In the end, it’s probably apt that CBGB, like so many vintage rockers, will have an afterlife in Las Vegas. (Seriously: after the New York punk-rock institution closed for good last night, owner Hilly Kristal told The New York Daily News he was moving the whole operation to Vegas – lock, stock, and appalling bathroom stalls.) Also apt, of course, was the fact that Patti Smith played the final show last night. I’m sure she helped tear the house down (metaphorically), three decades after having helped build its reputation, and she noted gracefully that, more than a doomed landmark, ”CBGB’s is a state of mind,” one that will find a new incarnation at some other venue where kids gather to hear the music that speaks to them.
Much ink has been spilled in recent weeks and months about the 33-year-old club’s historical significance. I don’t have much to add to what I said last September when CBGB lost its lease, except to suggest that the club was always an exciting place to visit, even though it had long ceased to be what it once was, the incubator of musical revolutions. (EW’s Dalton Ross went to a show there last week and made a similar observation.) No doubt it meant a lot more to you if you were a fan back then; I enjoyed the Saturday Night Live skit last week that featured Smith and Lou Reed (played by Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen) standing across the street from CBGB and waxing nostalgic about the cheaper, grimier, more dangerous New York of the 1970s, in that annoying way that everyone who came to New York before you did moans about how much cooler the city used to be. Meanwhile, as The New York Times notes in its article about last night’s closing performance at CBGB, the rock-club scene it spawned in its neighborhood is all but dead now, with the action having trekked across the East River. Maybe some new musical movement is now slouching toward Brooklyn to be born, and maybe 30 years from now, we’ll be moaning the demise of that club scene after it’s become a 60-story parking garage for our flying cars.
Still feeling nostalgic for CBGB (or want to know what the fuss was all about)? Post below, or check out the photo galleries at Stereogum and Punkphoto.
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This post reminds me of an episode of Sex and the City entitled Splat!
Lexi Featherton stood on the edge of a window and proclaimed, “New York is over, O-V-E-R, over! It isn’t fun anymore, whatever happend to fun?! I’m so bored I could die”! and out the window she went; much like this infamous club!
In the end, everything can be traced back to Sex and the City, when it comes to New York.
Ya know, I’ve been to CBGB’s, I’ve even played on the stage when I was in a “not so good but definetly not bad rock band”. Honestly, the place was a crap hole. No love lost at all. If Hilly and the club was making money and had paid the back rent he could still be there. It was a business not a charity.
Why didn’t all the “big” stars who started there dig into their deep pockets to keep it here if it was that important?
If it’s the same money losing venture in Vegas as it was here in NYC it’ll be gone long before the next 33 years.
It’s time had come. Yawn.
Doesn’t NYC still have Arlene’s Grocery and a few dozen other haunts for checking out local bands?
I’ll personally be more bummed if Minneapolis’ First Avenue shuts down. Prince, Moris Day n Soul Asylum got discovered there, and the place has a decent vibe.
Besides NYC reigned in the punk era, brought us hip hop, merged carribean sounds together into salsa music, and helped ska music make it’s 3rd revival, so maybe it’s time that a different city started up a music scene for once…
Not really sad to see it go, it has been dead long before it was pronounced.
So with CBGB’s and the Bottom Line now closed we can officialy say that rock is dead, again.
That leaves us with only Justin Timbercrap music now. so in twenty years when someone says “remember the music of the 2000’s?” We can all say no.
CBGB posed an unusual problem for those who desperately wanted to give it historic landmark status: How do you preserve and maintain an entity that to a great extent achieved its renown because it was a decaying, decrepit s—hole?
A lot of ink has been spilled this week about CBGB’s role in the origins of the punk movement. That movement came to furious life with the mission of tearing down all the old institutionalized aesthetics. Now the wrecking ball is all too appropriately aimed right back at one of its foundations. With the utmost respect, that sure sounds like blissfully bloody punk karma to me.
To Ed, Somehow you worked in a shout-out to Lexi Featherington in both this thread and the Bill Murray one. Why stop there? How about how Lexi would look in a mohawk, or how she used party to the late hours with Freddie Fender. Popwatch is a celebration of popculture but twice in a row feels like you’re trying too hard.
To Dan:
It’s Monday, I’m at work, and I try everything in my power to forget that, let me have my fun.
Never heard of the place…don’t really give a damn…New York get over yourself.
In Manhattan you had CB’s and in Brooklyn you had Lamours. Both were the places to be for true rock, metal and punk. Now places like Club B and now the Bitter End is pushing industrial and punk. Hopefully the legacy will continue.
Viva Las Vegas CBGB’s!
I had a punk clothing store on St. Marks Pl. in the late 70’s & 80’s. I did clothing for Blondie made Joey Ramones leather jacket among others. I was a regular at CBGB’s, and now an era is gone. But all is not lost. I have just resurrected my look with a new website http://www.natashanyc.com. Come visit and view the old and the new. I have some great photos from the 70’s & 80’s on the site, that have never before been seen. Natasha
BLOGSPAMMER ID: Natasha Adonzio / Steven Velozo / natashanyc.com
Unfortunate, in several ways, but mostly sad to me that someone is compelled to tag websites talking about personal experiences with CBGB (good and bad) with their newly “resurrected” punk clothing store. Today’s blogspammer came to you through Google,…