergency. A kid got up onstage, danced around, and ripped Vernon Reid’s guitar cord out of its pedal with his foot during a solo, so the security staff grabbed him up, and visibly threw him out of the exit doors next to the stage. Living Colour did The Clash’s ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go?’ as an encore, and I cupped my hands around my mouth and screamed ‘STTAAAYYYY!!!’ as loud as I could. Corey Glover stopped and cocked his head, and stared I me, and I, being the chubby teenaged white nerd that I was, felt like I wanted to crawl into a hole.
“The Phantasy and Flash’s Night Club were my go-to places to catch rising and falling stars in the ’80s.”
— Mike Simko, Brooklyn, Ohio
“I have had the honor of performing, promoting and attending great shows at the Phantasy and the Symposium. I hope the people that take over this historic gem can appreciate its history and restore it to a significant destination venue to catch touring acts, and more importantly to continue it as a launching pad for local acts. Hopefully some really cool people decide on it.”
— Tracy Marie, Lakewood