Few venues epitomized the passion of live music like small, scrappy all-ages venue Chain Reaction. With an interior covered with band stickers and T-shirts and a cramped, enclosed alley with walls covered in gum and graffiti, the Anaheim venue on Lincoln Avenue spent nearly 30 years as a staple for punk, ska, hardcore, emo and more that helped put OC on the map for generations of local music fans.
This Friday marks the final shows at the venue, which OC Weekly once referred to as “the CBGBs of the West Coast”.Since 1996, Chain fostered breakout bands like Touché Amoré, Atreyu, Thrice, Throwdown and Eighteen Visions. Meanwhile it also became a must-stop venue for touring bands like Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, Yellowcard, My Chemical Romance and The Used.
But after so many years of slowly waning attendance numbers, and a major hit from the COVID-19 pandemic, Chain Reaction began to sink. Unfortunately, even the concession of adding a bar to the longtime dry venue wasn’t enough to keep the club profitable, and they made the last-minute announcement via Instagram last week:
“This call wasn’t made quickly. We wrestled with it and have ultimately made the decision to close our doors. We want to thank every band, fan and attendee of our shows. We want to thank the scene that supported us for almost three decades. We want to thank you for the friendships and memories made in our special club. Thank you for supporting us through the years and when we needed it most. CHAIN REACTION FOREVER.”
The closing of a staple in one of the biggest alternative music communities in the country is a symbol of a dismal state of affairs for a once-thriving scene.
“It’s kind of ironic that Chain’s last show will be on my 68th birthday,” Tim Hill, who founded the Anaheim club in 1996, told The Times. Hill, who now lives in Oregon, moved to Villa Park on the north end of Orange County in 1996 from his hometown of Maywood a few months before opening the venue. At the time he owned and operated a successful automotive electrical company that gave him financial freedom to try his hand at the live music business.
In 1996, he loaned $10,000 to a friend named Charlie Meloncamp to open a concert space in Anaheim in exchange for 10% of the revenue, but it was only a couple months before his friend abandoned ship.
“Charlie was just a guy who had good ideas, and I was the business guy,” Hill said. “Even though it was his idea to open the place, he was the one that decided he didn’t want to do it anymore because he realized it wasn’t going to make money. But I didn’t care because I already had money, so it could operate at a loss for a long time and I didn’t need to worry about it.”
The club’s first concert was Labor Day weekend in 1996 under the original name of Public Storage Coffee Lounge, with a stage that at the time was only 1 foot tall.
“Unfortunately, Charlie had forgotten to get a live entertainment license before the event and the city came in and shut it down, kicking everyone out about an hour into the show, I think after the first or second band. We gave everyone a voucher for the next show so that way they didn’t feel like they got ripped off,” Hill said.
The next several months were a painstaking process to procure the necessary permits for a live all-ages venue.
“The location used to be a bar that got shut down because someone got shot in there and the building was red tagged by the city of Anaheim, so the old conditional use permit was taken away and we had to totally start from scratch,” Hill said. “I had to go in front of City Council to speak a couple times, put flower beds in the parking lot, change the number of parking spots, put in a handicap spot, comply with the signage rules out front, sign tons of forms, etc.” That also included getting Anaheim’s police chief at the time to sign off on the venue’s conditional use permit, Hill said.
“It was a big deal. I mean just think about it, you’re gonna have a bunch of underage teenagers come to a concert? All kinds of things can go wrong.” But Hill realized the need for an all-ages venue in Orange County. “It was so important for there to be a place like this for all those kids to go.”
Hill worked the box office every single event after his day job, and as word of the all-ages haven spread, the club, which was operating at a loss, turned into an overnight success story.
“Chain started making pretty good money. I had figured out a good system,” Hill said. “When the punk and hardcore bands started coming in — Throwdown, Eighteen Visions — they would go to Showcase Theater and sell the place out, but the guy would only pay them 200 bucks or so. I figured, whatever came in through the door, I would subtract my staff, and whatever was left over, the band would get 60% or so. So basically if people come to see you, you’re getting paid a lot of money. They were smaller bands but the scene was way better. Pretty much every show would sell out. We would be having shows three times a week back then. Sometimes five times a week. Punk shows, ska, hardcore, emo.”
Hill credits the long-term success to providing the scene with a safe space for teenagers to call their headquarters.
“I was absolutely committed to no bar. I just thought it was so cool to have a place that kids could go. Parents would talk to me all the time because they were worried about their 14-year-old child going to a concert by themselves. I would tell them, ‘Just come in with your kid, sit in the back during the show, and decide for yourself if your child can come back.’”
What followed were years of countless packed-house nights, a Rolling Stone Magazine writeup in 1999, “secret shows” for bands like the Offspring, New Found Glory and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong’s side project Pinhead Gunpowder, and occasional celebrity drop-ins.
“I don’t remember the first time I saw him but Jason Schwartzman used to come in all the time,” Hill said. “He actually played there once with his band Phantom Planet. I smoked a cigar with Gary Busey in the parking lot one night when he had come to a show… Oh, and Billy Ray Cyrus and his wife came once, too. His son is in a band that played there several times and they came through the back door to watch them. Honestly, there were a lot of times I could have sold Chain Reaction for a lot of money, but I wanted to make sure it kept going the way it was. That’s why I sold it to Andy [Serrao].”
Andy Serrao had been one of the booking agents for Chain Reaction since 2006. In 2015 Tim sold the club to him and retired to his current home in Oregon.
“We had been doing it for such a long time already. Keep in mind, most of those years I was working 18-hour days, going straight to Chain to work the box office and I would stay until all the kids would leave anywhere between midnight to 1 a.m. and I had to get up and be at work at 7 in the morning the next day. Andy was one of the guys who booked local bands for us for a long time. One day I just asked him if he wanted to buy Chain and we worked out a deal. It was pretty simple.”
Hardcore band Touché Amoré played a dozen shows at Chain Reaction from 2009 to 2019, including their first ever headlining set with Joyce Manor opening in May 2010, so lead singer Jeremy Bolm is as good as any when it comes to a reliable source on the subject.
“Just like with most venues, you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I actually keep a book of every ticket stub for every show I’ve ever been to, so I still have the stub from the first time I ever went to Chain. It was Sept. 22, 2001. The bands were Eighteen Visions and Taken.”
Right before the COVID-19 lockdown, Touché Amoré played what would be their final stop at Chain Reaction on tour for the 10th anniversary of their first record, “…To the Beat of a Dead Horse.”
“We knew for the West Coast, we had to do the obvious three when it comes to what people think about when they think about legendary venues on the West Coast: Che Cafe, Gilman and Chain,” Bolm said.
Since announcing the demise of the location, people from all states and even other countries have been broadcasting their heartbreak online on forums like Reddit.
“I’m from San Diego so Chain was a staple. My husband is from upstate NY and told me when he was a kid his dream was to play a show at Chain,” one Reddit user commented.
“I’m all the way in Florida and have never been anywhere near SoCal and even I know how legendary that venue is. RIP to a real one,” lamented another.
Greg Katz from the band Cheekface grew up in Irvine and put into words exactly how formative Chain Reaction was for his identity in the scene.
“Chain taught me how to love independent music. It taught me how to be part of an indie scene. I learned to love local bands and to support touring bands. The t-shirts on the wall were a kind of road map to other bands you might like. The back alley outside of the venue crystalized a lot of my long term friendships.
“It’s really sad that it’s leaving Orange County without an obvious replacement. And it probably signals the end of an era for support of true independent music in OC. Of course there are other venues, but there is not another Chain Reaction.”
The post ‘Chain Reaction Forever’: OC’s all-ages haven for punk, ska and hardcore closes its doors appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
