For any suburban Connecticut resident too young to remember the 1980s (myself included,) the thought of the area ever being home to a hardcore punk club is downright stunning. Should time travel become a reality someday, however, all local punks should set their dials to that era. They’ll be in for the treat of their lives with a staggering number of shows at the Anthrax.
As former patron Chris Daily describes in his information-packed book Everybody’s Scene: The Story of Connecticut’s Anthrax Club (Butter Goose Press, 2009,) brothers Brian and Shaun Sheridan founded the club in a rough part of Stamford in 1982. The name “Anthrax” came from the Gang of Four song “Love Like Anthrax.” Upon checking a dictionary to learn that the word meant “highly contagious and infectious,” the brothers knew that it fit perfectly because, as Brian says in the book, “we figured film, art and music could be contagious too; that’s the way I always looked at it. And it really sounded good on the tongue.”
The very first Anthrax location only lasted for eight months due to a lack of patronage, but by May 1983, the brothers seized a new, twice-as-large location when a TV repair store only two doors down from the previous location closed. Funding came from an April 16 benefit show at the also now-defunct Bridgeport hardcore punk venue Pogo’s. The new club consisted of an art gallery on the main level with performances happening in the basement.
By 1986, the Anthrax’s owners realized that the club had outgrown its Stamford location when a planned Black Flag show went awry, causing tensions that could have incited a riot. The club moved to a much larger location at 25 Perry Avenue in Norwalk. It thrived until a combination of struggles - particularly a headache-inducing conflict brought on by a landlord who sold nearby land to a developer to build condos - led to a two-and-a-half year legal battle that the club lost in 1990. The very final show happened on Friday, November 2: Murphy’s Law, Burn and Sub Zero all performed at the bittersweet farewell.
“What's important to remember about the Anthrax is that it was strictly DIY,” says Trash American Style co-founder, former Anthrax patron and current musician Malcolm Tent. “It took a lot of sweat and elbow grease to make the place run and that's what it takes to make any venue run.” Tent knows first-hand what the DIY experience is like. His story has several key similarities to the Anthrax’s: two-and-a-half years after founding the original Brookfield-located Trash store with friend Kathy Kelly in 1986, they moved it to a larger location in Danbury; it flourished until a landlord conflict led to the loss of their storefront in 2007.
The Anthrax was a prime tour destination for a wide variety of punk bands: Sick of It All, Gorilla Biscuits, Social Distortion, Bad Brains, MDC, Reagan Youth, NOFX, Bad Religion, Gwar, The Toasters, Bouncing Souls and The Mr. T Experience are just a few of the bands who incited moshing in late-1980s Norwalk. If you see any old-school punk show photos with a zebra-pattern wall in the background, it’s a pretty sure bet that the show happened at the Anthrax.
Twenty-two years later, the location houses a string of shops. Tent advises people to never give up hope for the future, though. “Even though we no longer have the Anthrax and it can’t be replaced,” he says, “anyone with enough work ethic, desire and vision can make something similar happen again.”
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