BASEMENT TAPES
A new documentary shines a spotlight on one a gone-but-not-forgotten underground local venue.
By Crystal K. Wiebe Thursday, Oct 25 2007
For 18 months in 2005 and 2006, a certain midtown house with a crumbling foundation was the place to see awesome, freaky and occasionally awful rock and roll.
At least, that’s what I hear. People converged on the literally underground rock club called the Sleeper Cellar (at 512 West 39th Terrace) for the final time in August 2006, several months before I moved to KC.
Fortunately for those of us who never made it to the party house, there’s now a movie about it.
Most of the footage for the documentary Shameless in Kansas City was shot during the Sleeper Cellar’s final eight months. For the past year, former Cellar residents Anne Pierson and Justin Eagan have been editing the 100-plus hours down to about one hour of highlights.
If you don’t know local music, Shameless might seem like so many party shots. There’s no narrator to tie the scenes together or explain the chronology. As the DVD’s opening credits say, it’s really just a video collage of “one year in the life of a rock-and-roll house.” Bands play. People dance. Hipsters speak drunkenly into the camera.
But the concert clips offer a parade of local rockers, including Pixel Panda, Onemilliontinytinyjesuses, This Is My Condition, the Ssion, Super Black Market, the Supernauts, the Sperm and other KC and Lawrence notables.
“Everybody played there,” Pierson says.
So did a lot of nobodies. The Sleeper Cellar provided an outlet for freaks and rock experimenters who couldn’t land a gig anywhere else. Case in point: a woman on the video who wears a fishnet leotard and swings a phallic, plastic toy guitar around.
“Some of the bands were terrible,” Pierson recalls.
And some, including the touring acts, were damn good.
Trailer for the documentaryShameless in Kansas City:
Shameless features quite a few out-of-town performers, from as far away as Olympia, Washington.
Eagan says the venue’s greatest success was having nurtured a following for bands that might otherwise have skipped KC. The dingy basement first exposed metro music fans to Chicago’s Lord of the Yum Yum and Indianapolis’ Abner Trio, both of which routinely stop here now.
Although best known for its concerts, the Sleeper Cellar was also the site of flea markets and art shows. Pierson has fond memories of roommates staying up all night working on art projects. One product of such an all-nighter, a piñata in the shape of the club, gets destroyed on the DVD. “When you live in a place like that, with no amenities, and you’re young and poor, what else is there to do?” Pierson says.
Pierson is glad that they have more than memories of the time. “When you have a house like this, after it’s over and done, you think: Wouldn’t it have been great to have videotaped it all?”
At any given time, the Sleeper Cellar officially slept Eagan, Pierson and as many as four other young bohemians. Rent was cheap, but the old house didn’t stay very warm in the winter, and a strong wind — to say nothing of rock-and-roll decibels — could have shattered the windows.
In Shameless, one partier recounts waking up in the morning to a cockroach crawling across his chest. The critter was probably drawn to the garbage that Pierson and Eagan say they couldn’t stay on top of. With three to seven rock shows happening in the basement every month, no amount of cleaning was enough. The venue’s biggest monthly expense was industrial-strength trash bags.
“All I remember doing is sweeping up glass,” Eagan says.
Nor was there any such thing as privacy. “I couldn’t put my CDs or books on a shelf. Everything was in my room, locked up,” Eagan adds.
Eagan would never live at the Sleeper Cellar again. But for a while, it was home — to its official residents and to the KC scene.
(Source: justineagan)
Local Music Exploration: A look at K.C.'s local music scene by Kris Sachs
The Talon, Issue date: 11/8/05
Do you like going to local shows and getting to know the bands? Do you like paying three dollars to see a really awesome show, even when you’ve never heard of the band? Would you rather see a band play in a basement in more of a party environment than in a concert hall? If you said yes to any of these questions, I’ll tell you something…so do most of the rest of us.
Going to those big concert halls really got on my nerves when I first started going to concerts when I was 14. Being that I am 5’3, I got tossed around, punched, kicked, grabbed, pushed, and not to mention I never got any air. The crowds were enormous, the wait in line was terrible, and there was no way of even getting close to the band unless they were signing stuff…in which again, the wait was terrible. Now, despite everything you get with a big crowd, seeing a band you love is totally worth it, but on a week to week basis, I would rather go to a local show.
There are many places to have local shows-small concert halls (such as the Beaumont in Westport or The Granada in Lawrence), bars, house shows, basements, and even parks. Personally, I like the house and basement shows the best. Not only do you get a smaller, more personal crowd, but also more party-time and front row seats. Concert halls and other public places have certain restrictions.
On Wednesday, September 21st, I went to one of the greatest basement shows of my life at a place called the Sleeper Cellar. The address was around 27th and Pennsylvania, and instead of a house, this place is a 3rd floor apartment with a basement. All three floors are open to anyone at the show and entrance fee was only 4 bucks. By word of mouth, I heard that three people rented one flat each, as to have a bigger area to party, and agreed to start the Sleeper Cellar. From the look of the amount of kids there, I’m betting they easily collect $200 a night, not including the sale of…other things.
Going down into the basement, I realized where the place got its name. This place was much more like a cellar (of scariness and death) than a basement. The ceiling was very low and the walls were made of crumbling, stained brick. The atmosphere was damp and at the front of the cellar, there was just a single low watt bulb hanging from a cord in the ceiling. This place was actually really creepy, in a super awesome kind of way. The room was also filled with a lot of smoke so it was pretty hard to see. I sat down on a couch against one damp wall and watched the first band set up. From what I could see, I noticed that the band was mostly made up of heavily tattooed girls and one guy…
(ED) There was supposed to be a continutaion, but I guess that page got deleted? I think this guy had one too many, but it was one of the best shows he ever went to!. He got the address wrong by more than 10 blocks. He implied that we sold beer or drugs when in fact you all gave that to us for entry when you were broke! He also says that the place was lit by a single low watt bulb hanging from a cord. We directly installed about 6 can lights and had a host of other lights including Patrick Priddy’s disco lights with a board rigged up to our PA. Press is good anyway right?
