CBGB

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CBGB (Country, Blue Grass, and Blues) was a legendary music club located at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, CBGB was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became legendary as a forum for American punk and punk-influenced bands like Ramones, Television, Mink Deville, The Dead Boys, The Dictators, The Fleshtones, Blondie, and Talking Heads. The club closed on the weekend of October 13, 2006. The Dictators headlined the final Friday and Saturday night, October 13 and October 14, and were joined onstage Saturday night by Blondie's Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, performing an acoustic set. The final CBGB concert was performed by Patti Smith on Sunday October 15. CBGB Fashions (the CBGB store, wholesale department, and online store) stayed open until October 31 at 315 Bowery. On November 1 CBGB Fashions moved to 19-23 St. Mark's Place.

CBGB was founded in December 1973, on the site of Kristal's earlier bar, Hilly's on the Bowery, which he ran from 1969 to 1972. After that point he had focused exclusively on his more profitable West Village nightspot, Hilly's, until he was forced to close it due to complaints from residents, sending him back to the Bowery. The full name is CBGB & OMFUG which stands for "Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers". Gormandizer usually means a ravenous eater of food, but according to Kristal here it means "a voracious eater of ... music". The club was also affectionately known by many as simply, "CBGB's".

As its name implied, Kristal intended CBGB's to feature Country, Bluegrass and Blues music (along with poetry readings), but CBGB became famous as the birthplace of American punk. Since the Mercer Arts Center had collapsed in August 1973, there were few locations in New York where unsigned bands could play original music, and a couple of Mercer refugees—Suicide and Wayne County—played one-off gigs in the very early days of CBGB. However, the key moment in the venue's early history is considered to be the Sunday night residency of Television that began on March 31, 1974, the start of a flood of performers of "street music" (especially the Ramones), as punk acts were initially known.

At the third Television gig on 14 April 1974, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye from the Patti Smith Group were in the audience; however, the band was not to make its CBGB debut until 14 February 1975. Alongside Television, other early performers included The Stillettoes (featuring future Blondie vocalist Debbie Harry), who supported Television on 5 May 1974, the newly-formed Blondie (under its original name of Angel & the Snake) and The Ramones, both in August 1974.

Mink DeVille, Talking Heads, The Shirts, Steel Tips, Jackson Main, The Heartbreakers, The Fleshtones and many other bands followed in quick succession. The club continued to host many punk and new wave bands over the years.

CBGB's had only one rule for a band to follow in order to play at the venue: they had to write original music. No cover bands were booked to play there. However, regulars like Television and the Ramones sometimes played a handful of covers during their sets.

Though CBGB was utilized as a hot spot for touring bands to hit when they came through New York, the scene that kept the bar alive during the 1980s was New York's underground hardcore scene. Sunday at CBGB was matinee day (also named "thrash day" in a documentary about hardcore skinheads). Every Sunday, a handful of hardcore bands took the stage in the afternoon to dinnertime hours, usually for cheap. Over the years, the CBGB's matinee became an institution, before violence both in and out of the scene caused Kristal to refuse to book hardcore shows. By 1990, CBGB did not book any hardcore punk shows. CBGB's brought hardcore back at various times, and for the last several years of its existence had no rules about what genres could and couldn't be featured.

In 2005, a dispute between CBGB and the Bowery Resident's Committee began. The Committee billed Kristal $91,000 in back rent, while Kristal claimed he had not been informed of increases in his $19,000 monthly rent. After the lease expired, they reached an agreement for the club to remain for fourteen more months while Kristal dropped his legal battles and his attempts to get historic landmark status for the club.

Kristal plans to move the club far from its roots with a new CBGB's in Las Vegas, Nevada. The owner plans to strip the current club down to the bare walls, bringing as much of it to Nevada as possible (they actually moved the club a couple of blocks away to 19-23 St. Marks Place, NYC)

"We're going to take the urinals," he said. "I'll take whatever I can. The movers said, `You ought to take everything, and auction off what you don't want on eBay.' Why not? Somebody will."

The club finally closed on October 15, 2006. The last week featured multi-night stands by Bad Brains and The Dictators, along with an acoustic set by Blondie. Younger groups such as Avail and the Bouncing Souls also performed.

The final concert was performed by Patti Smith and broadcast live on Sirius Satellite Radio. Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers attended the show and even performed on a handful of songs with Smith and her band. Flea turned 44 at midnight, and the band and crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to him. Television's Richard Lloyd also guested on a few songs, including a version of "Marquee Moon". Toward the end of their set, the band played "Gloria", paying tribute to the Ramones during the chorus by alternating between the original lyrics and the "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" of "Blitzkrieg Bop". In her final encore, the song "Elegie", Smith listed many of the musicians who died since they last played at CBGB.

Some Bands who palyed at CGBG

AC/DC 
The Acacia Strain 
Agnostic Front 
Alex Chilton 
An Angle 
Anthrax 
At the Gates 
Avengers 
The B-52's 
Bad Brains 
Bad Religion 
Beastie Boys 
Berlin 
Black 47 
The Black Crowes 
Black Flag 
Blink 182 
Blondie 
Blood Has Been Shed 
The Bloodhound Gang 
Blues Traveler 
Bold 
The Boomtown Rats 
Bouncing Souls 
Brand New 
Breakdown 
Jeff Buckley 
David Byrne 
John Cale 
Candiria 
The Cars 
The Casualties 
Chevelle 
Codeine 
Coheed and Cambria 
Elvis Costello 
Wayne County 
Crowded House 
The Cramps 
The Damned 
The Dandy Warhols 
Dave Matthews Band 
The Dead Boys 
Dead Kennedys 
Devo 
The Dictators 
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles 
Disturbed 
Dropkick Murphys 
Doom 
Eddie & The Hot Rods 
Elvis Costello 
The Fleshtones 
Flipper 
Fu Manchu 
The Germs 
Gorilla Biscuits 
Green Day 
Green River 
The Go-Go's 
Good Charlotte 
Goo Goo Dolls 
Gumball 
Guns N' Roses 
Hawthorne Heights 
Hole 
HORSE the band 
Iggy Pop 
The Jam 
Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers 
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts 
KoЯn 
Lamb Of God 
Leftöver Crack 
Leisure Class 
The Libertines 
Life of Agony 
Linkin Park 
Live 
Living Colour 
Lil' Wayne 
Lou Reed 
Madball 
Minor Threat 
The Misfits 
Motörhead 
New York Dolls 
Willie Nile 
NOFX 
Norma Jean 
The Offspring 
Paramore 
Patent Pending 
Pearl Jam 
Liz Phair 
Plasmatics 
Poison the Well 
The Pretenders 
The Police 
Joey Ramone 
The Ramones 
Rancid 
The Runaways 
The Shangri-Las 
Michelle Shocked 
Smashing Pumpkins 
Patti Smith 
Social Disorder 
Social Distortion 
Sonic Youth 
Soul Asylum 
Soundgarden 
Bruce Springsteen 
The Stooges 
The Strokes 
Talking Heads 
Television 
They Might Be Giants 
Thursday 
The Toy Dolls 
Toyah 
The Troggs 
Type O Negative 
Voorhees 
Velvet Underground 
The Waitresses 
Warzone 
Weerd Science 
The White Stripes 
White Zombie 
XTC 

from Wikipedia licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

CBGB - Logo Hooded Sweatshirt