It's the End, The End of the Century...

Legendary punk venue CBGBs will close its doors in NY's Bowery district on October 15th. After 33 years showcasing the newest and now uber-legendary punk acts, this famed launching pad for bands like The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith Group and so many more, says goodnight.

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 CBGB founder Hilly Kristal here it means "a voracious eater of ... music" according to the official CBGB website. Country, Bluegrass, & Blues...not the place you would expect to be considered the birthplace of punk. But indeed it was. The band Television was the first of the punk acts to play there. Sometimes to a deafening crowd of 10 or so. In August of 1974, a sloppy four-piece band argued their way through an amateurish 25-minute set. The band was The Ramones. The music world would never be the same again.

Check out this blistering 1977 Ramones performance at CBGBs.


The final show will include a performance from the godmother of punk Patti Smith and an acoustic set from Debbie Harry & Chris Stein of Blondie. A fitting way to close the book on the greatest punk stage ever presented.

The club is closing thanks to skyrocketing rent costs. In another incarnation, CBGBs will relocate to Las Vegas, and expected to open in 2008.

According to founder Hilly Kristal: "I am taking the bars with me, I am taking the stage—I'm taking the urinal that Joey (Ramone) pissed in with me. I'm going to take a lot of things—anything that makes this place CBGBs."

Sad to say, I never made it to CBGBs. I bet it would have really been something to remember. It is anyway.

"CBGB is a toilet. An impossibly scuzzy little club buried somewhere in the section of the village the cab-drivers don't like to drive through. It looks as if the proprietors kick holes in the walls and piss in the corners before they let the customers in: fo' the atmosphere, you dig."
- Charles Shaar Murray, NME magazine, June 1975