The Fine Line Music Cafe in downtown
Minneapolis would have been smokin' Monday with the guitar wailing of Link
Wray, but the warm-up band got things hot a little early.
The Jet City Fix was playing its encore when
it set off a pyrotechnic display that started the club's ceiling on fire about
7:15 p.m., fire officials said.
The crowd of about 120 was scooted out and
the fire was extinguished within 15 minutes. Nobody was injured, and the fire
was contained to the Fine Line, but the club sustained extensive water damage.
Members of the The Jet City Fix never told
club owner Dario
Anselmo
that they would be shooting anything off during their set, Anselmo said. The
band played a show at Luther's Blues bar in Madison, Wis., on Sunday
and was yelled at by the owner after it did the same thing, Anselmo said.
Anselmo said Fine Line management had
reviewed safety procedures with the staff Monday in response to the deaths of
21 people who were killed earlier in the day in a crowded Chicago club.
"What happened in Chicago was an
anomaly," he said. "We make sure we're not over capacity and check
to see if all exits are unlocked."
The capacity of the Fine Line Music Cafe is
720. The club opened in 1987 in the 100-year-old Consortium Building at 318
1st Av. N. in the Warehouse District. The fire caused an estimated $100,000
damage, but Anselmo hopes to reopen in a month.
"I'm shocked, but happy everybody got
out," he said while looking at his business. "This could have hurt a
lot of people. We would have never allowed the band to do something like this.
I hope they don't play again."
Larry Lysaght
and his wife, Linda, were sitting in the club's second floor waiting for food
when they saw a small fire in the ceiling. It looked like it was part of the
show, he said.
"It took awhile to figure it out, but
we still didn't believe what was happening," he said. "Somebody from
the staff was trying to put it out, but then they started to holler at people
to get out."
David Wolfe, lead singer and guitarist for
the Vibro Champs, was also upstairs when his friend pointed to the flames
falling from the ceiling. They were making their way down the stairs within
seconds, but he said he could feel the fire at the back of his head.
"It was just amazing," he said.
"The staff did a wonderful job of getting everybody out. It's sad to see
this happen to such a great club."
The local rockabilly band was supposed to
play after Wray, the 74-year-old musician best known for the 1958 whammy bar
guitar-filled instrumental classic "Rumble." Wolfe was disappointed
he wasn't going to get the chance to play with his hero.
"And none of our equipment was
insured," he said.
The sprinkler system activated and all the
patrons were out of the club before the Fire Department arrived, said fire
spokeswoman Kristi Rollwagen.
Jet City Fix of Seattle is scheduled to open
for Wray for the next month. But on Monday night the band was pretty shaken
up, Anselmo said.
Said Lysaght: "It was like 'Smoke on
the Water,' revisited. It's too bad. They were nice kids and played a tight
set."