Word: kristall
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...Hilly Kristal, who died Aug. 28 of complications from lung cancer, agreed to a rare interview in November 2006 to discuss the legacy of CBGB, the club he had founded to promote his first musical loves - country, bluegrass and blues (CBGB) - and which in the 1970s and '80s became the official mecca of the underground New York rock scene. By that point, he had been battling cancer for some time, making him noticeably skinnier and less mobile...
...When I met with him, it was in an unfurnished office in the back of a storefront on St. Mark's Place, only a few blocks from where CBGB had closed the month before. At 74, weakened and depleted by chemotherapy, Kristal still exuded the charisma that had made him such a lionized figure during New York's punk heyday. He was even wearing dark sunglasses indoors...
...happy to talk about life after CBGB, the downtown Manhattan club that some say turned punk into a movement and a lifestyle, and helped make names of the Ramones, Blondie, Patti Smith and Television. After the club closed following a much-publicized dispute between him and his landlord, Kristal planned to open another venue, although discussions were on hiatus. Las Vegas and Boston were possibilities, he said, but much still rested on the bottom line. "All I have to do is get a little more money," he said. "Everything takes a lot of money...
...Shortly thereafter, Kristal decided to set that belief in stone: cover bands were effectively banned from CBGB's stage. "When I saw there were more and more bands that just wanted to play their own music, and there was no place to play, I didn't say they could play [original music], I said they have to play it," he recalled. "I think it made things more interesting - sometimes a little more agonizing, [but] sometimes more interesting." Interesting was an understatement: CBGB quickly became a scene in Manhattan; Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Paul Simon all rocked...
About 200 students are enrolled this semester, and they pay IUON's hefty price tag: $8,800 a semester, about four times the in-state tuition for an associate degree at a U.S. community college. "It's a scary obstacle," says fourth-semester student Kristal Nicks. But the 25-year-old Florida native says the loans she took out will be worth it. "I was sick of waiting to become a nurse," she says...