Please check out my colleague, Chris H's exceptional feature on the final, physical dismantling of CBGB. Good stuff!
ADDENDUM: You may or may not remember this post from a few days ago, in which I mentioned that I'd posted my own thoughts regarding CBGB and the state of the East Village in general on the Job's MySpace page. Being that you have to be a "friend" in order to read the blog entries, a lot of you folks may not have been able to access said piece. Being that I wrote it (and that it ultimately is of no great consequence), I thought I might as well reprise it for you here. That said, why not go befriend our MySpace page? You'll thank me later!
In any case, here `tis...
Thursday, November 02, 2006
CMJ's First Night In Post-CBGB NYC
Since last week's hotly contested closing and full-scale gutting of CBGB, there's been a lot of talk about it being "the end of an era." While the demise of the fabled birthplace of punk on the once-squalid Bowery is indeed a seismic event symbolically, many have been saying that downtown Manhattan -- and specifically the East Village -- has been bereft of cultural relevance for years, and that despite its storied legacy as a thriving hotbed of bohemia, it's simply become just another gentrified pocket of a New York City that is gradually eating itself. The hipsters have all de-camped to Brooklyn (and some even suggest that that frontier is starting to lose its cred).
Regardless, last night was the first night of the CMJ Music Marathon, an annual event wherein New York City is besieged upon by legions of up-and-coming bands trying to grab the brass ring -- bands like U2 and R.E.M. played at the CMJ fest back in the day. Doors on the city's rock clubs swing wide to accommodate hordes of badge-wielding music journalists and industry folk who race through the city's many tributaries to stand around in dark and cramped spaces, craning their necks to catch a fleeting glimpse of a hot new artist while droves of chatty industry mooks stand around schmoozing and drinking entirely-too-expensive beer.
A handful of the my colleagues hit the streets to soak up the first night of the fest. No exception, I set out to catch a performance by one of our colleagues, Benjamin Wagner..(executive producer by day, singer/songwriter by night). Since Ben was playing at a venue over in the former badlands of Avenue C, my trek to the show involved a veritable tour of the East Village's rock and roll ghost town.
There's the Continental on my right, which recently stopped hosting live rock shows and now just serves drinks. Hey, there's 15 St. Mark's Place, the former spot of Jesse Malin's punk rock funhouse, Coney Island High, which Rudolph Giuliani closed over "quality of life" issues prior to his 9/11 makeover as "America's Mayor." A little further down the block is the former site of the Electric Circus, where the Velvet Underground once performed as part of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable. In less-celebrated times, it also served as the location for Billy Joel's video for "A Matter of Trust."
These streets may be cleaner and decidedly less meaner, but they're still the same strips upon which countless bands cut their teeth. And not just the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Television and Talking Heads. Bands like the New York Dolls, the Dictators, Mink DeVille, the Dead Boys, the Heartbreakers, the Voidoids, the Plasmatics, Suicide, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Mars, DNA, James Chance & the Contortions, Glenn Branca, Klaus Nomi, Phoebe LeGere, Sonic Youth, Swans, Rat at Rat R, Pussy Galore, the Black Snakes, Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, Heart Attack, Kraut, the Mob, the Stimulators, the Undead, the Toasters, Agnostic Front, Murphy's Law, Cro-Mags, Leeway, Crumbsuckers, Token Entry, Letch Patrol, Iron Prostate, Furious George, False Prophets, Cop Shoot Cop, Helmet, Prong, Motherhead Bug, the Unsane, Surgery, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, D Generation, the Niagras, King Missile, Bongwater, God Is My Co-Pilot, Congo Norvell, Elysian Fields, Firewater, Botanica, Balkan Beat Box, Big Lazy, Gogol Bordello, the Strokes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs all started here. There are countless reasons for the reverence.
Walking further east, there's the former spot of the St. Mark's Bar & Grill, where the Stones shot the video for "Waiting on a Friend." Even further down the strip on my right is the Physical Graffiti tenement, the building pictured on the sleeve of the Zeppelin album of the same name. Approaching Avenue A, here's the former spot of Sin-e, a cozy hole in the wall where Jeff Buckley used to perform. These and countless other spots are long gone from the block, replaced by incongruously tony boutiques and eateries.
On Avenue A, I stop in for a quick slice of pizza at Sal's, adjacent to what used to be A7, the former epicenter of NYC hardcore where the Bad Brains held court. On the corner is Jesse Malin's bar, Niagra, which now boasts a memorial mural of the late Clash frontman, Joe Strummer. Joe's stoic face stares out across Tompkins Square Park, the former stomping grounds of anarchic, industrial noise collective, Missing Foundation (whose signature upside-down cocktail glass graffiti was once scrawled ubiquitously on these very streets), Even further down East 7th street -- one of the same, formerly-decrepit byways Jean-Michel Basquiat used to haunt, tagging his cryptic "Samo" inscriptions, lies my destination, the Alphabet Lounge.
A low-ceilinged venue with a humble stage in the back and a woefully inattentive bartender, the Alphabet Lounge acts as a perfect showcase for Benjamin's brand of heartfelt acoustic rock (although, the venue's surprisingly beefy sound system made the Iron Maiden show I saw at Nassau Coliseum a couple of weeks back seem shamefully polite). I arrive just as Ben's show is kicking off. Despite the intimacy of the venue and the arguably chilly atmosphere of it being an "industry show," Benjamin, flanked by a three piece band, played his heart out to a wholly receptive crowd, even throwing in a couple of cover tunes by Oasis and Matthew Sweet (a singer/songwriter equally reverent of New York's musical legacy, having drafted former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd and former Voidoids guitarist Ivan Julian to assist him on previous records).
Today's downtown music scene may be a thousand light years, culturally speaking, from the backwater wasteland where Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell of Television found their first lucky break when they wandered into an already decaying CBGB in the mid-'70s, but as long as artists like Benjamin Wagner can still find a stage, a microphone, a working PA and a responsive crowd, live music still thrives in downtown Manhattan
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