Great Scott
From its famed – and equally sticky – black-and-white tiled floor to the dangerous-looking bars and pipes hanging down from its ceiling, Great Scott in Boston’s Allston neighborhood was a music venue like none other in the area for 44 years. Known for its inclusive, welcoming vibe and ability to draw music lovers and artists of every stripe, it stood as a beacon where one could hear all manner of up-and-coming bands, often just before they hit the proverbial big time. When it closed in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, metaphorical shock waves even greater than the sound that had prompted many noise complaints rippled far beyond the neighborhood.
Originally called Brandy’s II, the second of three in the Brandy’s brand, the club sat beneath an apartment block on the corner of Commonwealth Ave. and Harvard Ave.; Frank Strenk bought the place in 1976 and renamed it Great Scott. It wasn’t specifically a blues joint during its first decade, but a number of established local and national blues acts appeared in the early ‘80s including Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, Sugar Ray & The Bluetones and Roomful of Blues pianist/organist Ron Levy. For the bulk of the ’80s, its convenient location between Boston University and Boston College resulted in it being mostly a college bar, with a popular deejay spinning on Wednesdays and a jam band called The Candles on Thursdays covering mostly Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead tunes.
REFOCUS, NEW DIRECTION
Great Scott transformed into a very different kind of live-music space in the ’90s, however, which had a lot to do with Tim Philbin, who came on board as a doorman in 1987 and later worked as a bartender. He became general manager in 1996 after returning to the club following a brief absence, even though he’s said that he wasn’t particularly interested in staying in the nightclub business. “I needed some quick money, so I picked up some bar shifts,” he told Adam 12 of WBUR in 2020. “Within a couple of weeks, the GM left and the owner, Frank Strenk, asked me to take his place.” In an effort to attract more customers, especially during weekdays, soon after taking the reins Philbin started “Ladies/’80s” night, which ran on Wednesdays and featured a deejay mixing Top 40 tunes with heavy metal bangers. Around 1996, when management dropped their previous booking agent, Philbin took on that role, too, which was the start of a sea change at the club.
“This was the beginning of the next transformation,” he told WBUR’s Adam 12. “It was a tough phase, as I think we were trying to be too many things to too many people. College kids didn’t want to go to the bar with all the tattooed kids and those kids didn’t want to be anywhere near the college kids. This is where we had to make the biggest choice in Great Scott history: backward to college bar or forward to music venue.” Philbin credits the club’s first production manager and sound engineer, Ben Karnavas, and promotion director, Ben Sisto, for driving the necessary changes toward the venue’s long-term success. Carl Lavin joined the team in May 2003 as booking agent and immediately recognized that the 240-capacity space had all the necessary elements to become a one-of-a kind live-music venue.
GROWING POPULARITY, WELCOMING VIBE
As an example of Great Scott’s successful shift of focus, after a local indie dance night called simply and in lower case “the pill” lost its venue at the Upstairs Lounge on Causeway Street in about 1997, Lavin helped deejay Michael Marotta find a new home for it at Great Scott. “It was a massive success right out of the gate, and allowed us to host bands as well as spin the modern indie dance party that the pill would be known for during that time,” Marotta told WBUR’s Adam 12. “[It] really helped create a sound for the pill that became popular enough to fill 200-plus people every Friday night. It was a dance party where literally everyone danced, and it was dark and shadowy and before the modern onslaught of social media documentation, so things likely happened on that dance floor that were probably never spoken of after the fact.”
By the turn of the century, Great Scott had become known for hosting shows of all sorts, from indie, rock, punk and hip-hop to just about everything else. In 2017, Consequence of Sound ranked it as #8 in its “100 Greatest Live Venues in America” list, saying “Great Scott takes quality booking, unassuming intimacy, and a dash of comically out-of-place crowdsurfing and turns it into something too special to describe. It’s a group of music obsessives and live show veterans that are willing to chat (even if they don’t know you), ready to welcome you to the family (even if you’re not local), and know the songs playing over the loudspeaker between sets (just kidding, only the sound guy seems to know that answer).” According to Cameron Keiber, formerly of The Beatings and now of Eldridge Rodriguez, Great Scott booked “all kinds of music and events and they weren’t afraid to host bills that they knew would lose money on the night. It seemed like it wasn’t about putting asses in seats but rather about supporting interesting acts and I think that’s important for a scene to flourish.”
That unique, “everybody’s welcome” booking approach included a nearly 10-year residency by Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), a queer dance party night that began in 2011 at the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain, and moved to Great Scott about a year later. “We’ve had a perfect home at Great Scott because they were a match made in Allston,” said deejay Colby Drasher of the new location. “The orientationally neutral (not gay) centralized locale of grungy Great Scott paired with DADT’s punk energy and unconventional aesthetic. Great Scott became a safe space for DADT to thrive, enabling tens of thousands of individuals who were previously from a fractured queer community to at last come together.”
MEMORIES: INTERIOR, ROSTER, NOTABLE APPEARANCES
Memories of Great Scott include the eclectic details that both annoyed and endeared themselves to customers who entered beneath the green fabric awning that proclaimed the name of the club. Between the aforementioned floor and ceilings there was a wood-paneled bar and a knee-height raised platform of a stage that led to many a banged shin. The lighting was dim, and Philbin referred to the makeshift sound system as “the Millennium Falcon.”
As Consequence of Sound lovingly described the place, “Bathrooms are cramped, but they’re cleaned frequently. It gets stuffy in summer, but a giant AC above the crowd maintains sweat control. Shows are earplug-worthy loud, but the sound crew prevents highs from getting drowned out.” Stickers for bands, as at any revered dive bar, covered every available surface, and above it all, a bust of Elvis presided over the festivities. “Because the bar and the music were in the same room and there was no green room, you had to see and spend time with the night’s talent,” Cameron Keiber says, describing conversations he was able to have with acts he liked “because there was nowhere for them to escape to in the club.”
According to frequent patron Jean Powers, the club’s roster was a major part of its success. “Carl was always right ahead of the curve in terms of band popularity, so bands would be booked there right before they broke and sometimes would end up playing there after becoming wildly popular,” she said. The number of acts that performed on Great Scott’s knee-high stage is dizzyingly long and spans a broad spectrum of genres, but many were based in Boston such as Boston Music Award winners Sidney Gish and Palehound. A lot of the indie rock bands who played also hailed from the one shore of the Charles River or the other, like Hallelujah the Hills, Horse Jumper of Love, and Pile.
Other New England-rooted rock acts included Vermont-based Humanwine, Connecticut’s MGMT and Weakened Friends out of Portland, Maine. National and international acts such as Brendon Benson of The Raconteurs, Titus Andronicus and Wolf Alice also appeared, as did The Sheila Devine’s frontman Aaron Perrino (in a solo set) and New York City-based metal band Mutoid Man. Rap and hip-hop shows included ones by Jack Harlow and local rapper Oompa and Phoebe Bridgers, a frequent collaborator with Taylor Swift, SZA and Kid Cudi, also graced the stage, along with Grammy-winner Charlie Xcx and Australian art punk/experimental supergroup Tropical Fuck Storm. Clairo, who grew up in Carlisle, Massachusetts, started posting music online in 2011 when she was 13, played at Great Scott later in her teens and has since gained international acclaim.
2020 CLOSING, 2026 REOPENING
Sadly for the throngs of people who appreciated Great Scott, the 2020/’21 Covid shutdowns, along with the cost of rent and a number of noise complaints, forced Great Scott to announce its closing in October 2020. Days later, someone placed a hand-made cardboard sign on the door declaring, “RIP to Boston’s Best Venue, Killed By The Virus: Capitalism.” Tributes appeared from every corner of the city lamenting the shuttering as fans and performers alike mourned the loss of a vibrant hub that brought the city together. Some 25,000 people signed a petition to prevent the closure, to no avail, and not long after, in July 2021, owner Frank Strenk died at age 77.
But, as optimists say. hope springs eternal: In July 2024, GBH and other media outlets reported that a crowdfunding campaign Levin had begun to revive Great Scott had brought in more than $300,000. They added that thanks to a deal between Lavin, Redefined CEO and Boston Music Awards producer Paul Armstrong and real estate developer Jordan Warshaw of the Noannet Group, the venue will reopen in 2026 just two blocks from the original location, along with its sister club O’Brien’s. Great Scott will own the lease for the 375-capacity space and, according to Lavin, the vibe will remain authentic, but the sound system will be state of the art.
(by John Radosta)
Lifelong Boston resident John Radosta is the co-author (with Keith Nainby) of Bob Dylan in Performance: Song, Stage, and Screen (Lexington, 2019) and has written numerous articles about Dylan and Woody Guthrie for a variety of publications.
