Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Stephen Johnston's avatar

Used to tend bar at the Zoo early 80's. So saw him alot. But when i was not and out with friends, we often sat near the front. And, i kid you not, Nancy, a friend of ours, would get a pitch of beer spilled on her every time. We always thought Charlie had picked her out, somehow. Long live 'Breathe for me Presley' and 'Met my baby at a garage sale'. RIP

Expand full comment
brent malnack.com's avatar

Roger,

I wanted to touch base. I saw your column on Charlie Burton. As a member of the Modern Day Scenics, I believe I did my first show with Charlie at the Lift Ticket lounge in 1979. We went on to do several shows with them at Saner's Lounge and the Howard Street Tavern.

When I left the music business to focus on my career, I lost touch with Charlie. But in 2017, we opened a pub / live music venue (Growler USA initially and then renamed to Mars Bar and Grill after we broke away from corporate).

The first time we had Charlie perform in 2017, he was in the middle of the song Rogue Cop when one of our servers said there was someone at a table that wanted to speak with me. I went over and the man immediately launched into a tirade about the song (he was a cop) and suggested he would never be back and would tell everyone he knew to not visit our establishment. I tried to make the free speech argument but they just walked out.

A few Charlie shows later at our place, he and I sat down to catch up a bit and I relayed the story about the cop to him. He was mortified. He apologized up and down and felt bad for hurting our business.

So that night when they played Rogue Cop, he introduced the song by saying that it was just ONE cop, not all cops and that he had many friends that were cops.

We closed down just before Covid closed businesses in Omaha. There is no way we would've survived that anyway. We bled out a bunch fighting corporate when we broke away from the franchise. We won, but were pretty much out of funds ad that point.

You mentioned in your piece that Charlie played a house show during the pandemic. That was our house. We felt bad for the bands that had nowhere to perform and we already had a studio in our basement, so we decided to add cameras and a switcher to stream the bands so they could make a few bucks. (We hosted over 600 shows at our pub in the 3 years it was open and nearly 80 shows from our home during the pandemic).

It was definitely nice seeing your name again and I have fond memories of some of our chats back in the day.

Hope all is well,

Brent Malnack

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts