Scenes From a Punk Rock and Storytelling Show, for Deaf People

At its best, punk rock relies on an admixture of velocity, attitude and volume — which is exactly what made last night’s Deaf Club event a smash success. The show, held at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, Queens, a former door factory turned interdisciplinary arts space, was curated by the Los Angeles-based artist Alison O’Daniel who, herself, is hard of hearing. The event was a live extension of O’Daniel’s “The Tuba Thieves” (currently a part of her “Room Tone” exhibition) — a film that explores the events surrounding an unlikely series of tuba thefts in Los Angeles schools.

One portion, however, also recreates a performance in the Deaf Club, a now-defunct social club for San Francisco’s deaf community that hosted punk shows in 1979. As the story goes, Robert Hanrahan, the manager for the punk band the Offs, was walking by it, saw a sign reading “The Deaf Club” and thought it was a cool, unexpected name for a concert venue. After realizing his mistake, he asked if his band could play — a message he originally wrote on a napkin. “I’m not a punk historian,” said O’Daniel. “My interest comes more from the deaf community. It’s the meeting of two totally disenfranchised communities — it’s really beautiful.” Eventually, bands including Dead Kennedys and Pink Section would record albums at the venue, forever sanctifying it in punk lore. (A core irony of the story, and also fittingly punk, was that the shows eventually came to a halt because of noise complaints.)

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