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GREENSBORO — What do R.E.M., Black Flag, Bad Brains and Jason and the Scorchers have in common? Three decades ago, they all played Friday’s, a tiny hamburger joint in Greensboro that doubled as a music venue.

“It was so nondescript, really,” says Garry Collins, a Friday’s regular. “It was like you were walking into any little burger and pizza joint, which is exactly what it was.”

Located on Tate Street, Friday’s hosted live music for about four years in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

It had pinball machines, a killer jukebox and live music four or five nights a week. It eventually became a regular tour stop for bands from New York, Washington and Athens, Ga., and a fertile breeding ground for local acts.

“I remember thinking, 'Why is this happening in Greensboro? This is Greensboro, North Carolina. Nothing ever happens here,’” Collins says.

On Friday, regulars of Friday’s and past music acts will reunite at Somewhere Else Tavern in Greensboro to honor the club that closed in December 1983.

The event is a fundraiser for Urban Ministry and will feature reunions of several bands that played the club during its heyday, including Treva and the Graphic, the Village Pistols and Tornado.

“It was like our own little CBGB’s with hamburgers,” Ricky Bryan Williams wrote on the Friday’s Reunion Discussion Page on Facebook.

Regulars credit operators Steve and Sharon Hayner with making Friday’s unique. In the late ’70s, Steve’s brother operated Friday’s and invited Steve from New York to book bands in order to bring in more patrons on weekends. Eventually the couple assumed the lease, continuing to serve up burgers and pizza along with great music.

At the time, the Hayners were fans of New York’s new wave scene and frequently saw bands such as the Ramones at legendary Manhattan venues including CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. Friday’s musical roster reflected that. They offered bands a place to play on off nights between shows in larger cities such as Washington and Atlanta, Steve Hayner says.

“I’d get ’em cheap and I’d get ’em on an off night,” he says. “A lot of the really good bands were on a Tuesday or a Thursday night, something like that. I lucked out.”

Lynn Blakey started hanging out at Friday’s as a freshman at UNCG in the fall of 1980. Today she is a songwriter, singer and member of the acclaimed Raleigh band Tres Chicas.

“I don’t think I would even have started playing music if it wasn’t for that place,” says Blakey, 49.

Blakey was one of a handful of people who saw R.E.M.’s first show at Friday’s in early 1981, and over time, other great acts there inspired her.

“I didn’t start playing guitar until after I had been there with my friends seeing bands and stuff,” she says. “It was so up-close and personal. That was the great thing about it. I think, this was probably after my 10th R.E.M. show — they were like five inches away from me — I thought, 'I can do that, it looks like fun.’ My friend Debbie (Mooneyham) and I decided to start a band, and that was the Broken Crayons.”

Collins, 63, played in the Alibis, a new wave band from Winston-Salem that was one of the first groups to perform at Friday’s. He learned about the gig from bandmate Bill Nash.

“I said, 'That’s a burger joint, where are we gonna play in that place?’” Collins says. “And he said, 'Well, we’ll set up in the corner and move pinball machines.’ And that’s literally what we did.”

Guitarist Mike Nicholson, 49, will perform at Friday’s reunion. He owns and operates Vista Point recording studio south of Chapel Hill and plays in the power-pop band Stratocruiser. But in the early ’80s, he played in a provocative rock band, The Village Pistols.

“The Village Pistols wanted to shake things up a little bit,” Nicholson says. “If you want weird, here’s weird.”

Other adventurous acts played Friday’s regularly, including Greensboro’s Eugene Chadbourne and the F-Art Ensemble, which will lead a march at the reunion.

Ivan Siler, who worked the door at Friday’s, remembers a Christmas pageant where Raymond Tucker came dressed in a leopard-skin Santa suit and called himself Anti Claus.

“He gets up on the stage, he sits in this big chair and says, 'Ho, ho, ho, I’m Anti Claus,’” Siler says. “'Come up and tell Anti Claus what you want taken away for Christmas.’ People would come up there and say, 'Take away my power bill,’ or 'Take away my brother-in-law.’”

What brought the house down is this one girl got in his lap and said, 'Take away my virginity.’”

Anti Claus also is scheduled to appear at the reunion show.

When the venue closed, R.E.M. had graduated to theaters by that point, but returned to Friday’s for one final performance on Dec. 11. That show provided the Hayners with enough money to move back to New York. They never made a profit running Friday’s, Hayner says, and were “flat broke” when the owner of the building decided not to renew their lease at the end of 1983. A memorable, brutally loud Black Flag show put the nail in the coffin.

“That’s what killed Friday’s,” Hayner says. “I was told that they knocked the vegetables off the stand in the grocery store next door, and I think that’s the guy who owned the whole building. My lease never got renewed. That just kind of put an icing on all of it. That was a wonderful night.”

Friday’s was the couple’s first and last attempt to operate a music venue. Today, they live in Tampa, Fla., where Steve works as an electrician.

Toward the end of the club’s era, its vibe had changed, Nicholson says, describing it as “a little weird and meat-markety.” Still, Siler says the music remained the primary focus until the end.

“I’m sure there was all kinds of debauchery and wild drug abuse and stuff like that,” he says. “But honestly, for the most part, I think everybody was there for the music.”

Contact Eddie Huffman at huffman.eddie@gmail.com