FUTURE’S SO BRIGHT Punk-rockers had a lot to smile about at La Mere Vipere in 1977.

PHOTO: GAVIN MORRISON

The late ’70s punk scenes of London and New York are the stuff of legend, but Chicago lays claim to one significant punk first: America’s first punk disco, La Mere Vipere, which stood at 2132 North Halsted Street (it’s now a liquor store). Punk night at La Mere began on May 8, 1977, when a staffer from Sounds Good Records—most agree it was Mike “Sparkle” Rivers—persuaded the owners of the gay bar to let him spin some new punk wax and call it “Anarchy Night.” At first, the owners relegated punk night to Sundays, but two months later, after a popular three-day Punk-O-Rama Fest, La Mere had become a full-time deejayed punk bar for the leather-jacket and torn T-shirt set. La Mere never lost its gay clientele, though—punks and drag queens shimmied to the Damned side-by-side.

At the club, the debut of a new U.K. punk single was a big deal—a new Sex Pistols record might even draw a crowd because city record shops only imported a few dozen copies of each seven-inch. But DJs Rick Faust and Little Dougie and the club’s owner, Noe Boudreau, pushed the envelope beyond the Pistols. “It wasn’t just straight punk; [DJs at La Mere] would play reggae, they would play rockabilly, they would play the Seeds—the band from the ’60s,” notes Joe Losurdo, director of the 2007 Chicago punk doc You Weren’t There. Sonotheque’s Joe Bryl, who often spent two or three nights a week at the club, confirms La Mere was more than just a punk club. “Television’s Marquee Moon was played endlessly at La Mere. Even some of the No Wave bands were played at La Mere. There was that strange fusion. If you walked into La Mere, you might hear the latest punk single coming out, a lot of reggae dub there, you’d hear a lot of gender-bending glitter stuff that was linked to the punk era… Roxy Music, T. Rex, Bowie.” It was a winning formula that some couldn’t resist copycatting. Monica Lynch, a former La Mere bartender who organized the Punk-O-Rama festival fashion show and later became president of Tommy Boy Records during hip-hop’s heyday, often recounts the tale of three New Yorkers who visited La Mere and promptly went home to open the influential punk disco the Mudd Club in Manhattan.

La Mere loudly burst onto the punk scene, and it vanished with just as much noise. Many Chicago punks only heard of its demise when the high priestess of punk herself, Patti Smith (who’d been to the bar that week), announced the club had just burned down during her Park West concert on April 28, 1978.