(Photo via Tempe History Museum)
By Paulina Pineda | Arizona Republic
Robert Shipp was a young man when he listened to early punk bands and new wave at Merlin’s in the early 1980s.
Tucked in the back of the unassuming Danelle Plaza at the corner of Mill and Southern avenues in Tempe, the music venue was a hub for artists, musicians, photographers and people trying to invent themselves. It was a place to meet dates, network and share alternative ideas, like a switchboard in a pre-internet, pre-cell phone world, Shipp said.
Experimental bands tested new sounds there and tried to find success. Local bands like Meat Puppets and the Psalms shared the stage early in their career with national artists at Merlin’s.
