(Admittedly, I
watched a grainy copy on Youtube)
I
wasn’t there from the beginning like some people (Binky for one) because I was in
a folk-rock band; the club was already headed in another direction by
1976. Nobody I hung around with went
there – partly because we were penniless. Finally one of my bands played there
in 77 and after that I could get in free most nights; it was a clubhouse once
you played there (unless Lisa was at the door).
First show I saw at CBs was Richard
Hell and the Voidoids. That was when the
stage was still on the left side – the right side had the pool table. Later, the pool table moved to way up near
the entrance, on the left, the stage moved back and to the right wall. I told Bob Quine he was great and he said
they (and he) had sucked. No egotist was
he. Later I saw Ivan Julian and the
Outsets (the other guitarist with Hell).
I saw Talking Heads just after
Jerry Harrison joined, Patti Smith before she had an album out, The Ramones
(how do they memorize these sets?), The Planets (wow!), Tuff Darts (after
Robert left, darn it), Wayne County (what?), The Miamis, The Cramps (whoa!),
Alex Chilton, The Fall, The Nitecaps, Bad Brains (another jaw-dropper),
Blondie, Violent Femmes, etc. Anybody
else remember Humans From Earth, Tragic Flaw, The Erasers, Helen Wheels, Bush
Tetras? All great, all different. How about “Suicide”? There was a band he took a chance on! They were famous for getting booed
offstage. They played there a lot,
too.
Wish I’d seen the Police, Devo or
the Butthole Surfers there, but of course most bands who weren’t well-known
would play at 2 AM on a weekday night. I
had to work in the morning. By then, I
wasn’t penniless.
The movie – for me it was
overwhelmed by the allusion to comics that came from Punk Magazine, and by
dwelling on Alan Rickman and his dog so much and the people and music so
little. There were so many kinds of
music…DNA, Walter Stedding? Rhys
Chatham? They had to keep it simple to
make it a movie, but I’d have loved some sort of list of bands (not the one too
tiny to read which is used in the background at one point). Does anyone else remember Hilly announcing
the acts onstage? I never saw him do
that…I do remember David Byrne shouting (as if there was no microphone in front
of his face) “The name of this band is Talking Heads!” which became the name of
their first live double album.
Um…I never heard of anyone doing an
audition for just the staff – there were Monday Night Auditions every
week. If you had a lot of friends, or
were good, you’d be back on a “real” night.
I’ll never forget having to guard our equipment for six hours, from
sound-check to show-time. And if the
next band climbed onstage before you were all packed up? Goodbye wires and pedals…
I heard the Police drew about ten
people their first gig there. (In Austin
they got only three, but one was a DJ who started playing “Roxanne” a lot and
broke them into having a hit in the States.
A lesson there, eh?)
I’m not sure
the Dead Boys were as dominant a band as it seems they are in the film. (But watch them live at CBs in 1977 on
Youtube – 20 minute set that kicks ass.)
Hilly managed half a dozen over the years, I think. Remember “The Big Fat Pet Clams From Outer
Space”? He managed them. They were older guys, and not very original or
good. I thought they sucked. What was he thinking?
Hilly was
gruff and growly, muttering and shouting, but not as cocky and weaselly as
Rickman. Nice dog. The shit – ugh. It could be dark in there, and everything was
painted black. Anywhere it was just
sheetrock (like the “dressing room”) was covered in magic-markered band
names. So were the toilets
downstairs. One toilet was smashed or
out of order. Men’s room mirror - smashed.
Men’s room door was torn off, never replaced. It smelled down there…actually you could
smell it almost as soon as you passed the stage on your way back.
Just inside
the front door was a bottle-neck space for customers to get their money out, show
their IDs, and pay at a little table and chair.
(Coat check?) Pay phone to the right, pinball machine right behind
ticket-taker. Very long bar. Lead singer of The Revelons, another great
band, was a bartender.
No mention of
the “Live at CBGBs” double album produced by Kim King? It sold a bunch! Lot of good bands on it – Miamis, Mink
DeVille, Tuff Darts (with Robert!), and a few others. But no Ramones, Blondie or Heads – already
signed, so no go.
Odd, the music
they chose for some scenes. First time we
see Patti Smith she does “Because the Night”?
That was years later. No keyboard
visible on that or on Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”, though you can hear one…
I remember
lots of lights and deafeningly loud bands – hard to get that effect in a movie
- probably impossible. And the crowd right up to the stage on both available
sides – people hanging off the walls (standing on pipes and on each other) and
those odd life-sized posters of people like Sarah Bernhardt and Chaplin onstage
became more and more covered with graffiti.
No stickers on the walls for decades, as Jahn mentioned. That place got
Packed on a busy night. Wall to wall
people, all night. Lucky thing it had a
high ceiling (which we don’t see in the movie) cause the smoke didn’t hang right
in your face (everyone smoked back then).
No mention of
him investing in a $100,000 sound system and equipment to tape live shows. Best sound of any club in the city.
Too bad they
didn’t have someone play James Chance or Lydia Lunch! I suppose they’d have to pay a fortune to
mention The Plasmatics, who were one of their biggest draws. They didn’t mention the marathon all-weekend
benefit show to raise money for Johnny Blitz’s hospital bill! There was a commemorative t-shirt – saw it
for years after. It had a list of all
the bands on it – dozens of the best. Must be worth a dollar now! Faded in the wash, I suppose…
There was
quite a while when a band had to make a choice – if you played at Max’s you
couldn’t play CBs, and vice-versa.
Heartbreakers were Max’s, Sid Vicious was Max’s, Iggy was Max’s. (And by the way, in “Sid and Nancy” they show
Sid doing shows to an empty house near the end – never happened! The place was packed every show, all the way
to his last.)
So – I
enjoyed the movie up to a point, but I kept seeing Rickman and his dog instead
of things I was more interested in. A
boy and his dog.
Dennis Dunn, unmentioned ace
lighting man, I salute you! (He was
there for years – and his brother was sound man a long time.) So was Rudy (of The Hard). I salute you all.
I do hope the
Kristals make money from the movie. It
was one of the great clubs, and we’ll ne’er see its like again. Here’s to Hilly and the 70s! Gone, gone, they are gone.
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