25 Years Later, It's Still 9:30

In the late '70s, the Atlantic Building, at 930 F St. NW, was home to the Atlantis club, but a lengthy battle between that venue's owner and local musicians sank its prospects. Local real estate developer and arts supporter John Bowers then bought the building and turned its ground-level space over to his then wife, DiSanto. For six years, DiSanto operated the club and shared booking responsibilities with several groups, including I.M.P. (for It's My Party), which rose to prominence with the concurrent arrival of punk, new wave, reggae and roots rock, "alternative" genres that established club and concert promoters were slow to recognize.

DiSanto, who now runs the Center for Movement Theatre and operates the Center, a health and fitness facility at Tenley Circle, sold the 9:30 to I.M.P. in 1986, but for seven years the club was the only inhabitant of the eight-story Atlantic Building. I.M.P. had been booking acts into the WUST Radio Music Hall at 915 V St. NW for a few years, and in 1995, it purchased that venue. After extensive remodeling, it opened Jan. 5, 1996, as the 9:30, with a show by Smashing Pumpkins; the group's former lead singer, Billy Corgan, performs at the 9:30 club June 24 to promote his first solo album.

And in what Hurwitz says is "absolutely sheer coincidence," Kraftwerk -- the first show I.M.P. booked outside the Ontario Theater (it played the Warner in 1981) -- will celebrate the release of its first live album with Monday and Tuesday performances at the club (not free).

Since moving to its current location, the 9:30 has been awarded Nightclub of the Year honors four times by Pollstar, the concert industry trade journal. And for most of that time, it has also been Pollstar's top ticket-selling club: Last year, the 9:30 sold 236,112 tickets. The next five clubs were all House of Blues franchises; the closest competitor was HoB's Chicago location with 219,392 tickets sold.

"It's one of the most active clubs in the country in terms of touring," says Pollstar publisher and editor Gary Bongiovanni. "Whoever is booking has a very good ear because they get acts on the front edge of the curve." That would be Hurwitz and White, though both say they get a lot of input from fellow workers. Heinecke handles market research, and there is a cadre of longtime employees at both the 9:30 and I.M.P., which has been operating the revived Merriweather Post Pavilion for the past three years.

In the first quarter of 2005, the 9:30 was supplanted as top ticket-selling venue by the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, which has a huge advantage in capacity (3,600 compared with the 9:30's 1,000) but has a long way to go before it touches the Washington club's reputation.

"The staff takes this stuff pretty seriously," says White of Pollstar honors and national word-of-mouth. "We like knowing that we're really good at what we do, and that goes from our administrative people to those who work the door and those who take care of the trash."

According to Hurwitz, the topic of franchising the 9:30 nationally has come up on occasion, usually to be quickly shot down. "It's not a formula, not a method, it's an accumulation of personalities and values and attitudes that you cannot replicate somewhere else," he insists.