688 Club: The Brief, Charmed Life Of An Atlanta Punk Mecca

*Located at 688 Spring Street in Atlanta, the club’s less than imaginative name literally came from their street number.*

688 Club. We called it “six eighty-eight.” That’s it. It was a perfect name. It was generic. The name of the club was just its address on Spring Street. Just like punk rock, it stood for nothing and everything all at once. Even though I’d had my musical eyes opened mostly in Athens, at Tyrone’s O.C. and the 40 Watt Club, no self-respecting Georgia punk rocker in the early 1980s could go more than a month or two without a trip to Atlanta to 688. As long as you could make it a mile from 688 to the Krispy Kreme on Ponce de Leon for sugar and caffeine, you were good for the drive home. I saw shows there that remain in my memory to this day, 30 years later. I remember being bewitched by the beauty (both physical and musical) of the Bangles, then being afraid to talk to them when they unexpectedly showed up at the Majestic Diner while I was eating a 2 a.m. breakfast there with my friends… read more >