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The End Of CBGB's
October 15th, 2006

Richard Hell waxes nostalgic about the closing this weekend of the rock ‘n’ roll club, CBGB’s, a staple on the Bowery for almost a quarter of a century. As founder Hilly Kristal has written in a multi-volume history of the club, CBGB’s stands for country bluegrass blues, “the kind of music I intended to have, but not the
kind that we became famous for.”

The music they became famous for, as Richard Hell enumerates in (of all places) the New York Times, was: “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.”

The last show, tonight at 8 p.m., featuring Patti Smith, Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty and Tony Shanahan, is (not too surprisingly) sold out. Hell does not sound too distraught: “CBGB’s is going to be dismantled and reconstructed as an exhibit in Las Vegas, like Elvis. I like that. A lot. I really hope it happens as intended.”

By Jonathan Mandell on October 15, 2006, 11:49 am
In category: Arts, Gotham City
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