The name of the venue seems to be a play on the fact that it was in the attic (of a building that housed a steak restaurant, in Philly's "Old City" area.) Before it was the Upstage, it was called Revival. It is now a restaurant bar. Lots of history here as found on https://mycitypaper.com/articles/060701/nc.life.shtml :
LIFE As We Knew It June 7-14, 2001
Life begins at the hop: Revelers take to the dance floor on Old City nightclub LIFE’s opening night.
A fabled club’s metamorphosis from Revival to LIFE.
by A.D. Amorosi
Back in February, Luigi Romano revealed that he had leased 22 S. Third St. from David Cohen, owner of the property that housed Wichita Steaks and its live music attic, The Upstage. Romano, 28, was capitalizing, as most would, on what he saw as "the continued Old City boom," he said.
Sure, it seemed odd that The Upstage, a Bryan Dilworth booked/operated alterna-venue that seemed to be doing well, was asked to leave and that Cohen himself would vacate his own building for the first time since taking the space in 1985. But it wasn’t shocking. Just showbiz. In the bustling restaubar economy, Cohen, 43, was simply evolving. His 312 Market St. entertainment complex and upscale food-mall was blossoming slowly into a family-filled enterprise that would open by July. And Romano, owner of Antico in Chalfont, PA, was going to turn the address into LIFE; an upscale nightlounge/dance club with 10,000 square feet filled with mega-sound systems, smart lights, an outdoor VIP area and blood red velvet walls.
"You’re gonna see limos and Mercedes, not kids who go to Deco or Shampoo," said Romano of Old City’s first danceclub in quite a while.
That "while" ended with Revival.
Revival has, since its ten-year tenure from July 1985 to September 1995, become a legend. Along with Black Banana, Catacombs, the Hot Club, Love and London Victory, Revival’s notorious after-after hour decadence and progressive music outlook made it Philly’s Studio 54, Max’s Kansas City, Le Cirque and Area all rolled into one darkly fabulous mascara-soaked eight-ball. Its long columns and wide steps became a literal and figurative entryway into a decrepit two floors of sex, drugs, vividly alternative realities, over-stimulation and all seven deadly sins. And that’s not saying word one about the bathrooms. (Full disclosure: I created and ran weekend events for Revival’s last crazed three or four years. I don’t remember exactly.)
"I miss it a lot," says Cohen, who wound up a board member of another after-hour spot, Evolution (he’s since resigned his post), while turning Revival into Jake & Oliver’s House of Brews by October of 1995. "I miss the diversity of the crowd on both floors. Different music on different floors — from electronic, house and alternative rock — wasn’t new. We just did it better."
Cohen is proud of having live performance art firsts in Philly like Karen Finley shoving canned candied yams up her ass and Joey Arias wearing ram horns singing opera and doing Lord know what else. He digs the fact that he debuted industrial bands like Ministry. Most of all, what Cohen misses is the hedonistic freedom — real-life acting out — that Revival allowed; the good old bad old days of clubland when S&M, transgender crowds, gay, straight, black and white all found themselves in one big melting pot at its over-sexed boiling point. Where everything was possible before it was popular.
"Everyone I talk to, and some of them have got to be barely 21," he laughs, "talk about Revival as if they were there. As if it’s a gold standard." (Cohen laughs about Shampoo’s recent foray into "Revival night," knowing full well that you can’t get there from here and if you could you’d have to drag along some stenchy dead bodies we left in the basement.)
Gold? Not so much. We were aware then that so much alterna (looks, behavior, music, acting out) would soon become de rigueur, commonplace. Cohen noticed Revival’s new membership getting older in age; the 28s to 30s were joining more than the 22-year-olds. "I was changing along with the neighborhood. I really thought that I could change it into something that would be busy 18 hours a day as opposed to the last few hours of a day." So he bagged Revival’s after-hour concept. And after Cohen turned Revival into Jake & Oliver’s, one of Philly’s first (certainly biggest) micro-brew spots, spinners like Bobby Startup and doyennes like Phoenixx mused, in a story I filed Sept. 1, 1995, that there would be nowhere to go, nothing like it again (Startup has gone onto David Carroll’s Bar Noir; Phoenixx, Shampoo).
Lifetime, fulltime: LIFE’s bar
The restaubar boom was just beginning. Food seemed like good soup. And it was. It was good when Cohen did Wichita Steaks & Brews with Upstage atop it. "Dilworth did a great job," says Cohen of the live spot. But Cohen realized that he was not maximizing the profit potential of owning a large building in Old City. He knew that Stephen Starr had raised the bar on what bars would have to look and feel like. "Besides, I had been doing clubs for 12 years. I have three kids. I’m doing the 312 Food Court on Market Street, which is going to be as multi-media a concept as Revival once was." So Cohen leased the space to Luigi Romano.
"LIFE will be more intimate," says Cohen. "Luigi’s seen to that. Everyone else — they book the same DJs out of New York to spin the same house records every great DJ in Philly can spin better. The lights are nice. The crowds are alive. But the energy....."
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Owner Luigi Romano
Brian Nagele wants that energy. Hell, as LIFE’s booker/promoter (along with running the Internet entertainment information center Maneo.com) he mentioned Revival in the very first line of LIFE’s press release. "In the beginning there was Revival," it goes, jumping straight to LIFE and disregarding its live venue Upstage all together.
"I was there to see a friend’s band. Once," says Nagele. "Live bands used to be all I ever saw. But I found that the electronic dance scene was more appealing. I got hooked. That scene is more of a community than the live local scene. The people who are into bands are usually into one band. In this scene, they’re into each other."
It’s showtime. Opening night at LIFE. Red velvet walls laced with candelabras absorb the heavy bass response and what little white light exists in the room. LIFE is dark, coolly so. Kids are sprawled across its half-moon banquettes, or peering from its upstairs dance floor into the silver-modular-pulpit DJ booth that hangs above one of three smart-lit bars. No one can find Luigi. Not that night. Not the next. Brian Nagele seems unruffled. At 24, he was a tot when Revival opened. He was never ever there. But he knows "it was the only place to be to let it all hang out," he says.
"I don’t want to get anyone in trouble but from what I understand — from friends of friends, from kids I know who used to travel there from where I grew up [Warminister, PA], a lot of people found out about themselves, their true selves, at Revival." That Revival closed at its peak — not past it — is what freezes that moment in time, one worth re-electrifying like Frankenstein’s monster.
Nagele was/is anxious to bring Revival’s level of risky after-hour excitement to LIFE’s til-2 rooms. Nagele knows LIFE won’t and couldn’t be Revival, despite the fact that many told Romano to open as Revival, even going so far as asking Cohen for the name. He knows remaking a Revival would be like raising the dead.
"What I want LIFE to be is a place where inhibitions run wild, where educating people to new music [like dark DJs Raf and Adam Freemer, techno-trancey Scott Melker and Revival veteran DJ MG] and the dynamics of ‘the hang’ is more important than the stiffness of having to look or act a certain way. I want something that hasn’t been here in years. Maybe not ever before. Look at the bartenders. They’re excited. The energy here is infectious. They’re feeding off the crowd. And the crowd is feeding off the music."
That feeding frenzy — the manic panic of clublife in Old City — may be just what Revive-als LIFE.