10 Spankings For RGRS

Rubber Gloves kicks off a two night celebration this evening to commemorate their 10th anniversary. They’ve had a great run, filling the considerable void left after The Argo closed and writing their own history with the kind of quirks and humbling predicaments that endear a venue to people like us. The free festivities continue tomorrow night and are making the Weekender a real bitch.

To mark the occasion, we invited some locals to share some of their experiences at Rubber Gloves. Several responded with some great stories.

Peter Schmidt:

i'm sure i'm a little older than you guys and the drive to Denton has gotten a little less appealing with each passing year so i'm afraid i haven't been out to Rubber Gloves in quite a while.

but i have seen some great shows there. Enon, Melt-Banana , Ted Leo (minus one Pharmacist that night for some reason)... even Trail of Dead managed to impress the first time i saw them there. and i don't really care for Low but hearing them duet with the passing train was something special. tons more but the recall isn't what it used to be.

as far as shows that i've played there, two stand out:

1) Rock Lottery, i'm guessing about 8 or 9 years ago. i can't remember the names of everyone in my band (Joe Butcher for sure though) or even the name that we chose for the band but i do remember that by about 2 o'clock that afternoon i was seriously regretting my decision to participate. the rehearsal was sucking and i was preparing myself for major embarrassment. but as practice time was winding down we mysteriously started to gel. the songs were pure noise but a pretty rockin' noise. at show time everyone actually remember their parts, we played better than we had all day and we seemed to go over with the crowd. my favorite part though was after about 15 minutes of atonal discord we somehow managed to pull off a semi-credible version of Miles Davis' `Round Midnight. in my memory at least, the crowd got very quiet and we achieved a couple of minutes that approached genuine beauty. one of my favorite music memories bar none.

2) Four or five years ago The New Year (with whom i play guitar but don't sing) started a week long tour at Rubber Gloves. the band all live in different parts of the country and we were glad to have a show in familiar territory before we headed out to the west coast. we had two days of practice before the tour and on the second Matt, the main singer, lost his voice. we debated canceling the Rubber Gloves show and just starting the tour in New Mexico but eventually we decided to heavy-up the set with songs that Bubba sang and have a couple of us who didn't normally sing (in the New Year anyway) tackle a few of Matt's songs. the show must go on and all that ya know. now i've been in the New Year since the beginning of the band and i've known the Kadane brothers since the very early 90's but i am still a HUGE fan of the Kadane brothers songs. so it was pretty surreal for me to sing my favorite New Year song "Newness Ends" on the Rubber Gloves stage while Matt just sat back and played guitar. i was still trying to memorize the lyrics and trying to think of excuses to not sing until the minute we went on. it's a testament to the Kadanes strong writing that even my poor voice couldn't do too much damage to the song.

Shiny Around the Edges:

What sums up RGRS best for us is when Heather took a chance on us promoting one of our first shows a few years back. We invited our friends The Hex to come down from Oklahoma City for a show as they had just set up this really successful one for us up there. Unfortunately, despite a ton of promoting, the resulting turnout for our show was roughly eight people, maybe a few more... maybe a few less. The Hex were great, but it was a real downer that not many people were there to see it. Jen and I felt horrible at the close of the evening because Heather (and Brett, Josh, and all the others involved in RGRS) took a chance on us, and, well... eight people does not pay the rent, much less the lights, A/C, etc. Despite the poor turnout, Heather came to us and expressed her thanks for putting the evening together, and then said how bummed she was that more people didn’t show up for a show she liked. We were amazed. Since then, we have worked with Heather, Brett, and Josh to put together evenings at RGRS that have hopefully helped to continue the venue’s legacy as an indie-rock corner bar that takes risks and helps to develop local artists. For this, we are ever thankful to the kind folks at RGRS - past, present, and future.

Of course, there is also the time we were playing with a band called Les Masseurs Du Rock. For some reason, a wheelbarrow appeared, and as this was back when they had the Big Ass Beer plastic cups all the time, we all were well on our respective ways to being fairly loaded halfway through the evening. Hijinks ensued and everyone had wheelbarrow rides through the bar while slurring French obscenities in faux accents until they politely kicked us all out at some point past 2 AM.


Aaron from Tame Tame and Quiet :

My top five favorite memories of Rubber Gloves:

5) My first two visits there consisted of some combination of these bands, playing on the outdoor stage. My introduction to Denton's live music scene. I think it was:

The Gunga Din Royal Trux Jetscreamer Mandarin Low (a train went by at some point and drowned them out beautifully, and they kept playing)
Hot Water Music (some guy hung from the rafters taking photos throughout the show)

4) The Boy Division reunion show with Hogpig. Security escorts with Mag-Lights led the Boys through a crazy throng of fans to woo everyone in the sexy way that only they can.

3) Security Breach!!!
a) Finding out what sort of hand markings RGRS was giving for a sold out Modest Mouse show. Going to the grocery store for orange highlighters to put an "X" on my hand and sneak in. Very sweaty, very packed, very awesome.
b) Driving my ass out to Denton to see a sold out Unwound show. No chance of sneaking in, so we partially scaled the back fence, held ourselves up, and watched and listened through the opened back door. Incredible!

2) The Microphones/Calvin Johnson/Get The Hell Out Of The Way Of The Volcano (now the much more succinct, The Blow):

This show had theatrics (I got to be a blood covered plane crash victim), costumes, song trading (including the greatest cover of Beat Happening's "Grave Digger Blues" by The Blow), and when Phil Elvrum took over for a while and led everyone present into the parking lot out back for a campfire sing-along, everything was going well. Then a seemingly endless train rolled by, but the only visible cargo was a continuous series of tanks, one after another. The songs stopped. Everyone just turned and stared. When it had passed, though everyone felt a little taken aback by the absurd surrealism of what we just saw, it was back to what we were originally there for. To hear songs. But that image really stood out to me. Songs being sung out into the night for no one in particular, with a succession of tanks floating by.

1) Lightning Bolt/Yeti...I don't know how long ago:

I had heard about the greatness of Lightning Bolt from a friend, so with Fort Worth greats Yeti opening, it was an easy sell. As Yeti performed, their overpowering drone apparently made me oblivious to the fact that Lightning Bolt was setting up on the floor beside me. As Yeti's set faded out, a rumbling erupted from the floor beside me, and I turned to see a circle forming around where LB had clandestinely set up. All I saw once they launched into their first song was a wall of Dentonites, densely packed and bouncing like I've never seen Denton kids bounce. My wife and I repositioned ourselves to stand, first up on the stage, then we moved up to stand on the merch booth to get a better view. It was this night in particular that I saw evidence of life and excitement present in live music again.


Here's Chris from The Baptist Generals:

Hmm --recollections and ruminations -- a list:

1. Since the demise of the Argo there wasn't really a place for indie or punk music for quite a while. There were house shows, but there wasn't a place for bigger touring bands to play. There were some businesses in Denton that helped pick up the slack giving local bands places to play but they weren't spaces best set up for music. Other than that you had to tread your way into Rick's (now the Inferno)--which was fratboy hell most nights except on the occasions when they would book something alright. I remember this period being really dark for music in Denton. How could Denton begin to claim a scene when it couldn't even support a respectable alternative venue?

2. A very early memory of what would later become the show room: Jason Wortham and his wife Memory were renting this old concrete factory to live in. I'd been hired by Slobberbone's label to produce a promotional video for them. I'd just gotten to know Jason and Memory and they let us use that room to shoot some fancy footage of the band practicing. That room was fucked up. Conduit ran everywhere up and down and across the cinder block walls. There were power boxes, odd gauge boxes and meter boxes everywhere, yet there was no power to tap. Still, I was still worried I was going to get fried. We all figured it had been a machine room. The whole point of me explaining all this is if Jason had told me he was going to turn that place into a room for shows I think I would have laughed at him in his face. The room needed lots of work.

3. The first show I went to in there was a Good/Bad Event. Baboon played on the floor. I remember it was this room without a stage and there was a glass-front coca-cola fridge and you had to bring your own beer and you could keep it cold in there. The room kind of felt like a church basement.

4. My favorite shows in no order:
Will Oldham on the Patio. I finally got to see that freak.

The night the Riverboat Gamblers played and Woebe did a ceiling walk and effectively disconnected a gas line on the wall. Everyone got out of the room, real, real quick.

The first time Jonathan Richman played--I think it was a Valentine's day show. The room was packed out but people got very, very quiet.

The night Lil' Grizzly played their last show. The place was packed and everyone was in a sad but familial mood.

From the hassles with getting the drink licenses, to the dynamic, explosive fallout of the different personalities that have gone through that place, man I'm glad Rubber Gloves has weathered all that. When that little club started it was still questionable whether one live independent music venue could survive in Denton. Ten years later it appears on better nights Denton could support 3 or 4 venues of the type. This is no knock against Denton's other established venues, but Gloves has an identity that would be difficult for any other venue in town to come close to touching. The place embodies the rich culture of original music here. It has remained scrappy, and hungry, and low-rent. Affordable and approachable. Best of all--in all the club's ups and downs Gloves has stayed young and supportive of the new bands that emerge in town each year. Maintaining that kind of relevance has got to be the best kind of suspended animation for a local music venue, and Rubber Gloves has oozed with that kind of relevance for so, so many years, simply because it has had to live so lean for so many years. Here's to 10 more reasonably lean and healthy years.

As for me (Wildcat), I used to love the open-mic big-ass-beer nights. I spent a lot of time in Denton during college summers and big-ass-beer night is the reason I now like to drink beer out of plastic cups even when I’m at home. The hands-down most peculiar memory I have is, ironically, characteristically typical of the kind RGRS has churned out over the past 10 years: watching Will Oldham pause mid-show to call someone—a friend or relative?—with a speaker phone on the old outdoor stage. The person he called just got out of jail, so the audience was treated to this phone call in which Oldham congratulated some guy on his first night out of jail.