Melody Bar Refugees: A Reunion On The Horizon?

I've been hearing a fair amount of rumbling about a Melody Bar reunion. It started as a half-static message on my answering machine from Stiffy Biceptz, but has slowly built up steam, to the point where I'm getting random notes in my inbox about it. (Okay, one random note, but still.) Multiple sources are convinced Matt Pinfield is all but ready to be involved, though I wouldn't fault him for 'spinning' using two iPods - those record crates were damn heavy!

Here's my request: "Work", by The Electric Guitars. I still can't find that damn record, and it ain't the easiest thing to Google.

For those unfamiliar with New Brunswick, NJ's Melody Bar: yes, it was a commercial establishment where people paid money to receive drinks (and food, though that wasn't the attraction) that is, somehow, more than worthy of a reunion. A lot of my memories are attached to it - as well as a few non-memories, if you catch my drift.

Its appeal, if I were to try and analyze it far further than it likely has any right to be, was that it was as much a nightclub as it was a funhouse. Part of the thrill of navigating to the dance floor was that you never knew what you'd encounter on the way there - both in terms of decoration and of clientele.

I DJ'd there on a number of occasions, regularly for a while 'till they realized I was on the wrong side of the escalating drinking age I'd missed grandfathering by six months, back before there was an enclosed "booth", and even managed to be there once when the "booth" was a slab of plywood strewn across a couple of stoves in the place's former kitchen. (That'd be 1982 or so.)

But you need to know more, and that set me a-Googling - and that's why you're here, 'cause now you don't have to. Truth be told, there ain't much more, so there shouldn't be a problem using Altrok here as a forum to change that. Got some info? Send it through our Feedback page...but as for what's out there:

Firstly, a MySpace page for The Melody...

Secondly, and this is news to me if it's true, Wikipedia says James Gandolfini was once a DJ there. (Now I don't even need Kevin Bacon to be linked to a Soprano.)

And for the morbidly curious, there's this photo set from DJ Shaggy of the inside of the building as it existed in 2004 just before it was torn down. Of course, it was more than just the building, but...damn.

(Wonder if it was demolished with the single bottle of tequila still on the bar?)