If you remember correctly, FEAR's logo almost looked like a swastika but they were LA boys. I mean, they fucking hated each other, so we would have to pull the tables during the shows and each of their fans would come and swing chains and it was ugly! It was almost the first-ever music rivalry in that kind of a way. I remember Adam Ant and Black Flag hated each other and it was almost like the hip-hop acts of today.

You also booked bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys there in the 80s.

As a joke, they listed this manager as producer of the record and the record won a fucking Grammy as Best Produced Comedy Album of the year.

Richard Pryor came to record his live album there, this would have been '78, and he comes into The Troubadour and everybody is shit-faced drunk and the producer says to the manager, 'Where do you guys hang microphones for four-track recordings?' So this manager tells him where to put the microphones and they drink a bottle of Courvoisier and get shit-faced drunk in the balcony. When I first started at The Troubadour there was a manager there whose name I won't mention but I remember it. Jon, if you ever decide to pursue a third career as a tour manager, please hit me up. While Taffer may not identify as a punk himself, it's clear that he has a deep appreciation for the genre and the innovators behind it. Despite the short-fused temper you may witness on his show, he was incredibly friendly and excited to share stories about his time at The Troubadour. I sat down with Taffer when he came through New York a few weeks ago as part of his Rescue Tour, a half-day workshop that he designed to help small business owners and industry professionals jumpstart growth in their companies. But as the episode went on, Taffer let on that he had a soft spot for these pioneers of LA punk and had booked a lot of bands who are now known as legends far before he was branding bars and helping dysfunctional families mend their relationships on television. On a Nerdist podcast a few years back, Taffer discussed his time spent as the manager of the legendary Los Angeles club, The Troubadour, in the 80s and I instantly imagined him in screaming matches with people like Henry Rollins and Lee Ving over their onstage antics.

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