dogmatika
00:30 on a Saturday night
14 September 2006
"What was it like? You had to be there, and if it was a- happening, there you were, though because it was so happening, you weren't thinking or even appreciating it much, just living in the groove of its moment, not wondering how its movement into legend was influencing and inspiring and creating waves."
In the Village Voice, Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group waxes lyrical on legendary club CBGB's, which closes its Bowery doors on September 30.
How can I tell them—those curious and sure they somehow missed out and bemoaning that it's not like that anymore, now spread over several continents, who weren't there back in the Where and When and Who that really it was just another and another and another night of hanging out, as much loitering on the sidewalk shooting the breeze with your pals or having another beer or trailing that perfect punk rock gal or, well, Richard Hell chronicled it so much better in song with the Voidoids' "Down at the Rock and Roll Club." The Heartbreakers described it as living on a Chinese rock. Television proved it neath the Marquee Moon, and the Ramones were living car-tune proof. The Dead Boys and Talking Heads felt the magnet from the various outré states they inhabited and migrated toward a locus of energy. And yet, it was my local, and for a while, and maybe always, it was that place to play, whether you were on- or offstage.
The stage itself was a low-slung affair in the beginning, off to the side by the left as you walked in, with a pool table beyond that, where they would build the new stage and a proper sound system, and a back dressing room where Hilly slept with his pack of salukis. There was initially a kitchen (!), where the later dressing room would reside, serving hamburgers prepared by Hilly's wife, Karen. Hardly anyone ate them. The bands in the early days would alternate a pair of sets a night, playing mostly to their friends in the other bands. There were lots of hopes and dreams, but the distance between their aspirations and the realities of the audience beyond Manhattan had already been judged an unbridgeable chasm by the Dolls' inability to fill the space between both coasts; the lone time the Ramones opened for Johnny Winter in Connecticut proved a harrowing experience for band and audience alike.
The stage itself was a low-slung affair in the beginning, off to the side by the left as you walked in, with a pool table beyond that, where they would build the new stage and a proper sound system, and a back dressing room where Hilly slept with his pack of salukis. There was initially a kitchen (!), where the later dressing room would reside, serving hamburgers prepared by Hilly's wife, Karen. Hardly anyone ate them. The bands in the early days would alternate a pair of sets a night, playing mostly to their friends in the other bands. There were lots of hopes and dreams, but the distance between their aspirations and the realities of the audience beyond Manhattan had already been judged an unbridgeable chasm by the Dolls' inability to fill the space between both coasts; the lone time the Ramones opened for Johnny Winter in Connecticut proved a harrowing experience for band and audience alike.
© Dogmatika 2004-2007 | All rights reserved
