The Masque (1978)

Scottish music promoter and reviewer Brendan Mullen began scouring Hollywood Boulevard for a place to practice music in June of 1977- four years after arriving in Los Angeles to be close to the radical and continuously shifting music scene that existed there at the time. While searching, he stumbled upon the grimy, unused basement (only accessible from the alley) underneath a notorious L.A. porn house called the Pussycat Theatre. After the property owner offered to rent the 10,000 square foot basement to him for only $850 a month, Mullen hatched the plan to convert the space into a club for the city’s steadily growing punk music scene.

Within weeks, bands began showing up to the basement and using it as a spot to practice and party. By the end of July, Mullen’s basement gained enough of a reputation to start hosting gigs. The first show at The Masque was on August 18, 1977, and marked the beginning of a raucous new epicenter for L.A.’s punk subculture. The club’s opening got rave reviews in first-generation punk fanzines such as Flipside and Slash.

Over the course of five months, several dozen punk bands performed at the venue. These included prominent early punk influences like Germs, the Dickies, X, the Screamers, the Weirdos, and Rhino 39. Two compilation records were made during this time. Wild antics- such as a live cow being smuggled onto the club floor- and a litany of city health and fire code violations led officials to refuse to grant Mullen with the necessary permits to operate The Masque legally as a club. In January of 1978, fire marshals forced The Masque to permanently close. They later sued Mullen to end the lease, prompting a group L.A. punk bands to do two nights of benefit concerts to help Mullen pay the legal fees. Both benefit concerts culminated in rioting. Mullen, with enormous support in the punk community, opened Other Masque at a nearby Hollywood venue later that year. It housed many gigs from bands such as Dead Kennedys, Germs, X, and the Mutants until it was also shut down in the spring of 1979. Mullen went on to open the Club Lingerie, which lasted until 1991 and was where a then-unknown rock band called Red Hot Chili Peppers received their first big break.

The original basement location of The Masque was renovated in 2001 and, with the help of Mullen, much of the club’s iconic graffiti was restored. Brendan Mullen died unexpectedly of a stroke eight years later on October 12, 2009 at the age of 60. Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote a two page long "in memoriam" article for him in the Los Angeles Times. The Masque basement is now used by the Hollywood production company World of Wonder as an archive.

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Flea. Brendan Mullen, The Los Angeles Times. October 14th 2009. Accessed October 13th 2020. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-oct-14-et-mullen-appreciation14-story.html.

Mullen, Brendan. Live at the Masque Nightmare in Punk Alley. Edition 1st. Santa Rosa, California. Gingko Press, 2007.

Sisario, Ben. Brendan Mullen, Pillar of Los Angeles Punk Scene, Dies at 60, The New York Times. October 13th 2009. Accessed October 13th 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/arts/music/14mullen.html?_r=0.

Spitz, Marc. Mullen, Brendan. We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk. Edition 1st. New York, New York. Three Rivers Press, 2001.