It’s somewhere between the time they get their electricity turned on and when they get their Texas driver’s license that newcomers to Austin are exposed to that big Austin tradition: hearing about all the great clubs in town that they’ll never get to go to. It is not unusual, in fact, for our nouveau citizens to know that Raul‘s was Austin’s first punk club even before they know the name of a good Chinese restaurant.

Austin loves its clubs like Idaho digs its potatoes and Dennis Rodman flaunts his tattoos. But unlike the impressionist sun around Rodman’s navel, there is no sense of permanence where great clubs are concerned. Like the passion between two who thought they’d always be together, the legendary clubs dissolve into bittersweet remembrances.

You wonder why, if such joints as Soap Creek, the Armadillo World Headquarters, Raul’s and Club Foot were so great, did they go out of business? But many a beloved saloon has crumbled under the march of time, or been sent crashing by the whipping wind shifts of “progress.” Then there are the TABC, greedy landlords and just plain old burnout to contend with.

The storied Austin music scene began in 1933 (the year Prohibition was repealed), when country yodeler Kenneth Threadgill received the first beer license in Travis County. Threadgill’s combination gas station/restaurant/nightclub was a special place that blurred class distinctions in the name of great music for almost 40 years. When the original Threadgill’s closed in ’72, with Janis Joplin among its most touted graduates, a new sort of musical melting pot was happening at an old National Guard armory near Town Lake.

The ’70s have been a much-maligned musical decade, but in Austin those were the glory days of live music because of the freewheeling Armadillo World Headquarters which hosted everyone from Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison and Fats Domino to ballet troupes. Owner Eddie Wilson called the structure that housed the venue “the coldest, ugliest building in town,” but becauseof the indeflatable spirit of people working together, the ‘Dillo had a big soul within its bare bones. As the reputation of this funky Austin concert hall spread and acts went out of their way to play there, the Armadillo became that rare case where the crowds sometimes drew the acts, instead of the other way around.

Jim Franklin, one of the club’s co-founders, summed up the AWHQ as “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with an address,” but that address is no more. Buildings are like people in that it’s what’s going on inside that really counts. And as in the case of the gawky teen who sits home with his integrity and humor on the night of the senior prom, justice doesn’t always pierce the surface. So the hideous one-story brick and corrugated metal structure, where hippies and rednecks sang Willie Nelson songs together, was torn down in 1981. Workers at One Texas Center now park their cars where Jimmy Cliff once sang “The Harder They Come” for an audience which had never heard live reggae music before.

The final night of this most legendary of all Austin clubs was Dec. 31, 1980, and it all ended with a cast of hundreds singing “Goodnight Irene” from the too-high stage at about 4 a.m. The last line of the ‘Dillo’s swan song goes “I’ll see you in my dreams, ” a fitting summary for all great clubs.

The reason they call them “haunts” is because it’s hard to get a favorite club out of your mind, especially if it was a frequent stop on the coming-of-age express. Gleeful night-life vignettes come around like ghosts, appearing and vaporizing through a charmed haze.

Memories are our own personal home movies, but even as the clicking and whirring of recall’s rickety projector reminds us that it’s only a movie, having experienced the gamut of emotions in the confines of one of Austin’s immortal nightclubs makes the film all the more interesting.

The Armadillo is far from being the only illustrious nightspot that has returned to dust: It’s just the standard-bearer in our Dead Club Crawl, which we’ve asked various eyewitnesses to guide you through.