Big Ben Roethlisberger has the Grenadiers banging on the door of the Big Daddy Championship Series

Grenadiers take the Woosiers to the Pain Cave

BANGOR, AL - A cave, a gong and "Get It On". Bangor is an unicorporated community in Blount County located between the residential Smoke Rise and the former resort town of Blount Springs. It is the home of the famous Bangor Cave which once housed the notorious Bangor Café Club speakeasy during Prohibition. Back in 1937, the cave's landowner, J. Breck Musgrove, convinced investors (rumored to include Al Capone) to provide funds for a casino nightclub in the vast underground cave. Touted as "The only underground nightclub in America" guests could arrive to the Café by motor car just off of U.S. Highway 31, or via a spur track of the L&N Railroad that could drop visitors off at the entrance to the cave club for a fun night of entertainment. The club opened in June of 1937 to an estimated crowd of 2,000 patrons and it included electrical lighting, fine dining, a bar, a bandstand and a special lounge for women. Another locked and heavily guarded room contained slot machines, craps tables, roulette wheels and card games for gambling. The total construction cost for the nightclub was reported to be $70,000 ($1,200,000 in today's economy) which the owners claimed was made back in the first few days of operation. Police raids and legal issues haunted the nightclub from the beginning. Legal battles with Governor Bibb Graves, the State and the County continued for 18 months until the owners finally closed the doors for good in January of 1939. If you visit the cave today, you can still see remnants of the nightclub's glory days. A “gong” is an East and Southeast Asian musical percussion instrument in the form of a flat, circular metal disc which when hit with a mallet, creates a loud vibrating sound. The gong traces its roots back to the Bronze Age around 3500 BC. "Get It On" is the classic rock tune by the British glam rock group, T. Rex, and it was featured on their 1971 album Electric Warrior. Written by frontman Marc Bolen it was retitled "Bang A Gong (Get It On)" in the United States to avoid confusion with a song of the same name by the group Chase.