Have happened anywhere, any time, any city. 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. Sure, she's difficult at times, but a lot less difficult than other local club owners."īorn and educated in Shanghai, Wong grew up traveling the world with her importer father. Green, co-manager of the Naughty Sweeties, The Kats and Nu Kats, also praised Wong in the heyday of her clubs, telling The Times in 1980: "Quirky she is, but she offers the best opportunity in this city to groups who can attract paying fans. "That's the place we've made the most money in L.A." "I like it because you get paid by your popularity," Gary Valentine of the Know told The Times in 1979. Each group split the entire admission fee. Wong could be jealous and vindictive - refusing to book or rebook any group that played at a rival Chinatown venue, the Hong Kong Cafe.īut she was also beloved by many of the bands as a favorite patron or godmother, not only for giving them a venue but for her payment policy. She all but banned female singers, calling them "no good, always trouble." And she regularly patrolled her establishment during performances, sniffing for marijuana smoke. She limited clientele to those over 21, eliminating the huge younger rock audience, to the distress of several bands. She once stopped a show until two members of the Ramones cleaned up graffiti they had written on the bathroom walls. One day I almost hit the Highway Patrol car that was right next to me."Ī no-nonsense businesswoman, Wong was disparaged by some bands for her temper. "When there's a bad tape, I throw it outside the window. "I got a very bad temper," she told The Times in 1980. Wong chose the groups by listening to audition tapes - although she had to give up playing them in her car. And she closed each club as new wave and then other forms of rock lost popularity. She opened the Santa Monica club, she once told The Times, because there were too many worthy groups seeking bookings for her Chinatown club alone to accommodate. Go-Gos, the Plimsouls, the Kats, the Nu Kats, the Bus Boys, Plane English, the Naughty Sweeties and others. X, the Motels, 20/20, the Knack, the Know, the Textones, the Besides Oingo Boingo, her stages presented the Police, To 1991, she proved a staunch supporter of new and local Madame Wong's West in Santa Monica, which operated from 1978 "Now I can turn it on, and it doesn't bother me."Īt Madame Wong's, which closed in 1985, and "Before, I didn't think I'd ever like rock music," she told The Times in 1979. 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. But when that music attracted smaller and smaller crowds, she was persuaded in 1978 to book rock musicians for one month. 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. She was 88.Īt first slow to accept punk rock, new wave and other 1970s music, the colorful and sometimes controversial Wong came to be one its most ardent patrons in Los Angeles. Esther Wong, the unlikely "godmother of punk" who showcased such groups as Oingo Boingo at her Madame Wong's clubs in Chinatown and Santa Monica in the late 1970s and '80s, has died.
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