CBGB’s and New York: “Thank You & To Hell With Nostalgia”

“… Many friends of mine who are in their mid-40s-mid ’50s… believe that it (CBGB’s) should remain open on principle — but these folks are really just mourning their youth.”

— writer Rob Kemp, mailing list posting, October 16, 2006

“I don’t understand why New Yorkers are so casual while our politicians destroy every landmark they can…. Nothing is safe… No wonder everyone says NYC is dead and it’s all mall-culture now.”

— Shauna Erlbaum, letter to AM New York about CBGB’s closing, October 19, 2006

When punk ground-central CBGB’s was getting ready to permanently shut its doors and ship them to Las Vegas, one thing was for sure: just like the Iraq war, nobody had a weak-kneed, faint-hearted opinion about it, good or bad. If anyone needs proof that there really is punk nostalgia, you wouldn’t have to go any further than the sweet send-offs from Lenny Kaye in the Village Voice or Richard Hell in The New York Times. On the other end, you had roadie David Idels who hauled equipment through the club for decades, fanatically wishing that “somebody would firebomb that shithole and that fat-fuck dirtbag Hilly would die of cancer.” No doubt agreeing with him would be a student in writer Vivien Goldman’s NYU punk class who scoffed at how “un-punk” it was for people to get all pathetically weepy over a decades-old club that’s well past its prime. Any way you looked at it, things were changing for the music scene in New York and what happened to CBGB’s was emblematic of this.

With all the simultaneous melancholy and cheering about CBGB’s, it’s hard to remember that the club didn’t exactly put NYC on the musical map. In the days before recorded music, the songwriting stronghold of Tin Pan Alley provided America with some of its most popular tunes. Later on, styles such as modern musical theatre, salsa, bebop, minimalism, and free jazz were for all intents and purposes birthed in Gotham, while dance music from swing to disco was also popularized there — and all happening years before punk rock. That isn’t even mentioning a now-global phenomenon called rap which was also sprouting up around the same time as punk. New York wasn’t so much one of the major cities / markets for music so much as a hub where musicians could gravitate, soak in the enormity of the surrounding culture, make a name for themselves, and cause ripples outside of their own time zone.

And it wasn’t just various styles that turned NYC in an embarrassment of musical riches; it was also the venues. Legendary, larger-than-life concert spaces like Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, Radio City Music Hall, Birdland, Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, the Apollo Theatre, the Kitchen, Brooklyn Academy of Music (all of which preceed CBGB’s and are still active today) and dozens of Broadway theatres all draw in renowned performers from across the globe. And so did CBGB’s.

Before any punk band stepped into the club, owner Hilly Kristal had a different vision for what he wanted. He’d opened two bars before CBGB’s, one in the West Village which was closed after complaints from the area (which echoed a similar scenario recently played out with the same result). When CBGB’s itself opened in December ’73, the Lower Eastside area it called home was a scary, scummy place. Regardless of the inelegant locale, Kristal set up shop and made it tacitly obvious as to what he originally had in mind: “CBGB’s” stands for “Country Bluegrass Blues.” But a roots music club wasn’t meant to be there. Only a few months after it opened, Hell and Tom Verlaine would play their first gig there with their band Television and soon after, the local music scene congealed and then exploded.

But it wasn’t as if CBGB’s was alone in giving a home to the early NYC punk bands, but besides Max’s Kansas City, farther uptown at Union Square, there weren’t many places for the groups to play their original music at the time. Max’s had originally opened in ’65 as an artsy hangout (Lou Reed played his last gigs with the Velvet Underground there in ’70) and shut down in ’74 just as CBGB’s was starting to make a name for itself. Max’s opened again in ’75 and remained a second punk outpost until it closed in ’81. In recent phone interviews, Hell and Kaye recalled the early days of the two clubs.

Kaye: “In their heyday, there was a constant stream of people walking from one club to the other. Max’s and CBGB’s were magnetic poles of 70’s rock, but Max’s bands did more traditional rock while CBGB’s bands had a broader spread. Still, you could find friends who were playing at one place or the other.”

Hell: “CBGB’s had less character (than Max’s) — only the bands brought character there. It was just an anonymous dump run by a guy . . . we were all lucky that he went with the flow.”

That flow stemmed from the way that Kristal not only let the bands pick the opening acts to share the bill with them, but also what songs were going to be on the jukebox and even who was collecting money at the door. The groups would even swap members or break off into new bands. A scene developed where the ‘punk’ label was slapped on it even though you’d have to search hard to find a more disparate group of bands; an amazing role-call of talent which included Television, the Patti Smith Group, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Other than the success and / or recognition they achieved, what also made these groups unique were that they were enormously influential, even today. You might even call them visionaries. New York had built up a music scene that wasn’t just getting national attention but also international recognition, especially in England, whose own punk scene would have been unimaginable otherwise.

Soon, CBGB’s would become a magnet for bands and fans alike. It wasn’t just the Christmas lights strung across the top of the bar or the long cavernous hall leading to the stage or the elevated platform for mersh and viewing in the back that drew people in. Looking around the club, you’d see thousands of stickers and flyers for bands which covered the walls, the speakers, the bar; everywhere except the floor and ceiling. Most clubs would quickly tear these down but CBGB’s didn’t. It was part of the grimy, inelegant flavor of the place and a constant reminder of the volume of groups that played there. Its reputation kept getting built upon as its flagship bands signed major label deals and made it to the airwaves. Playing CBGB’s became a must for any up-and-coming punk band, if not to be recognized at the fabled venue but then at least to say “we played at CBGB’s!” just as any jazz musician would brag about a Blue Note gig or a classical ensemble could include Carnegie Hall on its resume. CBGB’s was no longer a club, it was a shrine.

But you know what happens to shrines. As documented in recent film American Hardcore, another local music scene built up around the club in the ’80s but this was one that Kristal didn’t willfully embrace as he did before. By the close of the decade, he was banning hardcore shows from the club because of fears of violence, which just goes to show that bands can go too far, even for a punk club.

Part 2: Adapting to Change

Flipper [Live @ CBGB – 28 August 2005] Photo: 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).”

Part 3: Burn It Down

Last night at CBGB — Photo: Jason Gross

It’s October 15, 2006, the last night that CBGB’s will host a New York show. I’m in the neighborhood but not to attend the funeral there. Dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson is giving a rare NYC reading at the Bowery Poetry Club to a packed crowd, seemingly unconcerned about the other show down the street. The other bars in the area show their sympathy and support with signs outside bidding farewell to CBGB’s and thanking them.

Afterwards, I walk past CBGB’s and there’s a mile-long line waiting to get in to see Patti Smith deliver a joyous eulogy. Dozens more are gathered outside who won’t be going in. People are snapping pictures of this historic evening, including myself (for this article). News vans are parked in front with one of them running a video of an interview with Kristal. The once burly bear now looks gaunt and pale, most likely after rounds of chemotherapy that he’s gone through but also after all the legal wrangling. Though I can’t make out everything, the gist of it is that the reality of his surroundings have finally crystallized in his brain. “The neighborhood’s changed…” he sighs.”I guess it’s just a place for the rich now…”

Inside the club, writer Jesse Jarnow is enjoying not just the final show but also the people-watching that he can do there.

“Celebs included Flea & Richard Lloyd (sitting in), and — wondering around Chris & Tina from the Heads, Ed Norton (who I was apparently next to for the whole night, though didn’t realize it), Jim Carroll, some ex-Dead Boys, Elijah Wood (allegedly), and maybe a few others…Oh, and Little Stevie Van Zandt.”

“Patti’s set was a lot of fun. Not sure how it’ll hold up on tape, but the encore of Land > Gloria was quite intense. My Generation closed the set before that. The covers were great, too — Sonic Reducer, Gimmie Shelter, Rock and Roll Star, a Ramones medley, Marquee Moon (with Lloyd), Little Johnny Jewel, etc.. I wish I could hear Lenny better, because — when he cut through the noise — he was fantastic.”

Shortly afterwards, the CBGB website mentions that CGBG’s Fashions will move down the street and has this piece of brief, cryptic news about the club itself: “We will reopen in the near future.”

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It’s October 15 again. A Big Apple double-decker tour bus is cruising down the Bowery on its way to Chinatown, just passing Second Street, the corner of which had been christened Joey Ramone Place in 2003. Just like in October ’06, everyone takes out their camera to get a picture of the place.

“And if you look on your left, you’ll see the former spot where world famous punk club CBGB’s once stood…”

The tour guide goes on to describe the building under construction there, the CBGB fashion store that resides two blocks to the West and the new club under construction in Nevada, complete with the urinals that Kristal promised to yank out of the old club.

“What is this… punk…?” one of the tourists wonders.

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Even if Kristal has decided what’s to become of CBGB’s, what does he leave behind? Physically, nothing. He promised that what he wouldn’t ship off to the new locale, he’d sell off. As the end of lease drew near, all that they were auctioning on E-Bay were 18 sets of chairs from the main room. According to their listings, “They have been banged up, graffitied and covered with stickers. These chairs have barely survived the multitude of punk rock shows and historic final concerts. These are being sold for memorabilia “as is”. Each lot will come with a certificate of authenticity signed by the club’s owner Hilly Kristal.” Each lot of two-to-four chairs was going for $20 and wouldn’t be shipped anywhere — you had to go to the club to pick them up. As of the last weekend in October, there was a grand total of one bid on a single set of two chairs.

As for its once famous, earth-shaking home bodies, they’ve variously scattered and reassembled. The Ramones front-line is now sadly deceased. Blondie made two albums since reuniting in the late ’90s and has done plenty of touring. Television has been reuniting on and off since the ’90s. Richard Hell has mostly devoted himself to writing. Talking Heads have no interest in reuniting, it seems, while David Byrne maintains a fascinating solo career. Only the Patti Smith Group is still fully active and actually making some of their best music in the last few years.

As for punk itself, nobody really believes that it’ll disappear, no matter how old or worn out it might seem at times. It’s too much ingrained in the musical landscape by now. Whether it’s the pop-tinged ‘mall punk’ (multi-multi-platinum Green Day, who played at CBGB’s) or the old-school hardcore style or the hundreds of other variations in its homeland or abroad (where each place can claim it as its own), it’s here to stay for a long time in one form or another. Any style that can’t survive a club isn’t worth saving and by now, there are still too many believers.

Don’t bet that CBGB’s won’t thrive in the desert, either. With millions of tourists going there, showering the town with billions of dollars and show after show catering to fans who can only hear their favorite music on satellite radio, now, and a place where merchandise is embraced rather than frowned upon (though Virgin Records in NYC offered a sentimental CBGB’s stand with Ramones and Blondie paraphernalia), Vegas looks like a much friendlier place than NYC for a place like CBGB’s.

But that’s bad for Gotham. Even if you don’t mourn the end of the club itself, its closing still means that another cultural institution is gone from NYC. For the same reasons, I felt just as bad hearing that the Coliseum Books and the Tower Records chain were both shutting down. It wasn’t just the rents but also the online and big-box retailer competition that helped do them in. Say what you will about Tower versus a smaller indie store like Other Music, but Tower still had the best and largest selection of jazz and classical music in the city. Coliseum boasted not just best-sellers but also lots of intriguing smaller publishers that you wouldn’t always find at larger retail stores. Having all of these places wiped out while the likes of 7-11, K-Mart, and Home Depot set up roots makes New York city less and less distinguishable from its own suburbs.

As such, maybe CBGB’s memory will stand as a cautionary example. It’s a reminder for the rest of the clubs to be savvy instead of too complacent or cocky — especially with ever-skyrocketing rents and an increasingly adversarial local government constantly threatening their lives. Having a website, MySpace page, 100-CD jukebox and newsletter / mailing list should be second nature by now for any club. Even along with a prosperous merchandising business, that alone wasn’t enough to keep CBGB’s going.

As one-time CBGB’s denizen David Byrne noted, concerts are the one thing that cyberspace isn’t able to co-op (at least yet), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that fans will flock to a venue no matter how strong its rep is or how far back it goes. The Lounge/313 area was a good start but that wasn’t enough, either. You also need more outreach, not just to other music organizations but also to your own neighborhood and the larger city area including other clubs, arts organizations and civic groups for starters and to always restlessly look for and try out new opportunities and ideas, even if some of them flop. Also, in a harsh, dog-eat-dog environ like Gotham, you also have to put aside some pride and egalitarian spirit to pack in the patrons with known musical entities, at least sometimes, while preserving a unique identity if you want to stay around. Highbrow institutions from the ever-innovative BAM to the more traditional Lincoln Center know this too well and struggle with this problem every year. If smaller rock venues don’t do the same, they’ll wind up like CBGB’s, only they may not have a city out West to relocate to.

Other punk clubs and rock clubs will come and go, though none of them will have the same pull as CBGB’s, but some will make their own history, drawing in fans and new bands. Even in the rosy scenario that Ben Sisario recently painted in the New York Times for new clubs, they’ll still have to face the same difficulties that plague other Gotham venues. And don’t fool yourself: many of them won’t be open a few years from now. Talk to any NYC club owner and they’ll regale you with the same problems: the dreaded cabaret laws, the housing crunch, liquor licenses, noise laws, getting visas for musicians from overseas, health care for their employees and many other considerations and headaches. No matter how many new clubs open up (and close down), the same kind of forces that helped usher CBGB’s off the local map are still in play and still threaten the vitality of the music scene in New York. There are groups like the New York Nightlife Association and a burgeoning NY Music Commission (which I’m involved in) who want the music scene to thrive and grow, but that will only work if a network of club owners, musicians, promoters, labels and fans can convince the city (not just the government but also the constituents) that it’s in everyone’s best economic, social, and cultural interest to keep Gotham a music-friendly locale.

As for the fans and musicians who once flocked to CBGB’s or marveled at stories about it, the club’s closing is a milestone not just for Kristal or NYC, but also for themselves. For anyone who’s really despondent about this, they can always venture out West to discover their uprooted roots now planted in a multi-billionaire dollar oasis in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Hell: “CBGB’s moving to Vegas? It’s hilarious and cool — if that’s the remaining option as a way to enter the club, that’s alright with me. The club is an amazing artifact. It’s like I love going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing the inside of a tomb. I wouldn’t specifically go to Vegas just to see it but if I was passing through town, why not?”

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Michel Estaban sends out an October 21st communiqué from his label. His message is mixed with a certain amount of nostalgia but also grim defiance and determination. He talks about his zine “Rock News” which he started in ’75 and how he covered all the classic early bands at his favorite New York club.

“2 years later, I stopped taking pictures and writing about rock in order to create ZE Records with Michael Zilkha. Hilly and CGBG’s certainly had a lot to do with it. THANK YOU & TO HELL WITH NOSTALGIA.”

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Jason Gross is the editor/founder of Perfect Sound Forever, the longest running music publication on the Internet.

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