This venue’s one of the most important places for independant bands in the country and has been for over 20 years. Chemlab played there more times than I can count, mis-spending much of our fabled youth there rocking out and freaking out under the graces of Stephen Harm and his coterie of incredibly supportive and hungry-for-action employees like Nick Wilhelmy, and enjoying the sick pleasures of some excellent local disturbed noise like Zero Dark 30 (who never got the exposure they deserved, of course). We were always greeted on the street by a band of kids ready, snow or sweat, to hump our ridiculously heavy gear with us up every band’s arch nemesis: those endless fucking flights of eye-wateringly near-vertical stairs. The stage is wide and deep and not too high so I could always caress the glory faces that I’d soon be screaming in, steal people’s cigarettes and dance with total abandon in and amongst the audience knowing that I was in a place that “got” us. The Warehouse, Steve and Co. dug us from very early on, and it was one of the places that did so long before most other places outside the Midwest. The Midwest was years ahead of the rest of the country in swallowing everything we had to deliver, and so we spent a lot of time playing in places like the Warehouse and the Lizard Lounge in Grande Rapids. That a place like this, that’s supportive of the local scene, alcohol-free and hungry to keep doing what it’s been doing for years is in danger is Art Crime.