CBGB NYC: RIP

So, CBGB (not CBGB's, but that's what everyone called it) is finally closing, after 33 years in existence. RIP. You can read a great article in the NY Press on the subject written by my friend, band mate, and all-around class act Michael Cobb.

That band, The Crevulators, played there about a half-dozen times, down in the Downstairs Lounge and up on the main stage. Usually, the main stage appearances were on a bill supporting our friends The Reid Paley Trio:



It was cool to have trodden the same beer-soaked, carpet-covered plywood as the great NYC punk bands that are constantly mentioned in the same breath as CBGB: The Ramones, Talking Heads, and Blondie lead the medals podium there. They had a decent sound system and the Pabst Blue Ribbons were cold. But truth be told, it was past its prime by the time we got there. We usually had more fun and better crowds playing at either the Rodeo Bar across town or our more regular haunts in Brooklyn.

My guess is that most of the obits you're going to see about CBGB are going to be weepy nostalgia pieces that will almost invariably use the words "end of an era". Well, fine. Truth is, the place was a dump. It was a 10 minute walk in any direction to get either a slice of pizza or cup of coffee (an unforgiveable sin in Manhattan, really). Apart from the bands--most of which were Long Island, Westchester, and Jersey kids doing bad Green Day impressions--it was just a dark, spraypainted dive bar that was neither the first nor most impressive of its kind.

They never, as Tara pointed out to me, capitalized on their brand. How could someone not have paid Hilly Kristal ten thousand bucks 10 years ago, licensed the name, and opened up 5 or 10 places with memorabilia on the walls and $11 cheeseburgers? It'd have been a much cooler cachet than the Hard Rock or House of Blues. With instantaneous name recognition. Yeah, so it stripmallizes the cultural reference, but I stopped making myself upset about that sort of thing a few years ago. I'm picking my ideological battles much more carefully these days.

The closing of the place is as much about lack of vision as it is about any of the following influences that converged to sink the Kristal ship (ha! works in a classic rock reference!): NYC rents (rising), A-hole landlords (suing), original live music as an entertainment commodity (boring), and the passing into the Grey Havens of the bands that played there as kids (aging). It's just history, right? No need to start feeling old, or anything, right?