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No more encores for CBGB

Punk rock's launching pad to close Sunday

By Michael Clancy | amNewYork City Editor

October 13, 2006

A lot of rock acts end up in Las Vegas -- but not many people ever thought CBGB's would wind up there.

Those who say the club has long been irrelevant may feel it fitting that CB's will be reconstructed piece-by-piece alongside the ersatz Statue of Liberty and replica New York of the Vegas strip.

But the club that helped give birth to punk and New York hardcore might not seem any stranger among the sleaze and glitter of Sin City than it does now among the bistros and $4,000-a-month apartments on the Bowery.

"It's not a neighborhood anymore," said Jimmy G., the leader singer of Murphy's Law, a New York hardcore outfit that logged more than 50 shows at the club. "Once rents escalate over 3,000 a month and people don't sit on stoops anymore, it's stops being a neighborhood."

Just two months shy of 33 years on the Bowery, the club will close its doors Sunday, with a final farewell by Patti Smith, ending an important chapter in the histories of both New York City and rock 'n' roll.

"That place -- the smelly little armpit that it was -- has more rock history than other clubs will ever have," said Harley Flanagan of the Cro-Mags, Stimulators and Murphy's Law, among other bands. "Losing that place is gonna be sad. It's just gonna be a plaque on the wall and the T-shirt in the mall and it's a sad shame that New York has been taken away from New Yorkers and it now belongs to the yuppies and NYU."

The club didn't stop being important after the 1970s when The Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, the Dead Boys and Blondie made their names and history there. The Sunday hardcore matinees during the 1980s provided that fledging New York scene with bands such as the Cro-Mags, Murphy's Law, Sick of It All, and the Gorrilla Biscuits articulating the rage of the youth living under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In those days, they'd often be as many or more people outside the club as there would be inside.

"That's the true definition of what a scene is ," said Jimmy G. "There are people hanging outside. There are people inside -- that's a scene. A show is when people go in walk out and leave. That's a show."

Many people have criticized the club for never fixing its bathrooms or ceasing to be relevant, but what can't be disputed is the power of the music that came roaring through the club's superior public-address system and the joy that magical noise brought to thousands of people during three decades. The Bad Brains' final show at the club on Wednesday demonstrated that power can still be conjured from that grimy stage.

"It's been great that this place has been here for bands to play in, a place with a good PA.," said MCA of the Beastie Boys after catching the Bad Brains show. "We started out playing here -- we'd show up and they'd just give you gigs. It's too bad it's not going to be around anymore."