Cover Story

Last Xit to Wormtown

How an unassuming watering hole became a legendary punk rock club overnight

By Craig S. Semon

“ T he light that burns twice as bright burns half as long” – Blade Runner. On March 11, 1982, a new rock club called Xit 13 opened in the city and, almost overnight, it became the coolest place in Worcester.

But, if there’s something Worcesterites know all too well, nothing lasts forever. If you don’t believe me, drive through Kelley Square or, better yet, go down to Spag’s and wait in line for your free tomato plants.

Xit (pronounced like “exit”) 13 (meaning one more than 12) was located right off I-290, at exit 13, hence the name.

For those who never went to Xit 13, it was the coolest bar you never heard of. And, for those who did go to Xit 13, it was the coolest place the city has had in the last 40 years.

When we talk about Xit 13, we’re talking specifically the Tom Daley-Bruce Mitchell Era, which started March 11, 1982, and ended June 4, 1983. While the bar did come back for a few months with a new owner before closing for good, it wasn’t the same.

“Xit was a two-act set: ‘Xit 13,’ my thing, and ‘Xit,’ Bruce’s thing,” Daly said. “Nowadays, whenever it comes up, Bruce and I simply refer to it as ‘Xit.’ Back then though, it was two distinct yet interrelated chapters in a short torrid play directed by each of us, respectively.”

On March 18, 1982, there was a Ted Bunker article in The Evening Gazette sporting the headline, “Xit 13: new club fills the void of contemporary rock in the city.”

Clockwise from right: San Francisco’s Flipper headlined the first night at Xit 13; Flipper was the first band to play (and destroy) Xit 13. This club listing is a great piece of nostalgia; The Odds, The Chesterfield Kings and The Slumlords flyer; Probably the most notorious show ever at Xit 13 and it was only the second night.

Boy did it ever.

And it all started in the fall of 1981 when Daly and Mitchell placed a classified ad seeking an investor for a nightclub in both the Worcester Telegram and The Evening Gazette.

“Eventually, we were contacted by a Porsche-driving Citadel grad named Gary who kept a nickel-plated revolver in his glove compartment. He handed us the keys to the bar, a decent sized check and said, ‘Have fun, just don’t burn the place down,’” Daly was quoted as saying in Wormtown’s Minister of Culture Brian Goslow’s extensive “Worcester’s Rock History,” which ran in Worcester Magazine on Oct. 26, 2006.

Gary was Gary H. Davis, Wormtown’s equivalent to Daddy Warbucks.

A former owner and president of Harpers Data Servic

es, a payroll company in Worcester, until his retirement in 2010, Davis was sentenced on May 11, 2016 ,to six months in federal prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the IRS and three counts of tax evasion.

Roughly two months after they both turned 21, Daly and Mitchell opened Xit 13.

“While we loved going to Ralph’s (Chadwick Square Diner), Ralph (Moberly) was like a cool dad or uncle,” Daly said. “But, at Xit 13, we were with people our own age. We were their peers. We were a club run by young people, which is, kind of, unique.”

Xit 13 quickly established itself as the city’s premiere progressive nightclub, bringing in established regional acts and giving local garage bands an opportunity to be heard and develop a fanbase.

“We never had any trouble. Why would we? We had Artie as our doorman, as our bouncer,” Daly said. “Who would want to mess around with Artie?”

Artie is Wormtown rock legend Arthur “Artie” Sneiderman, singer of The Actions, The Belmondos and The Crybabies. But, in the spring of ’82, Artie was merely working the door at Xit 13 and about to embark in his first band, The Slumlords.

“It’s really funny that people were scared to go to Xit because they had this image of people with knives and that they would slash them to ribbons if they came in there,” Sniederman said. “And it really was a bunch of pretty meek people for the most part. It was pretty much a live and let live crowd.”

Daly said the thing that made Xit different were these crowds of people who were not necessarily there for the

music but because the energy was different.

“They were a different kind of person. I never saw them anywhere else throughout Greater Central Mass. or even in Boston,” Daly said. “It seemed that one or two of them would come from Ware or Charlton, Northbridge, Southbridge, Southboro and Westboro, and all of a sudden, they all came together and they found each other at this one little club on Millbury Street. And they found a place to be themselves all together.”

One of those different kind of persons was Deborah Beaudry of Southbridge.

“I went to a Billy Idol concert at E.M. Loew’s and ( future Crybabies’ bassist) Cheryle Crane’s behind me and we started chatting,” Beaudry recalled. “And she was like, ‘Oh, I have a club for you’ and she took me to Xit 13 and I was like, ‘Holy moly, mother-(expletive) (expletive)!’ It was like ‘The Island of Misfit Toys’ … It was like you were in a frigging John Hughes movie. I thought, these are my people.”

Not only did she become an Xit regular (and a prominent fixture in the Worcester rock scene), Beaudry started working the door.

“I worked the door that time those guys came in wearing Journey T-shirts and I made them leave,” Beaudry recalled. “So they threw a brick through the window, sailed right over my frigging head … Everybody teared ass out of the club and beat the (expletive) out of them in an alley. Spike Viper (real name Carl Rasmussen) came back, he’s like, ‘I broke his ribs real good, Deb, for you.’ That was hilarious.”

Xit 13 became synonymous with “Wormtown,” the city’s growing punk rock movement of the late ‘70s-early ’80s. The club had two rooms, one with a bar, one with a large dance floor and a barely furnished stage. The torn up walls were painted black. The ceiling was made of rafters. This was all topped off by one-stall, his and her bathrooms that were, apologize for the Valley Girl speak, grody to the max.

“The bathrooms at Xit rivaled CBGB’s. People used to say CBGB had a pretty rough bathroom, which it did,” Daly said. “But Xit gave CBGB a good run for its money.”

Flipper played Xit 13’s opening

night, Thursday, March 11, 1982, along with the Freeze and Gang Green.

Daly said Flipper destroyed most of the club’s microphones.

“I vividly remember Flipper toasted every mike on the first night,” Daly said. “The only reason we were able to open the next night was because of Bob Peters (of the Blue Moon Band). Bob loaned Tom (Moore, Xit 13’s sound guy) all of the mikes of the Blue Moon Band. Bob had a lot of trust in rock ‘n’ roll back then.”

“The building used to be a furniture store and there was still a rug there, so somehow, a Freeze’s fan wrapped the singer in the rug and they were pouncing on him and he was still there with the microphone,” Goslow recalled. “And that was only night one.”

“Before the Freeze, we had these kids called Gang Green,” Mitchell added. “They were like 15 years old, five feet tall, if that. They played all their songs in 15 minutes and we had them play them again … They were awesome.”

Despite Flipper collectively flipping the bird at Xit, Daly said he knew it was going to work out.

Richard Harnois, with his band The Aggressions at Xit 13.

“I had enough faith to open a place,” Daly insisted. “I wasn’t going to let a noise rock band from San Francisco discourage us on the first night.”

Ex-New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders was scheduled to play the second night, Friday, March 12, 1982.

“Johnny Thunders was in no shape to play,” Daly said. “But, when was Johnny, God rest his soul, ever, really, in shape to play.”

“Johnny Thunders came. He ended up not playing,” Mitchell added. “We offered refunds to the crowd. Everybody refused it. They had fun anyways.”

“A whopping $6 cover charge,” Daly snapped, “it helped us buy mikes for the following week.”

Boston legends The Neighborhoods and Worcester legends The Odds both played during the second weekend, on Friday, March 19, 1982.

“The Neighborhoods were getting ready to set up and the drummer, Carl Coletti, was setting up his drums,” Wormtown Mayor L.B. Worm (real name Leonard B. Saarinen) recalled. “Somebody upstairs dropped an M-80 through the ceiling and it landed right in his lap but it didn’t go off. He just jumped up really quick, waiting for it to explode but it never did.”

During their first year with Henry Rollins as its singer, Black Flag also played Xit.

“Not only did Black Flag play Xit, they stayed with us at our house and Tom (Daly) and I helped book their first two East Coast tours,” Moore said. “And, Spot, who was their road manager, completely demolished their touring van, sliding all the way down Vernon Hill in an ice storm, the night after they played at Xit. I went and rescued Scott out of the flipped van and all the band’s gear.”

On its “Hootenanny” tour, The Replacements played Sunday, April 24, 1983, at Xit to Daly, Artie and four other people.

“I was one of the six people there that night. It was pouring rain. The Replacements hadn’t really broken yet,” Sneiderman recalled. “They played their hearts out. They were great that night … I think they pulled out stuff they didn’t usually do and had a good time.”

Touring behind their I.R.S.-fulllength debut “Roman Gods,” The Fleshtones was another memorable show at Xit 13. How memorable? Sneiderman insists the Fleshtones was the best show ever at Xit, followed by the Lyres, his most favorite band in the world.

“Xit was the best place in Worcester if you wanted to see a punk rock show,” Worm said. “It was so popular that the bands from Boston were coming out to play there. No problem. There was no place like it.”

“Before Xit, we were spending a lot of our lives going back and forth to Boston for four or five years. So it was great when suddenly you could bring punk bands to Worcester. It was a heck of a lot easier,” Goslow said. “Tom (Daly) pretty much booked everybody that he could get. So the first month or two schedules were amazing, in some cases, even better than what was being booked in Boston at the time.”

JJ Rassler of the Odds said Xit helped create “a scene” in Worces

ter.

“A scene isn’t just one place. A scene has to have competition. It has to have a counter-point. It has to have a reflection in the mirror,” Rassler said. “CBGB wouldn’t have been as popular if there wasn’t Max’s Kansas City. It takes two. And, if Ralph’s was Max’s Kansas City, then Xit was definitely CBGB. I really liked the atmosphere at Xit and I liked the guys who ran it.”

Beth LaFrenier was a cocktail waitress at Xit, who sometimes helped at the door.

“When Tom and Bruce had it going, Xit was all about punk rock and alternative music, showcas- ing a lot of local talent and also getting some big names in town like Flipper, Black Flag and Mission of Burma,” LaFrenier said. “I just remember dancing the night away and the good camaraderie. Xit was a place where you could cut loose and have a good time.”

Doug Geer was a 16-year-old attending Doherty Memorial High School when he first played Xit 13 with his band, The Performers.

“At first, when the punk bands got together, we were playing in people’s basements or renting out Legion halls. So when Xit 13 came along, it was like we had a home,” Geer said. “What balls they (Daly and Mitchell) had to do something like that at that time. I didn’t know how to play an (expletive) instru- ment. They gave our band a shot and a year later, I put out a record.”

Xit 13 gained the reputation as the most progressive club in Worcester, booking more original local bands than any other while bringing in top-flight bands from all over the Northeast, including The Aggressions, Ashcan School, Band of Outsiders, Blue Moon Band, the Chain Reaction, the Chesterfield Kings, Creatures of Habit, Dangerous Birds, The Del Fuegos, the Dial-Tones, Fear, Hi Beams, The Hopelessly Obscure, Holy Cow & the Calves, Johnny

Primitive Romance at Xit 13.

Thunders, Limbo Race, Lou Miami and the Kozmetix, The Lynch Mob, The Lyres, Mission of Burma, Muffy & the Patriots, The Neats, The Neighborhoods, The Outskirts, Peter Dayton Band, Plan 9, The Post Moderns, Prefab Messiahs, The Prime Movers, Radio Novena, the Replacements, Rubber Rodeo, Salem 66, Sex Execs, The Slum- lords, Smegma and the Nunz, The Solicitors, the Unattached, Wayne Kramer ( formerly of MC5) and Willie “Loco” Alexander.

“We gave bands a chance be- cause we were young and we were given a chance,” Daly said, “We saw that there was an unmet need and we met that need and, obviously, on the first night it was jammed. There were a lot of nights when it was empty but there were a lot of nights that it was jammed full.”

“Xit was our clubhouse,” Mitchell said. “It was an opportunity to see the bands that we wanted to see by having our own club. We got to book them. If we wanted to see Black Flag, we booked Black Flag. If we wanted to see Mission of Burma, we booked Mission of Burma.”

Mitchell said he was especially

fond of all the local acts.

“They weren’t always headlin- ers, quite often they were open- ers,” Mitchell said before rattling off several local acts. “I have a special place in my heart for the Aggressions. God bless them. They were awesome and good people, just good people. Whenever they played, always memorable.”

Xit 13.

The first incarnation of Xit 13 closed in early June.

“I was exhausted,” Daly insisted. “That was it. I was an exhausted 21-year-old guy.”

In October of 1982, Mitchell reopened the newly crowned Xit with a new color scheme, red and blue, instead of black and white.

Despite the Wormtown Press giving Xit 13 its “Niteclub of the Year Award” in 1983, the DalyMitchell Era ended on Saturday, June 4, 1983, with The Odds and The Chain Reaction playing “a pri- vate party to drink the bar dry.”

“Many people did not realize this, but I was dirt poor, all the time,” Mitchell said. “For one thing, people robbed us blind. Every band raided the cooler downstairs because I didn’t bother to lock it, like duh. You turn your back and things disappear from the bar. Week two, poof, my camera’s gone.

Top, Xit 13 regulars, from left, Murp Murphy, Ed Gopoyan, Beth LaFrenier and Kenneth Mahan. Gang Green comprised, from left, Chris Doherty, Mike Dean and Bill Manley. It was the first band that played

PHOTOS/BRUCE MITCHELL

And I couldn’t afford to replace that. That’s why there are not too many pictures. If there was money in it, I would have kept doing it. There was no money in it, just love, just rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Why does something that me- teorically rises like the Sex Pistols burn out after one album?” Daly asked. “Sometimes people col- lectively come together and they create something and a tidal wave occurs and then it dissipates real quickly. That’s, kind of, what Xit was. We had our holiday in the sun and we took it. We also knew when to bow out.”