CBGB's and New York: "Thank You & To Hell With Nostalgia"

by Jason Gross

Since then, CBGB’s did manage to make several smart outreach gestures.  Not only did they open the next door Gallery to sell merchandise and let more performers play in a more low-key environment; they also let the Black Rock Coalition mount regular gigs there and let Bush Tetras drummer Dee Pop set up his impressive Freestyle Jazz series in the downstairs Lounge, an even more low-key area full of couches and living room chairs.  And CBGB’s merchandising was nothing to sneeze at: last count, their T-shirt sales were yielding a few million dollars a year, even if many of the buyers didn’t seem like they’d ever set foot in CBGB’s.  But that didn’t matter because by then, CBGB’s had become a name brand.

But none of that could hide that fact that while CBGB’s was an undeniable part of history, it was no longer as vital as it once was to the local music scene.  Simply, there wasn’t a scene there anymore and too few shows booked there drew in anyone but the rabidly faithful. To many, CBGB’s became a living relic.  You heard stories about fabled downtown venues like Max’s, the Mudd Club or the Filmore but they were long gone.  Soon, other venues like Wetlands, Tramps, the Bottom Line, Coney Island High, the Palladium, the Cooler, and the Ritz would also disappear at the turn of the millennium.  But no matter what you thought of CBGB’s, it was still around in the ‘90s and beyond—at least in some ways.  You could still go there and see shows, if you felt like it.

When I came to New York in ‘90, I’d heard plenty about the legend of CBGB’s and had already gone to the occasional show there, traveling from North Jersey. The first one was a Camper Van Beethoven show around 1986 which climaxed with a noisy, stomping version of Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive”.  I was also there on December 30, 1993 for CBGB’s 20th anniversary show featuring the Dictators, Marshall Crenshaw, Arto Lindsay and Lenny Kaye. It was one of the best multi-artist bills I’ve ever seen and just as varied as the bills that CBGB’s once put on in its classic days.  The only problem was that it had been two years since I had set foot in the club and it would be another year before I would go there again.  For the last 16 years that I’ve lived in New York, I don’t think I’ve been to CBGB’s more than 10 times.  The last time I ever went there was over a year ago ( in August 2005) to see a great nostalgia bill featuring Flipper and Sham 69.  For a music nut, that’s not a good sign—for the club or for me, admittedly.

And mind you, it wasn’t just that by the ‘90s, there were plenty of other places to see bands that would have played at CBGB’s, anyway.  It was that relic syndrome creeping in again, and I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling it.  When my Aussie friend Dave Lang (who runs the stalwart Lexicon Devil label) came out to New York to visit in the summer of ‘99, one of the places he wanted to see was CBGB’s.  “But there’s nothing really worth seeing there anymore,” I complained.  “Yeah, I know,” he sighed. “But I just want to say that I’ve been there anyway...” Similarly, some friends of mine in a joke-punk band called Scarfo (now long gone) played a late night gig at CBGB’s around 1995.  After the show, one of them wondered if they should try to book there again.  It was unanimous: they already played there, so why bother?

Was CBGB’s booking policy in the last 10-15 years so lax that it hurt the club’s chances of survival?  Hell and Kaye have interesting inside perspectives about this.

Hell: “Hilly was the same way back then (the ‘70s), booking tons of lousy bands. Look at the Village Voice ads from the period and you’ll see lots of names you won’t recognize.”

Kaye: “I actually like laxness in bookings.  If you try to over think what belongs in a club, you leave out unexpected treasures.  A great club lets anyone prove themselves.  I’m really not a fan of the velvet rope.  The more you try to figure these things out, you narrow your vision.  I just loved the fact that CBGB’s had such an open door—it was a true sense of democracy.  And you have to search for the nuggets in the haystack. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. I’d rather have local rock club not be elitist and give everyone have chance to play than confine everything.  My definition of a grassroots rock club is that it has non-discriminatory policy. I’m a fan of the impassioned underdog.  You need a place to build up audience and you don’t know which bands it’ll be that break through.”

Regardless of such wisdom and longtime policies, CBGB’s was living on borrowed time.  The usual villain that then swoops into the downtown NYC area and buys up buildings whose owners aren’t raking in enough cash is the ever-expanding New York University.  But this time with CBGB’s, the real estate battle lines were drawn with quite another type of adversary: the Bowery Residents’ Committee, an advocate group for the homeless which held a multi-decade lease.  In a New York magazine article, BRC honcho Muzzy Rosenblatt claims that when he approached Kristal last year with a nearly six figure bill for rent past due, he was scoffed at.  Whether true or not, BRC and CBGB’s looked horns in court about the rent and you already know who lost.

From there, it looked like Kristal acted either arrogantly or ignorantly, thinking that his landlord had no right to turn the thumb screws on him and that NYC should rush to his rescue.  Mayor Bloomberg offered to help the club relocate and one possibility was a building on Delancey Street, not far from the original location.  Kristal said the price tag was too high and turned it down.  Though some benefits were held in the summer of ‘05 and CBGB’s made a play for getting landmark status, it was too late and too little. 

Granted that Bloomberg was paying lip service (do you think he’d let the same fate happen to Carnegie Hall?) and that landmark status is actually a long, red-taped, politicized process, but Kristal also sorely underestimated the city’s lack of club-love.  Greedy landlords had already driven out Wetlands and the Bottom Line (thanks to NYU) and crackdowns on clubs have been rampant for the last several years, using everything from fire codes to noise laws to cabaret laws to prosecute them.  True, some of the clubs deserved their comeuppance for their lax self-policing. Other decades-old, smaller establishments managed to stay open by catering to an older crowd and rich tourists (Birdland, Blue Note) or constantly trying to push the envelope and surprise audiences (e.g., the Kitchen) while keeping themselves on the right side of the law.  Given all these club stories, did Kristal ignore the grim news or just think that he was by now above it all?

Whatever the case, he insulated himself from the reality going on not just in Gotham but also in his own backyard.  Quoting from October 13, 2006 newsletter of famed jazz / prog-rock music hub Downtown Music Gallery which is across the street from CBGB’s:

“The Bowery is changing fast, as NYU and other power brokers build oversized and over-priced condos up and down the block. Where will it lead? They are already squeezing out anyone who can not afford the ridiculous rents around here.”

With his legal options exhausted, Kristal decided that CBGB’s should leave New York and go to Las Vegas.  That’s right: the punk-rock shrine on the Vegas strip.  If they can open their arms to all other kinds of nostalgia decades after the fact, why not CBGB’s?  But such a drastic move had a tone of betrayal to it: in a New York Business article, Kristal said that the long rent fight “leaves a really bad taste in my mouth and we’re not going to stay here (New York)."

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