Club Soda remains refreshing
THREE DECADES, two locations, one pillar of our entertainment scene: The venue’s co-owners reflect on their gambles and payoffs
With three decades of shows under your belt, and a venue that maintains a booking rate somewhere north of 250 nights a year, you’ll never be able to remember everything.
That explains why Rubin Fogel, Michel Sabourin and Martin Després, the three co-owners of Club Soda, all drew blanks on certain questions when they recently sat down together in the club to reminisce about its history for a Gazette interview.
What was the last show at the old Parc Ave. location? They couldn’t remember, but Gazette files say it was a Bar Mitzvah show during the 1999 Just for Laughs festival.
And who was playing when David Bowie turned up in the audience? No one is certain.
More subjective matters were up for discussion, too. If they were opening the place now, would they still call it Club Soda? At least one of them was not so sure.
But such lapses were few. Club Soda — which would surely be at or near the top of many a Montreal fan’s favourite-venue list — is 30, and memories were flowing like cold beers on a good night in the room.
“We never thought (this anniversary year) would happen,” Sabourin said. “(When we started) I never thought Club Soda would be a living for me.”
It all began with Després, a former roadie for Beau Dommage and a DJ at the Pleine Lune bar, who opened the 450-capacity venue in a former reception hall over a Parc Ave. carpet store. (It later became the Kola Note and is now the Cabaret Mile End.)
Després had three partners at the time: television host Guy Gosselin, Joseph Martellino and filmmaker André Gagnon, all of whom later sold their shares. The idea for the name of the club came from a friend, Després said.
In the Montreal of 1982, the concept of a stand-alone musical event in a club, where people would order drinks and watch, was still in its infancy. The template, outside of concert halls, was more along the lines of live acts doing several sets a night in bars. The shortlived Club Montréal, which had opened in June 1980, was reborn as the Spectrum the same year Club Soda opened. Métropolis, as we know it, was years in the future.
According to Després, the live Montreal music scene was awakening from a discoinduced slumber, and his hope was to feature cover bands. The problem, he said, was that there were only two decent ones in the province: Spectacle and Hollywood and Vine. A slump in the number of Quebec musicians able to draw crowds had yet to end, he said.
So although the first big show presented was by the late singer George Thurston, better known as Boule Noire, and there were local rockers in battle-of-the-bands shows, comedy became the ordre du jour in the earliest days. Les Lundis des Ha! Ha!, presided over by comics Ding et Dong, blended American-style stand-up comedy, improv and a more Québécois monologue approach. The format was a runaway success, drawing lineups outside the club.
But as the decade went on, local comedians gravitated to larger venues and music became a more significant component of the schedule. Enter Sabourin, who had started in 1973 as a promoter at Café Campus, and Fogel, who had begun to produce shows in 1975. Partners in promoting rock concerts since 1977, they joined Després in 1985.
What they found were ongoing complaints from neighbours growing increasingly impatient with the noise and bass-generated vibrations shaking the plaster off their walls. But the gods were music lovers: the tenant most affected lived in an apartment adjoining the stage on the north side of the club. He was a musician and a fan.
“We were so afraid he would move that we paid his rent when he was not able,” Sabourin said, laughing. “We wanted to make sure he never moved out of his apartment.” And needless to say, Després added, their new friend had a permanent pass to all Club Soda shows.
Reinforcing the wall with 36 inches of material brought them within the legal limits.
Fogel still remembers a 1983 show by Robert Palmer as the gold standard in the old location.
“It was about 118 degrees,” he said.
“The entire clientele was practically naked,” Després added, “except for Robert, who was in a double-breasted suit and sang for two hours without undoing his tie or removing a thing.”
“After that, any time we had a great show, until the day we closed in 1999, it was always, ‘That was the best show since Robert Palmer,’ ” Fogel said.
By 1995, the partners were ready to create fresh benchmarks in a new place. They no longer felt they were in the right spot. The club was not located near a métro station and was becoming too cramped for the stature of many headliners. They started planning a move.
An early contender was the site on the Main now occupied by the Excentris cinema, but businessman Daniel Langlois exercised an option, which put paid to the idea.
The original Club Soda closed July 25, 1999; the venue reopened in March 2000 on St. Laurent Blvd., below Ste. Catherine St., with a $3.5-million facelift. The building had once housed the Crystal Theatre and the New Orleans club and, according to Fogel, a pharmacy, a flea market and a bordello. The new spot was conveniently close to the St. Laurent métro and other arts venues like Place des Arts, Théâtre du nouveau monde and Métropolis — but it made Després anxious.
“I was going there from my home in Plateau Mont-Royal each morning,” he said. “At 8 a.m., you had junkies and prostitutes, so imagine at night. I wondered whether customers would come. And I was afraid.”
“It was the biggest gamble we ever took in our lives,” Sabourin said. Apart from the environment, the three were worried about the room: long, narrow and shoe boxlike. Architect Luc Laporte was brought in to smooth out the rough edges of the place, with its capacity of 550 for a seated event and just under 1,000 for a standing one.
Seats on the side brought audience and performer together, while the sound — in spite of the parallel walls, generally not conducive to great acoustics — was honed to near-perfection. None of the three, however, can quite explain the quality of the sound.
Among the earliest concerts in the new digs was an April 1 performance by Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Sabourin had been waiting for what he called “the ghosts” of the old club to move into the new location. He cautiously concluded that they had arrived with a comedy performance the previous night in the series Du Soda au Soda: L’humour déménage. With the Jones show, however, he was certain. “We said, ‘OK, we’ve got a room!’ ” he remembered.
Maintaining a long-running club is no easy task. The field is marked by tombstones: the Spectrum, Cabaret Juste pour rire, La Brique and the Medley are only a few that come immediately to mind.
Club Soda — which has, historically, done great business during the city’s many yearly festivals — now takes its place as an important part of the Quartier des spectacles project.
But nothing is a given. Some promoters, Sabourin said, are chasing out-of-city migration, much of it by francophones, and opening venues in the suburbs. As a result, downtown attendance at some types of shows, notably events showcasing francophone music and humour, has been driven down, he said. Fogel expressed bewilderment over what seems to be a growing reluctance by people to come into the downtown core for entertainment from areas like the West Island.
But for now, the three are looking back at the good times, not fretting about the future.
Sabourin said his greatest satisfaction has come from the club still being here and hearing people sing its praises after three decades. For Després, who said he misses few shows there, “each night is a surprise. That’s why I’m still here.”
Fogel spoke of the club’s reputation and the respect it has enjoyed f rom artists, technicians and music lovers. But it was while praising architect Laporte’s vision that he hit on a greater truth that might speak for a larger number of concertgoers.
“When you walk into this place, it feels good,” Fogel said.