Thursday, 6 December, 1979 – Madame Wong’s West, Santa Monica, United States

Madame Wong’s was a   Chinatown restaurant with a floor show originally at 949 Sun Mun Way, located in the original 1938 Rice Bowl restaurant.  After fierce initial resistance,  owner Esther Wong  became a punk rock and new wave music promoter. Polynesian dance acts weren’t attracting customers, yet when Paul Greenstein, a Los Angeles “bum vivant,” first approached her husband George about booking bands, she declined. Greenstein’s persistence, and the fact that he had already given the nearby “Atomic Cafe” a new lease on life (cross-pollination between owners’ children worked the magic), caused her to agree to a trial run in Fall of 1978. Initially, under Greenstein, a showcase for unsigned, unbookable punk-bands, Madame Wong’s was one of few places such bands could perform. With the exit of Greenstein, Madame Wong’s morphed into a power-pop palace with bookings more influenced by a now-interested Wong.

There is no known recording of this gig.

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