In the Hurrican katrina thread, Methos, G-Man and Sammitch were bemoaning the destruction of some of our most treasured musical landmarks follwing the hurricane. Another musical landmark however is in danger of being lost and much can still be done to prevent it.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - CBGB, the grimy punk rock club that spawned acts like Blondie, is about to join the list of fabled New York music venues forced to shutter their doors.
The club's lease on its premises in the city's grungy East Village neighborhood ran out on Wednesday and the landlord has refused to renew it after a rent dispute.
"It's a real shame. It's the last bastion of independent rock music," said Max Weinberg, the drummer in Bruce Springsteen's E Street band and on Conan O'Brien's late night talk show.
"There's really a danger in not recognizing the cultural importance of such places," he said outside CBGB. "You don't start tearing down your monuments."
As the club's last hours wound down, hundreds of punksters sporting tattoos, spiked hair and body piercings milled around a nearby park to hear musicians including Blondie's Debbie Harry sing in a rally to save the club.
"It hit me pretty hard when I found out," said Bryan Kinelen, bass player of a punk band called the Bouncing Souls. "It's like the world of jeans without Levi's, and all you're left with are the Diesels and Sassoons."
"Coming to CBGB is a pilgrimage for any punk-rock kid," said 17 year-old Steve Ciccarelli, who took the train in from New Jersey for the benefit show on Tuesday night.
Other New York music joints with a cult following have succumbed to soaring rents and tougher regulations. This year alone clubs like Fez and the Luna Lounge have closed, while the Bottom Line shut its doors last year.
"A decade ago, nobody wanted to live down here. It was raw space. And look at it now," said David Schroeder, director of jazz studies at New York University. "It's definitely much harder now for a club to survive."
CBGB, whose full name is CBGB & OMFUG for Country Bluegrass Blues & Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers, once fostered the Ramones and no hosts dozens of bands each week.
It may move to another space, but that is hardly any solace for die-hard fans like Kinelen.
"It's a cozy place and it's sort of personal. Everybody's locked into that same little dark box," said Kinelen. "Part of what makes it irreplaceable is its history."
The club has vowed to fight the eviction and has shows scheduled through September.
Can't that place be made into a cultural landmark or something? It's influence in rock history certainly cannot be disputed. It's one thing to lose parts of our musical culture to acts of God, it's quite something else to lose them by choice.
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. --Will Rogers
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." - George W. Bush
I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would .. try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. - Condoleeza Rice
Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor
To comfort the powerless and make the powerful uncomfortable.
New York -- CBGB's owner Hilly Kristal, sitting at his usual perch Thursday inside lower Manhattan's renowned nightclub, offered twin observations: He's got no lease, and no intention of quietly surrendering his club. "It's a fight, a hard fight, and we're going to keep fighting," said the bearded 72-year-old patriarch of the club where the Ramones and Talking Heads found a home. "We think we have a chance of coming out on top."
Kristal spoke just a few hours after the club's lease with the Bowery Residents' Committee expired at midnight Wednesday. Muzzy Rosenblatt, executive director of the non-profit homeless-services agency, decided against renewing the club's lease after a contentious five-year battle over the monthly $19,000 (U.S.) rent. The group houses 250 homeless people above the club. CBGB is its lone commercial tenant.
Rosenblatt, who did not return a call for comment Thursday, had earlier issued a statement urging Kristal to "vacate the premises both voluntarily and expeditiously." But Kristal promised a court battle to keep the club running; shows already are scheduled for the rest of this month. Kristal founded the club in December, 1973, creating a space that gained an international reputation as the birthplace of punk. AP
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. --Will Rogers
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." - George W. Bush
I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would .. try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. - Condoleeza Rice
Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor
To comfort the powerless and make the powerful uncomfortable.
September 3, 2005 -- The potential demise of fabled nightclub CBGB proves that if there are 8 million stories in the Naked City, there may be 8 million ironies too.
The Bowery establishment's lease expired at midnight Wednesday.
The club and its landlord are in a battle over a $19,000 monthly rent that could double to $41,000.
Longtime club owner Hilly Kristal vows a protracted legal fight over the space.
Responding to Kristal's not-at-all-thinly veiled threat to move the club to Las Vegas if no deal is struck, Mayor Bloomberg has offered to mediate the lease dispute — or find the club new digs elsewhere: "It's part of our culture, it brings a lot of business here and it doesn't belong anywhere else."...
Though I highly doubt that threat is real. That would be so an un-CBGB thing to do! Plus seeing as how Studio 54 in Vegas is about the dullest club i've ever visited, I think something definately gets lost in the commercizlization/Vegas'ing of musical landmarks.
I however also have mixed feelings about moving it somewhere else in New York. Sure, it sounds like a reasonable compromise, but that'd be like saying, 'let's move Sun Studios to another part of Memphis'.. It's the history of the place that is paramount, not the name.
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. --Will Rogers
"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." - George W. Bush
I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would .. try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. - Condoleeza Rice
Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor
To comfort the powerless and make the powerful uncomfortable.
Punk poet laureate Patti Smith sang farewell to CBGB last night, as the New York music institution closed after hosting three decades of three-chord rock 'n' roll.
The veteran rocker took the stage as the last-ever act at the legendary Lower East Side club, playing "The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game," which, she said, "might have been the first song we ever played here."
Smith played a mixture of her old and new material, and also performed songs by other artists who'll forever be associated with CBGB. They included Blondie, the Velvet Underground and Television, which helped begin the punk tradition at the club, where the initials stand for country, bluegrass and blues.
The house was packed to capacity, while throngs of people outside on the Bowery snaked around the block, hoping against hope to get into the show, which sold out in eight minutes when tickets were put on sale.
After the show, club founder Hilly Kristal, now 75 and battling cancer, will dismantle the room, preserving or photographing the graffiti-covered walls, tearing out the notorious urinals and dismantling the bars and stage.
Everything will be moved into storage, as Kristal hopes to open a club and museum in Las Vegas in 2008 that will be an homage to CBGB, as well as other punk-era New York institutions, such as the Mudd Club and Max's Kansas City.
Dear, sweet Harley Kwink...I'm madly in love with you. Marry me! We can go to Canadia. Or Boston or something. It'll be grand...You know the cookies are a given. They are ALWAYS a given. You could dump me tomorrow and you'd still get the cookies. Boston..shit, wherever dyke weddings were legalized. And where better to rub their little piggie noses in how bad they suck than right on their doorstep? What are they gonna do? Be jealous of you? Stare furiously at your tah-tahs? Not willingly give you cookies, but instead begrudgingly give you their cookies? Woman, time to wake up to the powers you wield - Uschi
Not surprising. I don't think Boy George or Right Said Fred played there...
Uschi said: I won't rape you, I'll just fuck you 'till it hurts and then not stop and you'll cry.
MisterJLA: RACKS so hard, he called Jim Rome "Chris Everett." In Him, all porn is possible. He is far above mentions in so-called "blogs." RACK him, lest ye be lost!
"I can't even brush my teeth without gagging!" - Tommy Tantillo: Wank & Cry, heckpuppy, and general laughingstock
Not surprising. I don't think Boy George or Right Said Fred played there...
Dear, sweet Harley Kwink...I'm madly in love with you. Marry me! We can go to Canadia. Or Boston or something. It'll be grand...You know the cookies are a given. They are ALWAYS a given. You could dump me tomorrow and you'd still get the cookies. Boston..shit, wherever dyke weddings were legalized. And where better to rub their little piggie noses in how bad they suck than right on their doorstep? What are they gonna do? Be jealous of you? Stare furiously at your tah-tahs? Not willingly give you cookies, but instead begrudgingly give you their cookies? Woman, time to wake up to the powers you wield - Uschi
Uschi said: I won't rape you, I'll just fuck you 'till it hurts and then not stop and you'll cry.
MisterJLA: RACKS so hard, he called Jim Rome "Chris Everett." In Him, all porn is possible. He is far above mentions in so-called "blogs." RACK him, lest ye be lost!
"I can't even brush my teeth without gagging!" - Tommy Tantillo: Wank & Cry, heckpuppy, and general laughingstock
Dude was pretty huge around '97-00 there. He was a big deal, demanding as hefty price tag just for his DJ sets....even doing a residency for Cream (back in it's heyday...before it switched to the Minisitry on Fridays).
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