OK, I'm back, to the 2 or 3 people who may have noticed i was gone...
R.I.P. CBGB's...
CBGB's closes down forever this weekend...I remember reading somewhere that the owner wants to move it to Vegas.
In any case, this legendary club couldn't afford the rent anymore (something like $20,000 a month I think I read once) & has succumbed to gentrification.
The NYT eulogy puts it well:
"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."
For all of its history, I am amazed that some rich hipster didn't step up and ultimately bail out the club...But then, maybe its demise is better than it turning into something like a Planet Hollywood CBGB's, all preserved and sanitized....which may have happened if someone with the money had taken over...
Oh, well...I myself wish that I coulda even seen NYC back in the late '70s, in all its nasty squalor. It's still a dirty-ass city, but probably nowhere near as intense as it was 30 years ago...
Question: if CBGB's were to re-open in Vegas, would you go? (Me, myself...I try and avoid Vegas altogether)...
R.I.P. CBGB's...
CBGB's closes down forever this weekend...I remember reading somewhere that the owner wants to move it to Vegas.
In any case, this legendary club couldn't afford the rent anymore (something like $20,000 a month I think I read once) & has succumbed to gentrification.The NYT eulogy puts it well:
"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."
For all of its history, I am amazed that some rich hipster didn't step up and ultimately bail out the club...But then, maybe its demise is better than it turning into something like a Planet Hollywood CBGB's, all preserved and sanitized....which may have happened if someone with the money had taken over...
Oh, well...I myself wish that I coulda even seen NYC back in the late '70s, in all its nasty squalor. It's still a dirty-ass city, but probably nowhere near as intense as it was 30 years ago...
Question: if CBGB's were to re-open in Vegas, would you go? (Me, myself...I try and avoid Vegas altogether)...
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
I shall be working on a reply.
Ciao!