Rocks Off received an e-mail late Wednesday afternoon detailing the temporary partial closure of venerable downtown nightspot Sammy's at 2016 Main coming after the club's New Year's Eve festivities with Sammie Relford and Faye Robinson & the Mid-City Players.

The venue, open since 2005, sent out a press release titled "Reinventing Celebration" that detailed a plan that would see the location shutting down after the new year, and reopen in June after a round of image overhauls and renovations.

The missive's wording wasn't as hopeful as you might expect. Owner Jon Deal writes: "Given the economic conditions, we have found that many people are simply not celebrating as they have in the past." Deal did clarify that his club was not going to be closing indefinitely, adding that they would remain open only on Saturday nights for the wildly popular Faye Robinson & the Mid City Players gigs.

It's true that many clubs in the Houston-area have been taking some of the brunt of this year's economic down turn, with most of them scaling back or reorganizing the way they do night-to-night business. Sammy's was especially busy on Thursday nights when Austin-based nerdcore tribute band The Spazmatics would take the stage, and maintained a healthy crowd on the nights Relford and Robinson took to the venue's intimate stage. The rest of the week though the club was dark, only coming alive from Thursday to Saturday nights, where it was widely regarded as a cougar den of the highest order.

The Spazmatics are taking the closure as a chance to revamp their own act ahead of the venue's eventual grand re-opening in June. The band will still be booking their monthly shows at Scout Bar in Clear Lake, where they also have a residency. Their live show is a nearly four-hour odyssey into all things dorky and New Wave, with most clubs charging patrons at least $10 a head to get in the door to see the wildly in-demand (and, notes our own John Nova Lomax, inexplicably replicating) group.