The L.A. Musical History Tour
Madame Wong's West
2900 Wilshire, West Los Angeles
In 1977, when the punk movement was exploding, L.A.'s Chinatown became a
new focus
of musical energy. It started when entrepreneur Paul Greenstein persuaded
Madame
Wong's Chinese restaurant to open its doors to live music, and the nearby
Hong Kong
Restaurant followed suit. (This idea, of having bands in after a restaurant
closed, was a
popular one then. In San Francisco, the Philippine restaurant Mabuhay Gardens
provided
the same arrangement.) Bands of all persuasions and their fans flocked to
Chinatown to
see any of hundreds of new wave acts that were cropping up: Fear, the Heaters,
the
Knack, the Busboys, the Police, the B-52's,. Buoyed by its success, Esther
Wong opened
a second Madame Wong's in Santa Monica.
The wave collapsed in the mid-1980s when the Chinatown clubs closed, leaving
only
Wong's West to carry on the rock-band tradition, which it does energetically to
this day.