The Jockey Club
633 York St., Newport, KY
606-441-5724
Open 10pm - 3am Fri. and Sat.
Occasionally open during the week, so call for times.

The Jockey Club is in a building that once housed the Flamingo Club, one of Newport's more notorious hangouts, in the Sixties, for organized-crime figures. The undesirables were eventually driven out of town by the local sheriff, and the Flamingo Club closed down. Today its sign still stands outside the Jockey Club, but all similarities end there. This place is a very hot New Wave bar that books both nationally known acts, like the Circle Jerks and Jah Wobble, as well as local groups. Although the Jockey Club is across the Ohio River in Newport, most of its customers are from Cincinnati. Like most New Wave bars, there's nothing glitzy about the decor. It's downright minimal: there's one large room with a stage, a few tables, a long bar, and lots of space for dancing. The food is strictly microwave (hot dogs and sandwiches). Drinks are cheap--mixed ones start at $1.75. You can't miss owner Haynes Mincey in the punk audience. He's the one sporting the long white beard that he started growing when Ronald Reagan was elected. He vows it won't come off until Reagan is out of office.

The following article about  the Jockey Club in  Newport, KY appeared in  SubCin, a short-lived  Cincinnati "Street Sheet," published by Tim Fits, Bill Igerent and Stevie. Tim was the publisher. Bill wrote a column for the zine and also sang vocals for Musical Suicide until his nervous breakdown in late 1984. In addition to writing many articles and  reviews and conducting band interviews Stevie could be seen playing with a number of local bands including The Hopheads and the Warsaw Falcons under assumed names such as Steve Lance. According to a reliable source,  Stevie was found dead of a heroin overdose in a Seattle motel in 1998.  Tim and Bill are still alive but rarely go out in public.

SubCin, Issue 6, May 1984

Jockey Club

by Stevie

When WAIF DJs Clem Carpenter and Bill Leist approached Newport's Jockey Club management some 18 months ago with the idea of booking punk bands, owners "Tiny" and "Shorty" Mincey made a rather memorable decision. Why not? What did they have to lose?

Patrons of the once-ill-reputed club (known up  until 1971 as the Flamingo Club) might recall the JC's pre-punk days. The 550-person capacity club was chiefly host to hard rock and Top 40 cover bands, drawing fewer than 30 people on an average night. The bar was just breaking even and the bills were just barely being covered.

"Handsome" Clem, a long-time "alternative music" fan, saw potential in the Jockey Club and talked Bill (aka Billy Blank of current Reduced fame) into checking the club out. "I knew the place existed," he recalls, "but I never knew it was so huge!" The two part-time DJ's asked the JC owners if they could take over bookings for the club in August 1982 and their first show, featuring 11,000 Switches, Cointelpro and Lopez Sophisticates, took place Sept. 5.

"When we first started doing shows here, we didn't know what to expect from Tiny and Shorty," admits Bill. "We thought they might throw us out or something, but they've hung in with us all along. They saw the potential in what we were doing, and they also started having a good time with the freak shows."

In the late fall of 1982, Clem decided to turn his reigns over to Robert "Jughead" Sturdevant (bassist for SS-20). At about this same time, Bill made contact with several major booking agencies, including Crescent Moon of NYC, which resulted in the JC's first major gig featuring Vancouver, B.C.'s DOA.

As Bill recalls, the JC "alternative music" gigs were usually received quite well. "Cincinnati already had sort of a small 'scene' at the Brewhouse (Clifton), " adds Robert. "We kind of took the Brewhouse scene (to the Jockey Club)    and blew it up on a larger scale. The Brewhouse made sort of an agreement with us that if we continued, they'd stop, so that's what happened."

Something important was obviously happening. While JC attendance prior to this could only hope to reach 50 on a good night, suddenly patronage skyrocketed to as many as 120 people a night. In the eyes of alternative music promoters nationwide, Cincinnati was now on the map (while the club is actually in Newport, most of its patrons are from Cincinnati). In the months to come, the Jockey Club was able to book national and international acts like the U.K. Subs, Discharge, the Vibrators, Toxic Reasons, the Dickies, GBH and the Circle Jerks. Future JC calendars promise the excitement will continue.

"We've worked our asses off here--strictly as a hobby--and we like to think we've done something good here," says Bill. "Really, who else would've taken chances with a lot of the bands we've had in here? Hell, we'd have Johnny and the Jerkoffs play here if they asked us.

"Here's something else," he continues. "We are booking as many alternative music acts as any club in the country. We've never turned down a group. Lords of the New Church are sort of an exception; they accepted our offer, but when they found out how small our stage is, the decided not to do it." He adds that the JC probably could've booked bands like the Gang of Four and Echo and the Bunnymen--bands turned down by Cinti's Bogart's nightclub--"but you can only stick your neck out so many times in one month."

Bill says plans to enlarge the JC's stage are underway, and says other improvements to the club on the back burners include possibly updating the club's sound system, installing hanging curtains near the stage to create a back-stage area and "definitely" fixing the building's roof. Robert maintains that these needed improvements would never have been possible were it not for a recent benefit gig put on by Junta, the Auburnaires and the Libertines.

"Otherwise, forget it, we'd never have the money," notes Bill. "I myself lost about $1700 on this place last year. On the other hand, we've been able to raise over $3000 for WAIF during benefit gigs here."

The two say another project in the works is arranging all-ages shows, especially for those under the age of 18. "We really got things going here with hardcore and the younger kids, " says Robert. "But, from January to February of this year, the police came seven straight weekends to check IDs. We found out it would cost us a thousand bucks if we had to go to court for having minors in here, so we had no choice but to obey the law."

"Actually," adds Bill, "no other club around lets in 18-year-olds except us. Those kids can't drink in here, but they can still come and have a good time.

"All ages shows are definitely on our horizon here, but at first they'll have to probably happen with some of the larger acts. What it boils down to is that this place is run like a country store, it's a business for Shorty (Tiny recently passed away) and he's here to make money -- that's the bottom line. So, how are you gonna make money at an all-ages show when the audience just drinks ice water? People are always coming up to me and telling me how I could do this and that, but as it turns out, it takes money."

In the meantime, Bill continues, he and Robert stand on their record. "It's hard to believe how many clubs fuck people and bands over. Treating people right just comes as second nature to Jug and I. This isn't a business to us, we both have jobs. If we had to do this thing for our living we'd both be in the fucking gutter. Hell, we probably only ever earn 10 cents an hour doing shows here."

"Our only real goal here is to present as much alternative music as possible," Robert says. "We've done jazz, blues, reggae, rock, hardcore, you name it. We want to give something for everyone."

The Jockey Club, he continues, is a "people's club". "It has character, personality and color--this place is like home! And who could ask for more fun?"

Reprinted with permission.
Copyright (c)1984 SubCin Publishing

Punk only pays if it's bigtime

 New-wave music has a following,
but is it enough to support clubs?

by CLIFF RADEL
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Jockey Club has been scratched from the punk-rock sweepstakes. Bill Leist, the talent booker for the punk/new wave/new music club, has put himself out to pasture.

After four years of bringing such groups as the Ramones, the Dead Kennedys, D.O.A., the Cramps, the Damned, the Vibrators, Husker Du, Modern English, Violent Femmes and Black Flag into the Newport club, Leist finds himself, "approaching my 27th birthday without having a pot to you-know-what in."

Leist estimates he has lost "between $5,000 and $10,000 of my own money and at least that much of my partners' and backers'."

Leist and company did not lose the bulk of their money on the big name acts. They drew good crowds for the Dead Kennedys' two-night stand in May of 1985. They sold out the Ramones twice, once in March of 1985 and again in July of this year.

"It was the local and regional and up-and-coming acts that killed us," Leist said. "On June 22 of this year we brought in the Neighborhoods a good, new, pop band from Boston and 10 people showed up. Apathy like that makes my stomach curdle and so that's when I said it was time to call it a day."

Club made a name

Leist's run at the Jockey Club officially ends in September. Next month marks the fourth anniversary of his association with the new music hall that in Newport's sin city days of the '50s and '60s was an infamous casino and after-hours hangout known as the Flamingo Club.

"Somewhere around this place, there's a picture of Marilyn Monroe shooting craps in the Flamingo's back room," Leist said "That's the same back room we used for our mangy dressing room."

Mangy dressing room notwithstanding, Leist's bookings over the past four year gave the club a national reputation for presenting rough edged music that was far from the mainstream of rock and roll.

In honor of his fourth and final anniversary, Leist is planning, "a farewell month of gigs. We'll try to reunite some of the local, regional and name bands that did well at the club, like Junta and the Auburnaires on the local scene."

Has strong following

After September, the club's owner, Hallman "Shorty" Mincey, plans to carry on, but with local new-wave bands instead of name acts.

So where does that leave new music in Cincinnati? All punked out but no place to go? No.

Obviously, the music has a strong local following. Leist filled the Jockey Club to its 600-person capacity for the Ramones and the Dead Kennedys.

"It is beyond cult status," Leist observed. "We charged top dollar, $10 in advance and $12 at the door, for the Ramones and people paid it. You can't charge those prices for cult music."

Cult music also does not sell out the Taft Theater. And that's exactly what another new-music act, R.E.M., looks like it is going to do on Sept. 7. More than 2,000 tickets have already been sold. The Taft holds 2,510.

The Ramones and R.E.M., however, are special cases. They are proven commodities in their rock and roll subcategory. They are not relative unknowns like the Neighborhoods. The drawing power of the Ramones and R.E.M. and the lack of it for the Neighborhoods fit right into the theory Cleveland-based concert promoter Jules Belkin has about Cincinnati.

"Cincinnati is a superstar town," Belkin says. "Big names in every kind of music sell tickets down there. The marginal acts, the up-and-coming acts, the unkown acts, might as well skip Cincinnati. They don't sell. People in Cincy are not willing to take risks."

'We took risks'

Bill Leist insists he is an exception to Belkin's theory.

"We took the risks with every show," he said. Then he laughed and said, "and look what it got us. I'm in debt.

"But I don't look at it as a loss," he added. " I look at it as an investment from the experience I gained and the people I met."

Leist does not see any local club, "taking up the slack when we leave the Jockey Club. The Metro is too small. They consider 150 people a good crowd and you need to draw at least 600 people just to break even with the prices these national and international acts charge."

The Metro's size killed its big-name, new-music policy. After bringing Los Lobos and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to town, the downtown club his since devoted its energies to local and regional bands and occasional performances by show business types like the actor/actress, Divine.

Bogart's 1,000-seat capacity is big enough to fill the new-music void, but owner Al Porkolab doesn't "perceive that happening for two reasons. One, we do not specialize in one type of music. And two, if the Jockey Club couldn't make it, and they catered to that musical genre, who can?"

Porkolab does plan to book acts that have played the Jockey Club, "when it makes sense. We'll do a Husker Du or the Violent Femmes."

Not just for Mohawks

"There is definitely a market in Cincinnati for this music," he added "the new music/underground rock audience is much broader than the streotypical punks with the safety pins in the nose, the Mohawks and the spiked hair. There are alot of straight-looking people who like this music."

But whether they wear a Mohawk and earrings or polo shirts and boat shoes, Porkolab feels "they're just like everybody else in this town. They just go for the big winner and ley the marginal acts slide."

 The Jockey Club is heading for the last roundup. The area's premier punk club closes its doors Sunday.

"This is the end," says Bill Leist, the club's concert promoter since 1982. "There have been rumors for the last two years that the club was going to be sold to all sorts of people including the country singer, George Jones. But this time it has finally happened."

The Jockey Club has been sold to Newport Yellow Cab. The taxi company plans to turn the club into a showroom for its limo service, ending the building's long and sometimes sordid career as a nightspot.    Before the Jockey Club passes on, Leist has booked a full weekend of entertainment. The club's final lineup of acts is:

Tonight, Dag Nasty, 30 Pieces, the Speed Hickies.

Friday, Nice Strong Arm, the Reduced, Penny Dreadful, 101 Damnations

Saturday, Modern Vending, the Digits, SS-20, Cybermen.

Sunday, (the grand finale), the Auburnaires, and the Reduced.

"All of the shows will start at 9p.m. sharp," Leist says. "We have to be on time. This is our last hurrah."

During Newport's sin city days in the 1950s, the Jockey Club was a gambling hall called the Flamingo Club. When police weren't raiding the place, the club was filled with high rollers placing bets. Legend has it Marilyn Monroe once threw dice in the club's back room with Frank Sinatra.

"I get choked up thinking about what has happened here," Leist says, "But everything has it's time limit."

Since Leist started booking bands into the club, with the blessings of owner Hallman "Shorty" Mincey, the Jockey Club has played host to the stars of  punkdom including the Ramones, the Violent Femmes, the LeRoi Brothers, the Vibrators, the Del Lords, Husker Du, the Cramps, Johnny Thunder, D.O.A., the Damned, and, on two nights of their farewell tour of 1985, the Dead Kennedys.