Some final thoughts on CBGB's closing (mainly from the NYT):
“CBGB is a state of mind,” (Patti Smith) said from the stage in a short preshow set for the news media whose highlight was a medley of Ramones songs.
“There’s new kids with new ideas all over the world,” she added. “They’ll make their own places — it doesn’t matter whether it’s here or wherever it is.” ...
“It’s the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out,” said John Nikolai, a black-clad 36-year-old photographer from Staten Island whose tie read “I quit.”
Added Ms. Smith outside the club, “It’s a symptom of the empty new prosperity of our city.” ...
“When we first started there was no place we could play, so we ended up on the Bowery,” said Tom Erdelyi, better known as Tommy Ramone, the group’s first drummer and only surviving original member. “It ended up a perfect match.” ...
CBGB (its full name was CBGB & OMFUG, for Country, Bluegrass and Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers) is the latest and highest-profile rock club to vanish from Lower Manhattan in recent years as rents and other expenses have continued to skyrocket. Last year the Bottom Line closed over a debt of $185,000 to its landlord, New York University, and Fez and the Luna Lounge shut down because of development. The Continental, another ragged temple of punk on Third Avenue in the East Village, quit live music last month. Other clubs have sprouted up in Manhattan, but the center of gravity of the city’s club scene has gradually been shifting to Brooklyn. ...
Patti Smith in 1979The club’s interior -- a narrow corridor with a bar to the right, the stage to the back, stalactites of grime dangling from the ceiling and miles of ancient posters and graffiti all around -- is almost as cherished as its music.
“It’s like it’s grown its own barnacles,” said Lenny Kaye, Ms. Smith’s guitarist and a longtime rock critic and historian. “You couldn’t replicate the décor in a million years, and dismantling all those layers of archaeology of music in the club is a daunting task.” ...
“When I go into a rock club in Helsinki or London or Des Moines, it feels like CBGB to me there,” Mr. Kaye said. “The message from this tiny little Bowery bar has gone around the world. It has authenticated the rock experience wherever it has landed.”
From Richard Hell's Oct. 14 op-ed piece in the NYT, entitled "Rock 'n Roll High School:"
On practically any weekend from 1974 to 76 you could see one or more of the following groups (here listed in approximate chronological order) in the often half-empty 300-capacity club: Television, the Ramones, Suicide, the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, the Dictators, the Heartbreakers, Talking Heads, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and the Dead Boys. Not to mention some often equally terrific (or equally pathetic) groups that aren’t as well remembered, like the Miamis and the Marbles and the Erasers and the Student Teachers. Nearly all the members of these bands treated the club as a headquarters -- as home. It was a private world. We dreamed it up. It flowered out of our imaginations.
How often do you get to do that? That’s what you want as a kid, and that’s what we were able to do at CBGB’s. It makes me think of that Elvis Presley quotation: “When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times.” We dreamed CBGB’s into existence.
The owner of the club, Hilly Kristal, never said no. That was his genius. Though it’s dumb to use the word genius about what happened there. It was all a dream. Many of us were drunk or stoned half our waking hours, after all. The thing is, we were young there. You don’t get that back. Even children know that. They don’t want their old stuff thrown away. Everything should be kept. I regret everything I’ve ever thrown away. ...
CBGB’s is going to be dismantled and reconstructed as an exhibit in Las Vegas, like Elvis. I like that. A lot. I really hope it happens as intended.
It’s occurred to me that Hilly’s genius passivity is something he has in common with Andy Warhol. Another trait of Warhol’s was that he fanatically tried to keep or record everything that ever happened in his vicinity, from junk mail in “time capsules” to small talk to newspaper front pages and movie star publicity shots to 24 hours of the Empire State Building.
We all know that nothing lasts. But at least we can make a cool and funny exhibit of it.
I’m serious. God likes change and a joke. God loves CBGB’s.
In the blogosphere, Velvet Sea has some good pix, Finance Trends Matter points to this Slate column and some cool YouTube video links, Martini Republic has a telling photo, and Pops' Bucket offers this perspective with his post 'Number 665... Now Serving Number 665...':
Before we all panic, let's look at the facts, shall we?
North Korea has nukes. A Scorsese movie is on pace to turn a hefty profit. Supreme Court Justices are on TV debating things in with ACLU members. John Kerry might run for president again in 2008. CBGB shut down. The Detroit Tigers are in the World Series.
OK, now you may panic. Let's not be naive. The signs are unmistakable. Something is about to happen. Something bad.
One of the songs Patti Smith played was the Ramones' Do You Remember Rock 'n Roll Radio? Here's the lyrics:
Rock 'n, rock 'n roll radio!
Lets' go!Do you remember hullabaloo,
Upbeat, shindig and Ed Sullivan too?
Do you remember rock 'n roll radio?
Do you remember rock 'n roll radio?Do you remember Murray the K,
Alan Freed and high energy?
It's the end, the end of the 70s.
It's the end, the end of the century.Do you remember lying in bed
Wwith thecovers pulled up over your head?
Radio playin' so no one can see.We need change and we need it fast
Before rock's just part of the past
'Cause lately it all sounds the same to me.Will you remember Jerry Lee,
John Lennon, T. Rex and ol' Moulty?
It's the end, the end of the 70s
It's the end, the end of the century.
And let's turn to The Onion for a last bit of perspective:
