Viva Bam Bam

Strip Teaser: "Our girls are so beautiful they don't need to strip all the way down," says Bam Bam. Photo By: Mike Mergen

The naked truth with WYSP jock and Cheerleaders host Jacky Bam Bam.

by A.D. Amorosi

A strip mall strip bar in South Philly shouldn't be a magnet for rock dignitaries. There are swankier, more bare-assed peel palaces than Cheerleaders, a club where the stripping stops at lingerie, wet T-shirts and bikinis.

Yet over its nine years of slippery poles and bruised thighs, members of Godsmack, KISS, Jet, Motley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, Cinderella, the Roots, Replacements and more have found their way to South Front Street.

Aside from 50-some scantily clad girls writhing nightly, the reason is gangly, ageless DJ Jacky Bam Bam (aka Rena) host of "Sunday Rock and Roll Church" and Monday's "World Famous Wet-Titty T-Shirt" events.

Through a maze of manic cock-rock, the DJ/MC cig-coughs a slow, salacious, personalized patter for each dancer: "Look up. There's a plane. No. A bird? No. It's my Tower of Pussy Power."

Bam Bam cackles. Purses his lips. Bobs his head so the bangs of his rooster konk hairdo fly across his long face and prominent nose.

He does this for every girl. Whether she's in thong or lacey panties, he's got a lewd-but-loving comment. Though he's got more triple entendres than a Friars' Club Roast, he's selling a girl's fine points, not pimping.

"Our girls are so beautiful they don't need to strip all the way down," says Bam Bam. "I'm not gonna mention gentleman's clubs where the girls are a little too fake and a little too snooty."

"He has his pet names — Little Miss Dynamite. Blonde Bombshell," says Mike Stieffenhofer, the Cheerleaders general manager who's known Bam Bam since their days working at Teezers at 20th and Oregon. "But he makes each introduction unique."

There's a familial relationship between Jacky and the girls. But he also attends to the boys in the crowd.

"This is for Tom out there enjoying his Miller. You're taking care of the ladies, right, Tom? He wants to hear "Shake Me' from Cinderella. We're going to rock it."

When not at Cheerleaders (noon until 2 a.m. each of his days), spinning Wednesdays at Old City's Mint, or rehearsing for his yearly gig marching as a Fancy with the Golden Sunrise New Year's Association, he's at 94 WYSP-FM. Bam Bam's been there for three years as an on-air personality (Saturdays, 8 p.m.-midnight). For the last year, he's also produced WYSP's "Couzin Ed" show.

Before stints at Manhattan's Cat Club, Philly's after-hour Revival, and before he took up as drummer for the Stones-y Dogtown Balladeers, Bam's dad used to drag a young sixth-grade Jacky to Studio 54.

"I was his little helper," says Bam Bam of his dad, whom he refers to as "The Music Man," 54's Wednesday-night spinner.

Bam Bam has been at Cheerleaders since its inception when John Meehan, general manager at Teezers, bought Cheerleaders nine years ago and Bam Bam and the Teezers crew moved to Front Street with him. (Bam Bam will host Cheerleaders' ninth anniversary party at the club on Wed., March 23.)

Here, Bam Bam nestles in a low-lit cocoon of CDs, surrounded by boards lined with dancer names. Unlike hosts at most strip clubs, he DJs for the crowd; spinning T Rex, Skynard, Metallica and ZZ Top, maybe some R&B or Latin beats "for the hot Spanish girls."

"If you're that guy drinking the beer — especially if football's on — you wanna rock. If Tom out there is happy, the girls make more money. Sometimes it's hard to get that into [the girls'] heads. … But they figure it out."

Though he talks it up in the booth, Bam Bam doesn't give up dirt about what goes on inside it. He won't say who his favorite girls are or dime out his celebrated guests for what did or didn't happen.

"I gotta protect the innocent," jokes Bam Bam.

So why do celebs come to this decidedly un-glitzy bar where women don't strip naked?

It's Jacky. His ties to legendary rock clubs and rock radio notwithstanding, it's because he's one of them — not the usual wanker strip club DJ who looks and sounds like a meth-freak.

Jacky is a drummer whose look — black hair run through with white or red streaks, scarves, chains and rings — makes him an honorary Rolling Crow. "Rod Stewart once … told me I should have been in the Faces," says Jacky. "No joke."

Stieffenhofer says while Cheerleaders treats its white-collar customers and visiting dignitaries like part of their blue-collar family, its Jacky they come for. "He's equally great with all of them."

But Bam Bam defers, offering Cheerleaders' unassuming ambience as the reason he's the choice of rockers and regular joes.

"If I was on the other side of the fence and I wanted to hang out and have a drink and cig with a girl without her stealing my wallet and there was a Jacky Bam Bam playing good rock 'n' roll, I'd wanna be there."