Happy Birthday Debbie Harry

[Cover photo from 1979 via Facebook]

The singer-songwriter-actress-Blondie lead singer turns 70 today.

On Saturday night, Blondie opened for Morrissey at the Garden, and drew high marks. Per the Voice: "Blondie’s sound has become (and will continue to be) the soundtrack to generations of fans’ lives. Last night’s performance at Madison Square Garden was a reminder of why Debbie Harry and her band continue to keep their audience enthralled after all these years."

On Friday night, Harry was at 292 Gallery on East Third Street to hear Romy Ashby read from her new novel "Stink."

(I do not know what she did last Thursday night.)

Now back to the music with "Rifle Range" from 1977...

Watch David Johansen interview Johnny Thunders outside CBGB circa 1976

Courtesy of a post at Dangerous Minds today, we have this impromptu video interview between now-former New York Dolls bandmates David Johansen and Johnny Thunders.

You can head over to Dangerous Minds for all the background… One thing: The interview was shot with photographer Bob Gruen's video camera and included on the New York Dolls DVD of Gruen footage, "Lookin’ Fine On Television."

If you'd like some free tickets to the CBGB Music & Film Festival

The 2014 CBGB Music & Film Festival gets underway tomorrow.

And festival organizer Tim Hayes passed along 50 free pairs of tickets for EVG readers. (Thank you Tim!)

UPDATED: We've reached the 50-pair limit!

Here's what you have to do to receive a pair: Mention EV Grieve (or, if you wish, "EV Grieve") and RSVP to this email for the free pair of tickets.

And please specify one of the following events that you'd like to attend:

Wednesday – Oct. 8

• U2, Bob Dylan, & The Killers producer, Daniel Lanois & The Modern School of Film Present: Flesh And Machine...The Films @ Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 6 pm

• An Evening with Dirty South: Screening, Q&A, and Album Listening Party Cocktail Reception @ Landmark Sunshine Cinema – 8:30 pm.

Thursday – Oct. 9

• Billy Idol, Duff McKagan’s Walking Papers, Ex-Cops & The Skin Festival HQ Launch Event @ Center 548 – doors at 6 pm.

Friday – Oct. 10

• Adam Horovitz, aka AD-ROCK, of the Beastie Boys, hosts anniversary screening of “Up In Smoke” @ Village East Cinema – 4:20 pm.

• Music Talks With Open Bar Featuring: Galadrielle Allman, Erin Davis & Vince Wilburn Jr., and Stephen Trask @ Helen Mills Theater – 6 pm to 8:30 pm.

• Exclusive Film Clips with Michael Alago & Duff McKagan
Village East Cinema – 9:30 pm to 11:30 pm.

• Hardcore DEVO Live! Film Premiere with DEVO members Gerald V. Casale & Mark Mothersbaugh doing a Q&A @ Village East Cinema – 7 pm.

Head to the 2014 CBGB Music & Film Festival website for more details on these events.

RIP Karen Kristal

[Photo via CBGB on Facebook]

Word is spreading that Karen Kristal, matriarch of CBGB, died this past weekend.

We don't have a lot of biographical information at the moment. She was in her late 80s. We will update this post when more details are available.

Tim Hayes, who owns the CBGB brand and is the founder of the CBGB Festival, said that "she made a huge impact on the music scene in NYC."

"She was the godmother of hardcore music in NYC," he told us. "She took care of the kids that came to CBGB and the hardcore shows on Sundays were all hers. Her role in CBGB was immeasurable and history has not done her justice yet. I will miss her deeply."

David Poe wrote this about her on the newly created CBGB: Punk and Hardcore page on Facebook:

"I will always remember Karen on Sundays checking id's and calling kids' parents when she sniffed out a fake one Her contributions to CBGB are well-known, and it's true enough that venerated space would not have existed as it did had it not been for her efforts. Karen was a true patron of the arts and embodied the indie spirit."

Here's more on her from a Village Voice article from September 2007:

Through the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Karen was a fixture at the door of CBGB and behind its bar. In that time, she developed a reputation, among patrons, bouncers, bartenders, and musicians alike, as a bit of a humorless hard-ass. Skinheads obeyed her command. The Ramones hid their joints when they saw her coming.

"I was more scared of Karen than I was of the skinheads," said George Tabb, a founding member of the False Prophets, former CBGB employee, and longtime Kristal family friend, as well as a reporter who covered the scene at the club for Maximum Rock'n'Roll. "They all had this respect for her. She put on the matinees — it was her idea, and that basically started the whole hardcore movement in New York."

Karen had been involved in an ugly legal battle over the estate of her husband Hilly Kristal following his death in August 2007. You can find the background of that suit at the Voice.

High times! CBGB to sell 'gourmet cannabis edibles'

Just noting a Help Wanted ad that Gothamist spotted at Eater:

Recipe Consultant , CBGB, New York

CBGB is globally recognized as the birthplace of punk & new music. One natural expansion is into world of high-end, gourmet cannabis edibles. From the Bowery & Berlin to Red Rocks and The Gorge Amphitheatre; CBGB is a trusted curator for new experiences. This includes the exciting world of hand made cannabis treats.

We have developed a full line of edibles that will soon be available in 20 states but we need you to fine tune the recipes as we strive to set a new industry standard for quality, taste and originality.

Do you have the punk spirit? Can you speak well on camera and in the press? We want to hear from you!

The ad is dated March 25.

Here is 'TV-CBGB'

Wow. A big score for our friends at This Ain’t the Summer of Love, who tracked down an episode of the ultra-obscure "TV-CBGB" cable-access show… featuring the comedy stylings of the CBGB staff… (LAUGH TRACK ALERT!) as well as performances by Idiot Savant, The Roustabouts, The Hard, Jo Marshall, Shrapnel and Sic F*cks.

Here is a 30-minute episode from 1981…



Head over to This Ain’t the Summer of Love for more about the show.

Noted

This was lying on the sidewalk outside the John Varvatos store on the Bowery this morning… Speaking of CBGB … the CBGB movie came out on DVD/Blu-ray this past Tuesday. Soundtrack aside, I still haven't talked with anyone who liked the film…

For another look at the early days of CBGB

Marc Campbell, vocalist of the Nails, is none too pleased about the new CBGB biopic... and at Dangerous Minds today, he offers up an antidote.

For a grittier and more honest view of the early days at CBGB, check out Ivan Kral and Amos Poe’s 1976 cinéma vérité, low-budget (but beautifully shot) The Blank Generation. With its post-dubbed sound and chainsaw editing, the movie doesn’t work as a strait-on, conventional documentary but it does capture some important rock and roll history, a time when rock was starting to feel again.

You can head on over to Dangerous Minds to watch the film if you'd like...

[Image via Dangerous Minds]

Some early thoughts on the CBGB movie

The "CBGB" biopic makes its U.S. premiere tonight at the Sunshine as part of the CBGB Music and Film Festival. (The movie opens Friday in theaters.)

So far, some of the reviews of the movie starring Alan Rickman as CBGB founder Hilly Kristal haven't been so kind, putting it mildly. (To date, there are four "rotten" reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes.)

At the Voice, Brian McManus turns in a review accompanied by the headline "The Year Punk Bored: CBGB Could've Been Good But..." He writes that the film is "a mostly turgid, boring-as-hell, campy slog that gets more wrong than right."

His conclusion:

The story of Hilly’s historic club is, of course, well-trodden, but likely unknown by many more familiar with the famous logo than the fact that it’s the place The Ramones were first given a platform. CBGB misses the opportunity to educate. But its biggest sin, unlike many who performed there, is that it also misses the opportunity to entertain.

At the Daily News, veteran music writer Jim Farber tries to be diplomatic. He points out the movie's much-discussed historical inaccuracies, such as Patti Smith performing "Because the Night" at least three years before it was written.

His conclusion:

The film is a poorly written, clumsily acted mess.

Yet, in the end, it did my heart good to see it. I thrilled to every fast reference to long-lost and beloved acts like the Mumps, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the Tuff Darts. More, it was warming to see any depiction of the obliterated New York of old, no matter how vaguely rendered. If, in the end, the movie gets nowhere near its core mission of bringing back punk’s essential passion, it delivers its putrid outlines with loving accuracy.

The most savage review came last Monday via Marc Campbell, the vocalist for the Nails, in a post at Dangerous Minds titled "If You Thought CBGB's Bathrooms Were Full of Shit Check Out the Movie."

Among his many grenades:

• "CBGB really really sucks shit."

• "Fortunately, I can’t imagine CBGB finding an audience willing to spend a dime on this glob of pustulating spit."

• "From a hectoring, shrewish Patti Smith ... to a pathetically sexless Iggy Pop or Lou Reed, looking like a cross between Eminem and the Pillsbury Doughboy, or the tight-ass actress playing Debbie Harry with absolutely no feel for the delightfully clunky, self-aware, sex-kitten charm of the Bowery’s platinum blondie, this movie manages to suck all of the rock ‘n’ roll magic out of every single performer it supposedly celebrates."

The review prompted positive responses about the film in the comments from Dead Boys guitarist Cheetah Chrome and founding Television guitarist Richard Lloyd. (Spin covered that here.)

And here's a closing thought about trying to capture all this via a piece on the film in The New York Times yesterday:

"It's virtually impossible to capture a Hollywood version of punk," said Handsome Dick Manitoba, the frontman for the original punk band the Dictators and the owner of a punk bar, Manitoba’s, in the East Village who also works as a satellite-radio D.J. "The only way to do it is with a documentary."

Previously.

One way to see the inside of CBGB again

Here's a detail about the upcoming CBGB Music and Film Festival that we missed... Brooklyn Vegan pointed out yesterday that the original CBGB walls and sound system will be reconstructed at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on East Houston next Thursday... on the occasion of the keynote addresses by former MTV President Van Toffler and former Guns N' Roses guitarist Duff McKagan ...

CBGB owner Hilly Kristal and club talent booker Louise Staley oversaw the removal of the interior back in November 2006... According to a news release that Brooklyn Vegan quotes, "Hilly wanted them to live on. He saved them for exactly this type of occasion," said Staley.

Meanwhile, "CBGB: the Movie" premieres at the Sunshine on Tuesday night. Maybe you read Marc Campbell's review of it at Dangerous Minds after you see it...

About that CBGB Music and Film Festival post from earlier today

The piece that we linked to at AdWeek this morning was apparently incorrect ... according to festival publicists, no bands have been confirmed for the CBGB Music and Film Festival. AdWeek has amended their original post. And we removed the subsequent incorrect info about the bands.

Meanwhile!

Find more festival info at the CBGB site.

Minor Threat at CBGB 1982

If you're interested... head on over to Dangerous Minds, where they have a (muddy) video from this Minor Threat show at CBGB circa Dec. 18, 1982.

This is the good stuff.

Swissted's posters for CBGB shows at Avalon Bowery Place

The art wall over at Avalon Bowery Place along East First Street is now featuring the work of Swissted's Mike Joyce ... it's part of a project that the NYC-based graphic designer launched in January 2012...

The Village Voice explained the concept this way last year:

Joyce combs through flyers of old-school punk, hardcore, and indie rock shows, retains the vital info, and uses that text to create Swiss Modernist-style posters that often incorporate geometric patterns. His work favors minimalism, and his only font is Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk Medium (lowercase, natch).

This collection features shows from CBGB...

More details released about the CBGB Music & Film Festival this October

From the EV Grieve inbox...

For four decades, the name CBGB has been synonymous with all musical genres emerging from the indie and punk underground. This year, CBGB will be breaking more new ground with the expansion of the CBGB MUSIC & FILM FESTIVAL, a five-day festival/conference.

This will take place Wednesday, October 9 to Sunday, October 13, 2013 within NYC's rich and varied music venues throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Landmark Sunshine Theater on E. Houston St. will serve as the conference and film festival hub.

The new CBGBers haven't announced any acts yet. But that number is expected to be... 525 bands, 100 film screenings and 40 seminars ... there is ticket information, which you can find here.

And here's a snappy video about the festival...

Punk nostalgia

Coming soon to a department store, movie theater and museum near you...

Item.



This Bloomingdale's ad appeared in the Post yesterday. According to the ad, we're in for a Punk Summer. Prepare now! His Ramones T-shirt is $48, her Pretenders T-shirt is $64.

Item.



Also in the Post yesterday. A fashion spread in which you can "become a rebel belle with stripped-down styles inspired by priestess of punk, Patti Smith."

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James Wolcott has an essay in the May Vanity Fair titled "Punk Is in the Air," a look at the new wave of nostalgia with the Richard Hell memoir, the upcoming CBGB biopic and the the Costume Institute's Punk: Chaos To Couture exhibit.

Here then, a few of his thoughts on the CBGB film, which he hasn't seen yet.

To those of us who were there, one of the anticipations of screening CBGB once it’s released from captivity is seeing not just how it simulates the squalor, congestion, snarling sound, and cove-like sanctuary of this landlocked submarine, but how it portrays the musicians, bartenders, waitresses, and regulars without whom it would have been just another hangout.

And!

When filmmakers attempt a teeming mural like this, populated with recognizable figures, it’s easy to end up with a Mort Drucker–esque Mad-magazine spread with familiar faces packed like sardines and pressed against the glass, contorted and distorted.

Item.

On that topic, the CBGB Facebook page posted a few more stills from the film in recent weeks...

"Hilly... Playing chess with the bikers"



And... "Blondie and Iggy on stage... nice lipstick"



Item.

The press preview for the Costume Institute's Punk: Chaos To Couture exhibit was yesterday. Racked was there. One apparent highlight. A replica of the CBGB men's room.

On this date in 1974 Television played its first show at CBGB

Finished Richard Hell's memoir, "I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp," the other day... Recalled from the book that Television held the first of its "intitial venue-establishing series of consecutive Sundays at CBGB" on March 31, 1974.

(Side note: The Times reviewed the book today...)

Always dislike these audio-only videos... but this will do...



Previously.

On the Bowery: CBGB and its impact on the visual arts and downtown nightlife

There's an interesting talk set for tomorrow night at the New Museum on the Bowery titled "Parallel Lines: Visual Art, CBGB, and Downtown Nightlife."

Here's a blurb about it:

A panel discussion about the impact of CBGB and the downtown club scene on the visual arts from 1975-1985. The participants are John Holmstrom, Pat Place, Marcia Resnick and Arturo Vega.

Marc H. Miller is serving as the moderator. We asked him to recall his first visit to CBGB, circa 1976:

"When I first walked into CBGB, I was surprised to see so many visual artists that I knew from Soho and Tribeca. Some were in bands, others had friends in bands and helped out by making posters and stuff, some took photographs, most just hung out. The funny thing was that nobody wanted to be called an artist. The art world seemed phony and pretentious at the time. The favorite word was “boring.” People were looking for action, for something real, for something that actually had an audience. The music scene provided an opening."

The panel is part of the ongoing "Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969–1989" exhibit that runs through Jan. 6. (Tickets for the discussion are $8.)

And because I've only posted this video of one of my favorite songs 12-13 times on this site ... here we have the Bush Tetras, with Pat Place, on the Bowery...



[Image via Marc H. Miller]

The CBGB Festival starts today; and please don't pee in the sink. Or be a dick.

The CBGB Festival starts today... the whole lineup and what not is here.

And thanks to the CBGB Festival people and East Village Radio for giving six all-access passes to EV Grieve readers.

And some words of wisdom from the back of the Festival program...

The CBGB Festival starts next week , and you can get free tickets here

The inaugural CBGB Festival starts next Thursday and runs through July 8. More than 300 bands will play at 35 venues in Manhatan and Brooklyn... there are also films and conferences and stuff.

Anyway, the CBGB Festival folks, with a big hat tip to East Village Radio, passed along some free individual full-combo passes to the fest for EV Grieve readers. Gives you access to the film, music and conference panels. You're on your own with the booze and bath salts.

Thanks everyone! We gave them all away.

So we have six individual passes to give away.

In lieu of a contest or telling us about your favorite CBGB bathroom moment ... the first six people who email us can can have them... or at least the info about how you get them.

Oh, and you can use the EV Grieve email here. And it is for ONE pass — good for access to the whole festival. (Not two passes for each person.)

And you must be 21... and plan on actually going and not forgetting about it later...

[Image via the CBGB Facebook page by one of our favorites, Danny Hellman.]

CBGB lives! (in Savannah)

[via Facebook]

The CBGB biopic starring Alan Rickman as Hilly Kristal is filming in Savannah, Ga., both on Broughton Street (on Paula Deen's block!) where we think the bar's exterior above was created... and in a studio ... the crew replicated the inside of the bar in Savannah's Meddin Studios, where all the interior shots will take place...