CAT’S CRADLE
Playing Cat’s Cradle
When Frank Heath and his part- that benefited from opening for more Bands that had just hit the top of their
ners bought Cat’s Cradle in established national touring bands. game — or were about to — stand out in
1986, North Carolina music “The Veldt and Dillon Fence, in partic- Heath’s mind. “Some of my favorite shows
had been getting significant national and ular, played a lot of house parties, frat parties at [206 West Franklin] were the Pixies right
international attention for a year or so, and and free shows before they started playing at after their album Dolittle came out and they
the local scene was heating up. clubs, so they had this underground buzz. became a household word. Public Enemy
“There were some bands that estab- People had seen them and liked them. came after It Takes a Nation of Millions to
lished themselves probably more like ’ 83, When they hit the club, it was sort of like Hold Us Back, when they were at the peak
’ 84 — the dBs, Let’s Active and Fetchin their unveiling — people were real excited of their powers. They had these Nation of
Bones — that were from the about them.” Islam security guard guys — it was just
Winston/Greensboro/Charlotte area,” part of the show, but there were
Heath recalled. “The dB’s were pre- these six dudes standing there during
REM in defining — I hate words like the whole show looking really mean
that — but defining this new Southern in their uniforms. Flavor Flav came
rock sound. At the same time, some out riding on Billy [Johnson]’s back.
bands were generating around here like “Nirvana played there twice, once
Southern Culture on the Skids and in front of, like, 80 people before they
Bad Checks. And there had been Arro- were really big. I think they played a
gance earlier, which was tied in with show in May and then [again] in
Let’s Active and the dBs. Another band October after their album Nevermind
that was huge then were the Pressure came out. It was the most blinding
Boys, a ska band from Chapel Hill.” moment of the crossing over
DANIEL COSTON
Many of the members of these bands between indie rock and mass hyste-
knew each other, he said, some Frank Heath at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro. Heath and various ria, just the way that this guy who
because of shared ties to Carolina. partners have owned the club since 1986. had played there six months earlier
Heath and Fox experimented with to pretty much zero fanfare was sud-
a variety of music. “We had Al Stewart play, denly in the spotlight, a complete icon, and
Gatemouth Brown, a lot of things that were it wasn’t your typical rock star band. It was
sort of crapshoots,” Heath said. “We had the antithesis of what they seemed to be
Badfinger featuring the drummer and the about. Just because they’d been on MTV,
bassist because two of the main guys had people from the rock station were trying to
died at that point. And most of it worked get tickets, and I’d never spoken to anyone
out OK. I booked some of the people that from the rock station before.”
I was a fan of, like Steve Forbert and Liv- More recently, Heath has brought to the
ingston Taylor.” He couldn’t get James Tay- Cradle some of his all-time favorites —
lor, a childhood hero, but Livingston came. Warren Zevon, Richard Buckner and
And then one day the Indigo Girls came Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. A few
knocking on his door. “Amy [Ray]’s sister years ago, he recalled, there was a period in
was the manager, and she was shopping which Iggy Pop, David Byrne, Cowboy
them around — it was probably their first Junkies and Ben Folds all came in quick
out-of-Georgia shows. She just started talk- succession.
ing to me about them, and I said, ‘That “Some of the most electrifying shows
sounds kind of unusual.’” Despite his that we’ve had here in the last few years
doubts, Heath booked them. And with the have been hip-hop shows. The audiences are
duo themselves doing self-promotion once a lot more energetic. It’s a very mixed crowd,
they got to town, some adventurous souls black/white, and there’s more of a feeling
came out. One of those first Indigo Girls of community. Back at the last location,
shows drew about 50 people, another Ice-T played and Arrested Development,
about 80. and the Ice-T show was one of the most
Some of the local bands that emerged electric shows. It was right after the Cop
during Heath’s first few months running Killer album had come out, and he did this
Cat’s Cradle were Dillon Fence, the Veldt, show that was half verging on punk rock
the Popes and Satellite Boyfriend, one of and half hip-hop, and it blew people away.”
his favorites. All were new, younger bands — Kathleen Kearns
The bands also represented a shift in the
dominant local sound, Heath said. “The
music went from more underground to
bands that were more pop and radio-friendly sounds.”
For a couple of years, Dillon Fence, the
Veldt, Giant Quest and the Sex Police routinely sold out the Cradle at its 206 West
Franklin location, which held about 700.
But the quirks of stardom meant that there
was never any telling which act on a bill
might go on to make it big. “The Sex
Police played all these shows with bands
that became stadium-size acts. No Doubt
opened for the opening band for the Sex
Police at the Cradle once. Matchbox 20
opened for the Lemonheads. And Counting Crows opened for Cracker.”
Sometimes bands emerged out of
nowhere and created a sensation — the
Royal Crescent Mob, for instance. “They
wound up opening for the Dead Milkmen,
and that was a legendary show where they
blew the Dead Milkmen off the stage.
Everybody thought they were great, and so
they came back and sold out the Cradle
during exams, which I thought was pretty
spectacular.”
