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.