Under the Couch (UTC) was* a cool little venue whose importance in the start of many a young rock group cannot be understated. Located in the basement of the Couch building (Music department) on Georgia Tech's campus, Under the Couch was more receptive to smaller, local bands --arguably because the venue existed as part of the school-sponsored Musician's Network, and not necessarily to make profit-- than other clubs in the Atlanta area.

Alex Laroche, Dunwoody High alum and a year our senior, enrolled in Georgia Tech and had become a booking agent for UTC while we were still lowly seniors at Dunwoody High School. Alex was monumentally important in booking shows for the Hosstages, the Reruns, the Loose Screws, and other high school bands that needed exposure and experience. Alex was a friendly guy who was universally liked and more than fair when it came to distributing money after a show. He used his position at the venue to help out the up-and-coming bands, which I would argue was integral for the Hosstages development in terms of experience, fan base expansion, as well as important criticisms/feedback. Alex, we salute you!

Physically speaking, Under the Couch was not very prominent. Being notoriously difficult to find didn't seem to help matters either. The Couch building is uniquely located within the concrete bowels of the west residential area of the Georgia Tech campus. It is a very old building, which probably explains why it is the only non-housing building in the vicinity.

The two doors of Under the Couch faced north. The outside wall was old brick, and the two doors and two windows were painted dark blue. Back in '98, just a small UTC sign and a sad florescent marquee hoisted ten feet off the ground marked the otherwise invisible venue. With the exception of the stage, the inside of the place was dimly lit. During the day, most of the available light streamed in from the windows; at night, the orange street lamps and the glow of the marquee made it difficult to see inside the club unless you pressed up to a window with your hands cupped around your face. The walls were painted dark colors and the ceiling, which was little more than exposed wooden beams, was painted black (though at one point, old skateboards were nailed to the ceiling). The darkness of the interior naturally directed attention to the stage, but it also created a mysterious ambience and made the place seem to be bigger than it really was.

Although there were two doors, the back door was where show-goers entered and got their hands marked in exchange for the few dollars of admission, while the front door was used by the bands to move equipment in and out. This door was locked during sets to deter the cheapskates from getting a free show. In the front of the room was the stage, a platform a little more than a foot off of the ground with acoustic padding covering the wall behind and multicolored stage lights attached to a truss beam overhead. A door in the wall on the stage led to the equipment room teeming with mics, stands, tangles of guitar cables of varying lengths, XLR and power cords, and other assorted recording and mixing equipment. Off to the right of the stage was a small practice space and storage room for the bands. In the rear of the room to the left and partially sectioned off was the mixing equipment, including a much-too-large sound board which fed sound to the two columns of speakers, one on each end of the stage. Along the right wall, there were two sparse, graffiti-filled bathrooms.

Dark blue support poles unofficially partitioned off the concert crowd floor space from the makeshift merchandise tables upon which bands could sell CDs, stickers, and T-shirts, if they had any. There was also a guy named Gavin Frederick, a Georgia Tech graduate, who would frequent UTC shows with boxes upon boxes of independent (and often obscure and hard-to-find) CDs and records neatly arranged on tables for purchase. [An aside: Gavin also hosts his own radio show, "Radiobomb," on WREK 91.1 FM, Georgia Tech's 40,000 watt radio station. Alex LaRoche was also very involved with WREK, and even became Music Programming Director.]

What really made Under the Couch stand out above all were its couches. In a wonderfully corny pun on the venue's name, UTC brought in used couches and lined them up along the walls and against the aforementioned poles. The couches were great for resting on before shows and between sets, but also limited the standing room floor space somewhat-- a small price to pay for the venue's unique personality.

Under the Couch has been controversial within the Georgia Tech community as long as I can remember. There are two camps: the "Under the Couch brings culture to the otherwise mundane Georgia Tech campus" camp and the "Under the Couch brings noise and trouble to the otherwise mundane Georgia Tech campus" camp. UTC has seen a number of changes in recent years, including the addition of a kitchen and some small tables and chairs to serve snacks during the day, and a few arcade machines that can be heard blipping and beeping between and sometimes during band performances, an undesirable yet often hilarious effect.

Jet by Day has, over the years, performed less and less at Under the Couch, as Georgia Tech has steadily reduced opportunities (and parking spaces) for non-student acts. To me, it seems a shame that such an enormous proponent and outlet for expression among developing artists should be denied to the very people that made the place great to begin with. It is in light of recent events that I have decided to write this small tangent as a remembrance of what was once a major institution in the growth of countless local bands.