The Back Room closing this weekend

Caught the sad news first on KUT so I’ll go with their story since it’s easier to link than the Austin Chronicle’s blurb. 
 
I had only seen the Aquabats there because in my 10+ years of living in Austin, the Back Room was usually a Heavy Metal place with the occasional Punk reunion tour (The Damned), Rap show or whatever (Fishbone I think was there years ago). Someone I know through a mutual friend told me that it wasn’t always a Metal joint. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s she saw Jane’s Addiction, The Ramones and Soundgarden play the venue. 
 
Sadly, the Back Room’s closing is probably the real estate on Riverside becoming too valuable as Austin’s formerly undesirable neighborhoods experience gentrification. A rather ugly trend pushing the poor and residents of lesser means into other regions [not sure where though]. I do have a bone to pick with the KUT story, Liberty Lunch [another venue lost to corporate greed and the idiocy of local government] had a higher capacity. Anyway, this is also a loss for the so-called Austin music scene as there’s one less intimate, cheap place for local and national acts to book shows of under 500 people. 
 
Meanwhile, the march to turn Austin into every other boring city advances.