Venue: Metro Chicago
Address: 3730 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60613
Town: Chicago, US
Capacity: 1,100

Metro (formerly the Stages Music Hall and Cabaret Metro) is a concert hall in Chicago, Illinois, United States, that plays host to a variety of local, regional and national emerging bands and musicians. The Metro was first opened in 1982. The capacity is 1,100, divided between the main floor and the balcony. The building housing Metro also houses Smart Bar underneath the main venue. In the late 1970s, Joe Shanahan, having experienced the art, music and dance culture in New York City, created a club to host creative acts in Chicago. Shanahan was directed to the Northside Auditorium Building. The building was originally built in 1927 as a Swedish Community Center. When Shanahan came across it, it was home to a jazz/folk club, Stages. Shanahan opened "Smart Bar" in July 1982 as a dance club, mixing a variety of the new genres of the time. Smart Bar was on the fourth floor of the building, which now houses the offices of the Metro staff. DJ Frankie Knuckles performed regularly, while DJ Joe Smooth "Promised Land" played Thursday and Saturday evenings primetime until 1985. Ministry and similar bands performed their new industrial music by playing tapes of newly recorded songs. In late July 1982, Shanahan, through his production company Latest Creations, booked and promoted a concert for R.E.M. The July 25 show was a success, and Shanahan began booking the club's weekend slots, gradually taking over the main floor of Stages. He then moved Smart Bar from the fourth floor to the basement of the building. Metro, then called "Stages Music Hall", was re-opened as a live music venue in its current space. At first, the Metro primarily hosted local bands, like Naked Raygun and Big Black, but it quickly began to book national acts, including New York's Sonic Youth, Samhain and the Ramones, California's X, Metallica and The Bangles, Minneapolis' The Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum, R.E.M., Guadalcanal Diary, and Pylon, and Texas' Butthole Surfers. During the Metro's first y