Word: cb
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...CB's is still there, though I don't know anyone who still attends the events. It's a long club with a bar on the right starting a few feet after you walk in the door, with a raised seating area on the left. The raised area terminates at the soundboard; the bar stops just opposite and the space opens up a bit. Maybe another 30 feet or so through some tiny scattered circular tables there's a stage just a few feet off the floor. Hanging from the ceiling, massive monitors flank it. On the far left...
...neighborhood around CB's, the old Lower East Side of New York, rents were cheap. Lofts could go for one or two hundred bucks, apartments for less. The cheap rents and the dope (which was everywhere, three dollars a bag, with 50 or 60 people lined up on 2nd St. and Avenue B waiting for the dope store to open every morning) attracted the fringe players, the ones who couldn't handle the tedium in Queens or New Jersey or suburban anywhere. From this crowd of disaffected youth emerged our players, and the stage was CBGB...
...says in "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk": "Where is a bar where nothing is happening? With nothing to lose if we tell them to let us play there one night a week?" They approached Kristal with the idea of doing a series of weekends at CB's, so the band might connect to the space like the Dolls had connected to the Mercer Arts Center. Kristal went...
...were putting down at rehearsals. Manager Tommy took over on the kit when drummer after auditioning drummer failed to understand the stripped-down style he was hearing in his head. When Tommy finally sat down behind the drums, the first Ramones lineup was complete. They found their way to CB's on August 16, 1974. Early sets were chaotic - 20 songs in 17 minutes - but promising enough for Hilly to bring them back 22 more times in '74 alone...
Reading various accounts while researching this article, I was impressed by how similar the reactions were to the Ramones. There were definitely people who didn't get it (Linda Ronstadt reportedly ran out of CB's screaming), and there still are, in fact, but for those of us who did, the effect was incredible. The band walked out on stage without ceremony and started with a four-count from Dee Dee: "One two three four" BAM! You could feel "the wind from the amplifiers" as Lenny Kaye...