CBGB Hosts Last Concert Before Eviction

AP via Excite News ^ | Oct 16, 6:07 AM (ET) | JAKE COYLE

[t_skoz]

NEW YORK (AP) - The final chords reverberated off the black, sticker-covered walls of CBGB as the grungy, iconic club toasted the end of its 33-year residence in New York.

Rock poet Patti Smith headlined the Sunday night concert, CBGB's last before eviction by its landlord - the Bowery Residents Committee, a homeless advocacy group that owns the property. The club will close Oct. 31.

Hundreds of music fans packed the small downtown club Sunday, while reporters hovered outside. The mood was both somber and raucous at CBGB, hailed by many as the birthplace of punk.

"This place is not a ... temple," Smith said during the concert. "It is what it is."

She refused to wax nostalgic, instead claiming at a pre-show news conference that doubled as a sound check that "CBGB's is a state of mind" that will carry on elsewhere for a new generation. She later noted with relish that CBGB, at 33, was the same age as Jesus.

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea surprised the audience, joining Smith's band for much of her second set. Having turned 44 at midnight, he was treated to a loud, enthusiastic "Happy Birthday" by the band and crowd.

Much of the concert was filled with reminders of changed times. Sirius Satellite Radio broadcast the show live, and digital cameras populated the audience.

Nevertheless, Smith often struck a '60s vibe, urging change and awareness of issues such as the disputed treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. She sang covers of the Who's "My Generation" and the Rolling Stones'"Gimme Shelter" with obvious parallels to CBGB.

The club was founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973 and over the years helped spawn the careers of such acts as the Ramones, Blondie, the Talking Heads and Television. Though its glory days are long gone, it has remained a symbolic fixture on the Manhattan music scene.

The crowd paid tribute to many of the bands forever connected to the club - including several chants of "Hey ho, let's go!" from the Ramones' classic "Blitzkrieg Bop."

Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads were on hand, as was E Street Band guitarist Little Steven Van Zandt, who had battled to keep the club open during the protracted dispute over its future.

The Bowery Residents Committee's decision not to renew CBGB's lease when it ran out in August 2005 sparked protests, tributes and vigils for more than a year. Kristal recently gave up his legal fight to stay.

Though weary from his battle with lung cancer, he remains combative about his club's exodus from the Bowery, and said Sunday he was "very disappointed" in Mayor Michael Bloomberg for not saving the club.

Still, he says he remains focused on "generating the energy" for CBGB, which he plans to move to Las Vegas. It's very much alive as a brand, too. Kristal will transplant its store, CBGB Fashions, to a new location a few blocks away on Nov. 1.

"I'm thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the next day, and going on to do more with CBGB's," Kristal said Sunday.

Frantz said he and his wife, Weymouth, had to attend the finale because CBGB is like the "center of gravity for us." He reflected on the club where the Talking Heads got their big break.

"It just had a super cool ambiance or electric vibe ... even though it was pretty much a dump," Frantz said.

With a capacity of barely 300, CBGB was founded as a place of freedom for different musical acts. Smith said Kristal "always gave us a job, just like tonight."

"He was our champion and in those days, there were very few," she added.

Though its letters stand for the music Kristal originally planned to present there - country, bluegrass and blues - it quickly came to represent the physical epicenter of early punk and the storied downtown scene of 1970s New York.

Smith's final encore was a quiet poem listing many of the musicians who have died in the years since they played CBGB, but perhaps the more fitting send-off came right before it. The band played the punk staple "Gloria," verging back and forth between choruses of "Gloria! G-L-O-R-I-A!" and "Hey ho, let's go!"

The crowd shook its fists high for the Ramones' classic - an anthem to CBGB and so much more.

[weegee]

Sad thing is disco is still here (and it still sucks).

People call hip hop the new rock but actually it is the new 'disco'. Modern trance-house is also 'disco'.

And 70s Disco is still here. ARRRRGGGGHHH!

[To Hell With Poverty]

Jeepers creepers, posting that Patti Smith pic is about as sadistic as the Helen Thomas pics I always see on FR!

[weegee]

CBGB's best days were just before Gen X was able to get in!

Truth. And I never went. I have seen some other vibrant music scenes in my lifetime (I entering high school in 1982).

For those interested in reading about CBGBs, there are 2 recommended books:

This Ain't No Disco: The Story of Cbgb (Paperback) by by Roman Kozak and Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil (of Punk Magazine) Gillian McCain.

Please Kill Me covers the scene from the Velvet Underground to Iggy & the Stooges and the New York Dolls up to Patti Smith's "final" show at CBGBs in the late 1970s. It is very NYC centric but it is well done (with some time spent covering Detroit in the late 1960s and Iggy Pop as he went to LA).

Legs McNeil published Punk Magazine and his sticker campaign "Punk Is Coming" gave the new music its name (although previously Lenny Kaye had commented on the "punk bands" of the sixties on his Nuggets compilation for Elektra Records in 1972).

[weegee]

Please Kill Me also discussed the "Florida years" of the New York Dolls.

[RepoGirl]

I've been meaning to read that for years, and I'm curious now about the NYD's stint in America's Wang (a fine state, actually, and a pretty cool scene way back when.) Never knew the Dolls were down here at all -- must have been Miami.

[weegee]

If I recall, it was north of that. Ft. Lauderdale maybe or possibly as far north as St. Petersburg.

Malcolm Maclaren was their manager at that point (and afterward he created the punk rock Monkees, the Sex Pistols). Malcolm's idea of outrage was to have the NYDolls dress in red and play in front of a big Communist flag.

Iggy Pop lives in Miami these days.

[t_skoz]

Patti Smith rules!

[RepoGirl]

Malcolm's idea of outrage was to have the NYDolls dress in red and play in front of a big Communist flag.

Maclaren always seemed like such a putz. He got lucky with the Pistols, sorta, but every other single fad he tried to exploit failed miserably. Bow Wow Wow, I think, would have succeeded with or without him.

[Volunteer]

"It's just not the same since Joey Ramone died.

Rest in Peace Joey.

[GOP_1900AD]

We may be boomers by the book but culturally we never had anything to do with the dirty hippies and disco clowns. We cast off the largesse and went back to basics, drawing from rockabilly, old Memphis twang bar rock and roll and surf guitar. We cut our hair and thrashed away in the pits of innumerable dives and ad hoc venues. And to think, I still have all my own teeth - it truly is a miracle!

[SupplySider]

Former dirty hippie pro-punk anti-disco bump :)

[tet68]

All past my time, we hung at Reienzies and Cafe Wa but that was eons ago during the pleisto-scene...