godmother of punk RIP

Esther Wong, the proprietor of L.A. venue Madame Wong's, has died at age 88.

Her Madame Wong's restaurant on Sun Mun Way in Chinatown, which she opened in 1970 with her now-deceased first husband, George Wong, originally featured Polynesian bands. But when that music attracted smaller and smaller crowds, she was persuaded in 1978 to book rock musicians for one month.

The switch immediately increased her nightly crowd from as few as a dozen to about 350, and she declared the restaurant a stage for rock, punk and new wave bands...

"I got a very bad temper," she told The Times in 1980. "When there's a bad tape, I throw it outside the window. One day I almost hit the Highway Patrol car that was right next to me."

A no-nonsense businesswoman, Wong was disparaged by some bands for her temper. She once stopped a show until two members of the Ramones cleaned up graffiti they had written on the bathroom walls.

She limited clientele to those over 21, eliminating the huge younger rock audience, to the distress of several bands. She all but banned female singers, calling them "no good, always trouble." And she regularly patrolled her establishment during performances, sniffing for marijuana smoke...

Born and educated in Shanghai, Wong grew up traveling the world with her importer father. She moved to Los Angeles in 1949 to escape the Communist regime and worked for two decades as a clerk and trainer of clerks for a shipping company before opening her restaurant.

In a related note, Exene Cervenka will have an exhibition at the Santa Monica Musuem of Art next month. (Via blogging.la)
-