They were wild times.
Once standing at the corner of 21st and South Street was the tiny punk rock cultural phenomenon of a concert venue known as the Hot Club, which attracted almost every punk rock and new wave band in the late 1970s. It gave young local music lovers — some too young — their first glimpse of Elvis Costello, the Misfits and Iggy Pop before those musicians launched into stardom.
Jay Schwartz, a Rhawnhurst native who has lived in South Philly for the last decade, was there to capture it all with his Nikon camera.
“I was under drinking age when I started working but I was on the guest list as press,” Schwartz recalled. “I later found out they let 16-year-olds in that I later became friends with.”
Schwartz had started his love of photography as part of the school newspaper staff at Northeast High School before pursuing journalism at Temple University and reporting for his college paper. It was at that time he began covering shows at the Hot Club for the New York Rocker, which was a leading periodical magazine that documented the punk rock explosion in the United States.
Schwartz’s photos are now on view and for sale at the SPACE Art Gallery at 749 S. 8th St. through May 31. There are more than 60 of his images sprawling the beautiful walls of the quaint South Philly gallery.
“They were willing to do it,” Schwartz said with a dry laugh. “But I’m happy how it all worked out. I’ve been meaning to do this for eight years.”
Schwartz’s mission to share his work hit a few obstacles, including an agreement with the recently closed University of the Arts.
“We set the date for the opening reception, which would have been one year earlier,” Schwartz said. “The very next day, the news emerged that the University of the Arts was closing forever. So that didn’t happen, needless to say. A friend photographer told me about this place and they were interested and here we are.”
The SPACE Art Galley’s walls are filled with raw black and white images of musicians who performed at local venues like Deborah Harry of Blondie, the Ramones, Talking Heads, The Dead Boys, Devo and the B-52’s. Some were taken at larger venues like the Tower Theater. Others were in the cramped, smokey stages of the Hot Club, where Schwartz later worked as the club’s publicist. With that access, he was able to capture incredibly raw candid photos that ventured past the instruments and microphones and behind the scenes of the punk rockers.
“It’s exciting,” Schwartz said. “A lot of the pictures I never saw enlarged before. I just saw them on contact sheets. All these pictures were taken with the idea that they were going to be printed in a magazine somewhere. Most of them never were.”
Silver gelatin prints were printed by Dale McCarthy and arranged neatly on the white walls of the SPACE Art Gallery while Schwartz told stories of his experiences covering Philly’s punk rock infusion. It’s local music history on the small stage before the sellout arenas.
“If you were at these shows, you were in on something pretty early,” Schwartz said. “It was almost like a secret club. Probably 100 or 200 people in the Delaware Valley came to these shows.”
Schwartz captured more than 75 influential bands. His raw exclusive photos are being revealed to the public for the first time. Schwartz gave a speech at an artists reception at SPACE Art Gallery on May 3 in front of music and art lovers, many who were reliving those days at the Hot Club. Although it was tough to spot club goers themselves in Schwartz’s photos.
“I regret that I only shot musicians and I didn’t really shoot the scene around it,” Schwartz said. “A lot of the press at the time was shooting pictures of crazy-looking punk rock fans and even though I didn’t look like that, I considered myself part of that world and I didn’t want to treat that as a freak show. I was into the music so I mostly showed musicians.”
