CBGB

CBGB, also CBGB's or CB's is a club at the address 315 Bowery in New York City, New York. The full name is CBGB & OMFUG which stands for "Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers". Gormandizer usually means a ravenous eater of food, but according to CBGB founder Hilly Kristal here it means "a voracious eater of ... music".^[1]

Founding

CBGB was founded in 1973, by Hilly Kristal, on the site of his earlier bar Hilly's on the Bowery, which he ran from 1969 to 1972. After that point he had focused exclusively on his more profitable West Village nightspot, Hilly's, until he was forced to close it due to complaints from residents, sending him back to the Bowery.

As its name implied, Kristal intended the bar to feature Country, Blues and Bluegrass music (along with poetry readings), but it became famous as the birthplace of American punk. Since the Mercer Arts Center had collapsed in August 1973, there were few locations in New York where unsigned bands could play original music, and a couple of Mercer refugees - Suicide and Wayne County - played one-off gigs in the very early days of CBGB. However, the key moment in the venue's early history is considered to be the Sunday night residency of Television that began on 31 March 1974, the start of a flood of performers of "street music" (especially The Ramones), as punk acts were initially known.

Mid-1970s on...

At the third Television gig on 14 April 1974, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye from the Patti Smith Group were in the audience; however, the band was not to make its CBGB debut until 14 February 1975. Alongside Television (often literally), other early performers included The Stillettoes (featuring future Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry), who supported Television on 5 May 1974, the newly-formed Blondie (under its original name of Angel & the Snakes) and The Ramones, both in August 1974.

Mink DeVille, Talking Heads, Tuff Darts, The Shirts, Steel Tips, The Heartbreakers, The Fleshtones and many other bands followed in quick succession.

The club continued to host many punk and new wave bands over the years.

Hardcore

Though CBGB was utilized as a hot spot for touring bands to hit when they came through New York, the scene that kept the bar alive during the 1980s was New York's underground hardcore scene. Sundays at CBGB was matinee day (also named "thrash day" in a documentary about hardcore skinheads). Each and every Sunday a handful of hardcore bands took the stage in the afternoon to dinnertime hours, usually for cheap or free. Over the years the CB's matinee became an institution, before violence both in and out of the scene caused Kristal to refuse to book hardcore shows. By 1990 CBGB did not book any hardcore punk or punk shows. CB's has accepted hardcore back at various times, and for the past several years has made no rules about what genres can and can't be featured.

Bands made legendary by the now famous matinees include Gorilla Biscuits, the Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, Sick Of It All, Reagan Youth, Warzone, Urban Waste, Youth Of Today, Murphy's Law, Leeway, Sheer Terror, and Breakdown.

The future

CBGB has announced it will close indefinitely on September 30, 2006. According to a Pitchfork news clip, the venue has been in a long legal battle with the Bowery Residents' Committee:

"The BRC is a nonprofit organization that houses 250 homeless New Yorkers in the building at 315 Bowery where CBGB is located. As previously reported, the club’s lease with the BRC expired on August 31, and Hilly Kristal, owner of the bar since 1973, was presented with an eviction notice after much fighting."

However, Kristal did indicate plans for CBGB's future in an article in College Music Journal.

The agreement raises CBs rent from $19,000 to $35,000 a month until owner and founder Hilly Kristal is forced to leave the building in October 2006. He says he's looking at potential locations in Manhattan and is considering Las Vegas as a site to open a sister club.

"We're looking here and there, and we may have both places or we may only have one place," Kristal told CMJ. "We're partnering with some people that we'll talk about in a week."

According to MTV News, as of July 7th, owner Hilly Kristal plans to move the venue, including the stage and bar, to downtown Las Vegas sometime in the Spring of 2008.

The last show will take place on September 30, 2006 and will mark the end of the legendary NYC venue.

Famous acts

Books

Heylin, Clinton (1993, revised 2005). From the Velvets to the Voidoids (2nd ed.). London. ISBN 1-905139-04-7.
Brazis, Tamar (Ed.) (2005). CBGB & OMFUG (1st ed.). New York. ISBN 0-8109-5787-8.
Kozak, Roman (1988). "This Aint No Disco" Winchester, Mass. ISBN 0-571-12956-0

External links

Footnotes

^ Official CBGB website

[1] Official CBGB website

[1]