[Incorrigible]

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

When I was high school freshman in Jersey City in 1981 I didn't realize how radical it was to be playing The Ramones and Talking Heads at a high school dance. We wreathed on the floor during "Rock Lobster" and jumped high in the air during "Shout" while people attended the Halloween dance in togas.

Only years later would I get to CBGBs and by that time, glam rock hair bands had already taken over from the punk/new wave music scene.

Nope, I've got to hand it to the younger Boomers who put the nail in the coffin of disco.

[RepoGirl]

I was a few years too young to ever go to CBGBs. I was born in '68, so I was a yout' in the late 70s and early 80s - the glory days -- and I could only read about the place in Trouser Press and Cream. The New York scene of that era still holds an almost mythological place for me.

Also, being a thousand miles away in the sticks of Florida (and we had our own, quirky punk scene) it would have been one heck of a commute to get there.

[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!

[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).

[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!