C&L's Late Nite Music Club with the Dead Boys
If you were listening to KCBS in San Francisco around noon today, and stuck around after the traffic report, you might have heard me talking about the death of Hilly Kristal (at 75), the founder of NY's legendary punk rock club, CBGB's.
My first visit to the club, to see a very early Ramones show, changed my life entirely and led to decades of punk rock evangelism in the press, on the radio and in the record industry. It also led to a friendship with Hilly which worked out especially well later when I was running Sire Records and he was managing Cleveland's Dead Boys. Here's a classic performance of their biggest song, "Sonic Reducer," at CB's. (I would have rather posted "Caught With The Meat in Your Mouth" as a dedication to our friends in the GOP but I couldn't find a great version.)
What was your best CBGB's experience ever?
Frist?
Oh, yeah, and thanks for the clip. The Dead Boys got a lot of play in my dorm room circa 1978.
Three!
lONG LIVE lOS rAMONES!
it's ok......but not really my cup of tea.....atleast not tonight.
In the early years of SNL they'd go to break by scanning the audience and focusing on someone.
One break around 1977, there in the audience was Cheetah Chrome.
I had to laugh like hell.
Stiv. Then Cheetah. And now Hilly. Man, do I ever feel old tonight.
Just walking into CB's was an experience. I've only been in NYC for 9 years but the place was saturated in modern music history. Although watching a few different friends bands play there always made for a great time.
If they open up a CB's in Las Vegas I'd say it's safe to say punk has officially died, been gutted and taxidermied into a parody of itself.
Pearl Jam plays Sonic Reducer in concert sometimes. I think they played it at MSG back in '03 even.
For those who need the lyrics:
I don't need anyone.
Don't need no Mom and Dad.
Don't need no good advice,
Don't need no human race!
But I got news for you:
I don't even needja too!
I've got my time machine,
Got my metallic dream
Sonic reducer!!!
Ain't no loser.
Got the sonic reducer.
Ain't no loser!!!
N n n n n no!!!
We go out on the street.
They don't know who I am.
I watch them from my room
They're all just passin' by.
But I'm not just anyone.
Yeah! I'm not just anyone!!!
I've got my time machine,
Got my 'lectronic dream!
Sonic reducer!!!
Ain't no loser.
Got the sonic reducer.
Ain't no loser!!!
No! no! no!!!
I'll be a pharroh soon,
We'll form some kinda tomb.
Things will be different then,
The sun will rise again.
And I'll be two feet tall.
And I'll be 'bove it all!!!
I've got my time machine,
Got my 'lectronic dream...
Sonic reducer!!!
Ain't no loser.
Got the sonic reducer.
Ain't no loser!!!
Got the sonic reducer. Sonic reducer!
Reducer!!!
Speaking of PJ and "Sonic Reducer":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE3NR04X30c
If Pearl Jam plays Sonic Reducer @ MSG I’d say it’s safe to say punk has officially died, been gutted and taxidermied into a parody of itself.
Best time I ever had there, and there were many was back in 92 when me and my brother caught a matinee of Brutal Truth, Cathedral, Carcass and Napalm Death. Still the best show, top to bottom I've ever been to.
The first thing that tipped me off the Dead Boys were informed was their Syndicate of Sound cover.
The drum break on "Little Girl" was part of a half dozen Ramones tunes.
Evidence the Ramones were also ultra tuned in to 60's punk product.
you have to give hilly credit for gracefully enduring the lunacy of certain NYC authorities. it was not very long ago that the city started to enforce the so-called cabaret laws and harassing nightclubs all over downtown to the point where they cited CB's with failure for a permit to serve food, at which point staff was quoted as saying "i guess they consider ice to be food." if you have times select here's a link to that story
and then as they were threatening to leave town, the oh-so-trendy mayor bloomberg sports one of their t-shirts.
my band played in CBs each year from 1986-96 and we always enjoyed hilly's presence, it was like a celebrity sighting in itself.
Hey, that was alright!
I never saw the Dead Boys live, and I didn't love their recorded stuff all that much, but they deliver the goods here. Definitely! I think the great David Thomas wrote (or maybe co-wrote) this song while he and Cheetah Chrome were in Rocket from the Tombs, yeah?
Re: (6) Instapummel: Cheetah's still alive, last I knew. Certainly still alive as of July of 2006, when I saw him with the reunited RFTT.
As for CB's, Hilly was pleasant when I met him. The CB's staff, though, was another story.
I was never up in NY during those years but I would have killed to see Television just once.
R.I.P. Hilly... and thanks!
da Ramones - Bonzo Goes to Bitburg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8m2LpYGV0E
What was your best CBGB’s experience ever?
None. Back then my only info on punk music came TSR and from comics like Post Bros.
Spent a lot of time hanging out at CB's in the 80's - it was always a great experience, even if only going to see some friends play. So many good times, the memories of which still bring a smile to this broken down, middle-aged geezer's face. RIP Hilly! And thanks to C&L for putting up that Dead Boys clip!
best old memories are of Patti Smith too many times to remember, best recent memory was sleater-kinney
Great clip! Apart from the Cramps at the Peppermint, Gun Club at the Lone Star and of course the ubiquitous Buster Poindexter gigs at the Bottom Line, I'd have to say getting dragged down to see some hair band called Spinal Tap in '83 was the best. I thought they were a joke (duh!), but I recognized Chris Guest from my heavily played "Goodbye Pop" album (if Art Rock Suite isn't a classic of parody, nothing is) and was bemused. It wasn't until ST hit the theaters that I realized I had witnessed greatness.
lewisnclark :
Yes, the song was originally by Rocket from the Tombs. It was one of the songs that David Thomas (later of Pere Ubu) "gave" to Gene O'Connor and Johnny Madansky when RFTT folded, although the Dead Boys claimed all credits to it, "Ain't It Fun" (mostly penned by the great Peter Laughner), "What Love Is" (though the lyrics were quite a bit more interesting in the original), "Down in Flames", and "Never Gonna Kill Myself Again" (re-purposed as the less-amusing and more crude "Caught with the Meat in Your Mouth").
Sadly, RFTT never put out an album in the old days. The best we have to go on are some bootlegs and official posthumous and reunion recordings. Easiest finds are "The Day the Earth Met the Rocket from the Tombs", which is a mix of awesome (though very distorted!) material from a live rehearsal recording that was originally broadcast on WMMS in Cleveland in the mid-70s and some spotty live gig recordings ("Seventeen" is a highlight - the best The Who-sounding song The Who never recorded!), and the more recent "Rocket Redux", which is a live-in-the-studio reunion album with Richard Lloyd (formerly of Television) filling in for Laughner and Ubu's current drummer Steve Mehlman filling in for Madansky. The latter's version of "Sonic Reducer" is probably my favorite recording of the tune...greater sense of urgency and teenage dread, less tough-ass machismo bullshit (despite Thomas being well past 50!).
Let's see: was it doing the sound at CB's? I was running the board when the b-52s showed up for their AUDITION. Or maybe the night Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople came up to the board to tell me he was hearing the BEST LIVE DRUM MIX he'd ever heard in any club, anywhere.
Or maybe it was performing at CB's with the Boo Hoo Band. I'll never forget Clem, the drummer for Blondie when he saw our show. He was aghast and decided we were all gay since our lead singer came out clothed only in SARAN WRAP for one of our tunes.
Stiv Bators? Well, he and I shared a girl friend at the time, no shit.
Yeah, NYC was fun for me and CB's was great. Hilly had the best fucking PA: All JBL and Crown. And a 24 Track 2" tape deck behind the board to record groups live. I don't think that ever really panned out, though, did it Howie?
Hilly was a huge bear of a guy who was somewhat intimidating 'til you got to know him a bit. What a roller-coaster of a life he had. Long live Hilly and long live CB's.
Er, and though in a completely different vein (AVOID this, punkers! you will likely loathe it!) but still straight out of Cleveland, two brilliant performances from the late-80s "Cloudland"-era pop incarnation of Pere Ubu, on the long-missed Night Music program (how the crap did Coors sponsor such a great show!?!). Nothing like a grotesque fellow caterwauling over-thought interpretations of the era's pop rock, especially when the line-up cooked as much as it did then:
Breath
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1hYqvtHzr48
Waiting for Mary
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TiK-Lvwanq0
Coors?!? I meant Michelob. Even more bewildering. Like Schlitz starting a children's hospital!
Oedipus and the Motherfuckers circa '88 backed up by Gay Bikers on Acid. Nah, just kidding but I saw Psychadelic Furs around that time ... it was kinda a shitty show but it was the only one I went to at CBGBs. Ooops. Now that i think of it, I saw Dred Zepplin and that black dude who fronted the metal band ... Living Color or something like that. I think it was all kinda over by the time I lived in NYC. I was born a decade or two too late. Thanks for punk.
Walter
Actually, I liked Stiv's later band, Lords of the New Church, better than the Dead Boys.
Too bad he and guitarist Brian James (previously of the Damned) couldn't keep the Lords together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG6jH5UUlJI
Blondie in a trenchcoat rocking in a sultry way then tearing it off to reveal a hot pink dress while kicking the energy levels off the charts. It was a crazy night. The opening act was a bio-feedback violinist.
Ah....I gotta sign off tonight....you guys are pissing me off......I admit it! I'm jealous....I never got to CBGB!
[shakes fist in air] BASTARDOS!!!!
But one more "Lords of the New Church" song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr3u08x8038&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs4P8WKbF-w
anyone remember the SicFucks?
I can't possibly pick just one so here's a few of the top of my head... Either of Kraut's reunion shows commemorating the 20th anniversary of the New York City Thrash comp. Adrenaline OD, Nihilistics, Jack Rabid's Even Worse and others performed. I remember Tommy from Prong doing some great live sound for 4-5 years. He always seemed to squeeze at least part of a Jam album over the PA in between sets. Other highlights include PJ Harvey (Dry tour), The Circle Jerks, a great Local H showcase, an early Soul Asylum show or two, The All Ages matinees... One night I was pressed into service to do lights for band I was friends with.
When I first (literally) ran into Hilly I mistook him for a homeless person. He certainly didn't dress like a world class rock club owner. Hilly had different priorities. He didn't act like one either which was a part of his singular genius. The times I spoke with Hilly I found him to be driven, thoughtful and passionate.
What a sad, sad day.
God speed Hilly.
AF
Of course, there would have been no Stiv Bators without Iggy (and the Stooges):
Vintage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD_XCECbAEU
Current:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSN-Y1W4Jm4&NR=1
will @ 33:
Absolutely. Loved 'em. Russel was a maniac.
Ah, man, the days of punk, the best years of my life, except for the 4 day coke-binges chainsmoking and playing space invaders until the images were burned into my brain and all I saw for days were little geometric shapes marching up and down my field of vision. But I never made it to NYC until I was a tad past my punk glory days prime. Now, you wanna talk the FabMab, there I got memories. If only I could remember them!
Ah….I gotta sign off tonight….you guys are pissing me off……I admit it! I’m jealous….I never got to CBGB!
So you're jealous of...what exactly? Really, play some power chords through a blown-out amp. I'll come over and piss in the corner while you smoke speed out of a lightbulb.
Really, much a rep as the place has, I can't begin to imagine all the really shit bands who must've been there at least every other night.
I don't have a CBGB's experience, but I have a Dead Boys experience. I went to see them at a club, and before the show, we were outside rearranging the club's marquee sign to say really obscene stuff, and Stiv came out and helped us. They were really good, and I remember the highlight for me was when right in the middle of a song, stiv bent over and farted into the mic through his red leather peg legs. Anyway, we got invited to the after party, (This was after Cheetah) and stiv drank about a half a bottle of vodka while I was sitting there with him for like three minutes. The guitar player kept bragging about how he was such good friends with Rick Nielsen, and then even after like a fifth of vodka, Stiv fucked the girl I came with. Good times : /
My first gig on stage as the substitute bass player with bandaged bleeding fingers in 1978. I was the mover who was recruited to play bass when the bass player left just before the gig, I was hooked and knew I loved playing music!
Over the next 10 years or so, I played CB's at least 20 more times. The last time was in the early 90's with a group of friends called Mood Swings. They never fixed the plumbing.
best experience @ CBGBs was playing there
Question: Was there a record put out by The Dead Boys called WE HAVE COME FOR YOUR CHILDREN or.. something like that?
I won that album on WNEW-FM when the morning DJ chose my OLD NEW BORROWED and BLUE set to use on the air by DJ Dave Herman.
Howie- are my memories on the money or am I confusing album names?
I think We Have Come For Your Children was the Dead Boys second album.
Don't think there's any video, but the Dead Boys did a legendary performance in Cleveland once where Iggy Pop joined them onstage for the last song which was the Stooges Search and Destroy. Stiv and Iggy together tearing up the stage.
I was played there in a couple of bands in the late 70's and early 80's, What a great place. It's a wonder that Hilly lasted so long there. The dressing rooms were the most disgusting place you could imagine. I was walking down the Bowery a couple of months after Hilly sold out and it was gone already, what a shock. Now it turns out he couldn't live with out it. RIP!
I saw Brutal Truth, Man Is The Bastard and NightStick (with dancing junkie clown!) at CB's around 1995/96. It was about 3:00 AM when Man/Bastard finally went on, but it was great. Brutal Truth were at their peak around that time.
KansasCityFaGt @ 11:
No doubt...what a travesty.
1977, while the Dead Boys were looking for a label, sitting with then producer Genya Raven and having her sing me all the lyrics along with Stiv because the PA was so bad.
Thanks Hilly, it was great.
peter @ 41:
Me too. And we sucked that night.
I saw the Dead Boys at the Bank in Akron, Ohio. Stivvy was amazing! At one point he crawled into the kick drum and was singing from there!
It was one of the best rock and roll shows I ever experienced!
NICE! Long live Stiv!
I miss Sunday matinees, NYC hardcore,... seems like an eternity ago,...
My favorite CB's experience is selfish: anytime my art was displayed there. Most recently I participated in the Valentine's Day 'Swear To Save CBGBs' show, where about 100 low brow artists painted vinyl Swear Bear toys, displayed with my concert posters & other art. http://www.seppukutattoo.com/updates.html
Also, playing 'Find The Hidden Stash' on a group of scantily clad lesbians,... but that's another story,...
Playing there, agreed, best part of it. The Holy Ghost opened for Japan's Hi-Los, and it was crammed with some (relatively interested in opening band - us) rock animals. Now, walking past the phantom CBs, surrounded by shiny new condos (unfinished, unoccupied), a frickin' Whole Foods up the street from the Bowery Mission (no irony there, Bloomberg), and a scant handful of clubs still around this town but shutting down slowly, the mission of rocking NYC is more difficult, and more necessary, than ever. No prisoners. Nothing BUT future, baby.
Hope they put that hell-encrusted lidless crapper in the Smithsonian.
Just read the news article about Hilly,... geez, I knew he was old, but 75?
Godspeed, Mr. Kristal.
Clearly,
Are the signs still up on 2nd for Joey Ramone Way?
I hope the city doesn't trash them now that CB's is gone.
Seeing the ALL (The Descendents) and The Voluptuos Horror of Karen Black co-headline. Both bands were amazing.
Anyone remember Gazzari's in LA? What a trip those days were. The whole pay to play thing the clubs do was too weird. Like charging a plumber to come fix your sink. I never was at peace with this system. Never would pay to play. We unfamous rockstars pay in so many other ways already.
Respect and kindness,
Mike
The Beastie Boys use the Sonic Reducer riff as the opening hook in their post 9/!! love song to NYC, To The 5 Boroughs. Awesome song, among other things they figure out how to rhyme Staten Island. This is the best vers. of it I could find online, sorry it cuts abruptly.
My favorite Hilly/CB's story?
I'm torn between Hilly yelling "NO!" at me as he was leaving CB's, when I asked him to sign that day's NY Post feature article on the death of CB's as he was leaving for the last time, kind of making me one of the last fans he ever spoke to. Tough night, David Peel, (the only other living person I know who was mentioned by name in a John Lennon song), was out on the sidewalk too, and he couldn't get in either.
Or the three years between May of 1979 through most of 1982 that I lived, on and off, at #9 and #10 Bleecker Street, just off the corner of The Bowery, within direct line of sight of the awning.
Here's the real kick in the teeth.
The only time I went in during that period was on a Sunday afternoon one day when we had blown a fuse at #10 and I was dispatched to see if Hilly would be willing to let us borrow an electrician.
Short version... I missed every major act that rolled in through there during that period.
Oops.
I just can't catch a break.
In my defense, I had enough going on at #10 to keep me happy, since it was also known as Studio 10 and we had a 3 Bands, 3 Bucks thing going on that kept me plenty busy.
Ya'll should be as lucky and blessed as I've been.
One cool thing I've noticed as The Greats pass on is that they get the Front Page treatment when they go. Strummer and Joey Ramone got the same when they went, whodathunkit?
~Nyc
I'm guessing it was 1975. My friend and I dropped a hit of mescaline and went to CBGBs. Richard Hell and the Voidoids while tripping is my fondest memory of the club. But happening during the same era was Max's Kansas City, the Chelsea Hotel and the 82 Club. And if you were queer, add in the trucks, the pier and the Strap. It was a truly amazing time to live through. I wonder to this day how I made it through alive!
Now I'm feeling all mushy and nostalgic. Thanks for the memories!
Francis
Any night at CB's was the best. (Nobody has mentioned what Stiv did while singing "caught with the meat in your mouth" if a fan was willing....)
How about The Mumps and Swing Madisons-those were always great shows. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks - that was crazy stuff. Personal favorite was seeing early Television.
Stuff happened at CBs that I can't even believe. It was great.
My gawd, how could I ever forget one night in '76 at CBGBs? As fucked up as I was, I have still managed to keep pretty detailed memories of this special night.
It wasn't the ugly interior design of the place...shit, we didn't go there for the decoration. And it wasn't that nasty floor that you certainly wouldn't want to accidently fall face down on and touch with your tongue.
No, and it wasn't even the band that was playing...some group of no-talent angry boys that looked as if they smelled like dried vomit.
What made this night memorable was that Patti Smith showed up and was just hanging out around the bar. We had met before, so I talked to her for a few minutes. You had to yell really loud to be heard over the "music".
"Hey", I said to Patti. "You should quit your band and join up with those guys."..I was pointing to the stage.
Patti glanced at the performers and said "Yeah, I should go up there on stage right now and kill every one of those fuckers! That would be a true artistic statement."
Wow, those were the days.
My favorite night was sometime in the late 80s and the Butthole Surfers played there touring on their greatest albumd, LOCUST ABORTION TECHNICIAN. The place was packed and everyone was cramped and squeezed into every open space and when the Surfers played, the darkness of the room along with the atavistic performance by the band lent to the evening (for me, anyway) the feeling that I was deep underground in a cave witnessing a primordial rite.
My favorite discovery at CBs were the DOG FACED HERMANS, who opened there for some other band I'd gone to see...perhaps even the Surfers on the night described above! I saw them on purpose several times thereafter and they were always superb.
Of course I was proud to see my best friend John's band, the REVERB MOTHERFUCKERS, play there a few times; John and I had read about CBs back in college in Gainesville, Florida, ca. 1976-78.
And, yes, the SIC FUCS were great! I only saw them once, at the Ritz, opening for the also great Dictators and one of their (the Dics) early 80s reunion shows.
What's happened to Noo Yawk?!!
Never made it to CB's. But there is some great, Great, GREAT(!!!!) video of Bad Brains as CBGBs.
I failed to point out that my friend John's band that I mentioned, REVERB MOTHERFUCKERS, featured another frenetically talented fellow and the other songwriter in the band who is now prominent in another sphere of activity: Roy, of Alicublog, found near the very top of your Blogroll here.
Check it out!
Hi Howie, Richard X. Heyman's wife Nancy here. I used to play CBGB all the time, first with my all-female band Cheap Perfume, then with Richard. It was always an experience. I think the greatest show I ever saw there was Marshall Crenshaw, very early in his career. Other old favorites from the late 70's/early 80's were the Revelons, Nervus Rex and Quincy. Hope you're well.
Nancy
Great song, very underrated band. "Young, Loud and Snotty" was one of my favorite early punk records, with tons of great songs. I think they were written off because they didn't try to imitate the Ramones look/sound or the British one either. I always thought their music was a shade richer than the average punks of the time. Plus their lyrics were considered offensive by the more politically-correct punks (!) -- maybe that's why I liked them. I saw the Dictators a few years back (all alive and well, thank you very much) and they did a great cover of "Sonic Reducer" which I thought was a fitting tribute. Ross the Boss used to play guitar with the Dead Boys because he could play the solos on "Search and Destroy" and apparently none of the Dead Boys guitarists could.
I didn't know that Cheetah Chrome had died. RIP.
As someone else here has already pointed out, Cheetah Chrome is still alive and, presumably, well.
Wes @ 45:
Holy fuck! I was at that one too. MITB were the shit, but me and my bro left after Tank Killer because it was just too fucking late and we were dead.
though i've seen a good many (and many good) shows at cb's, my best moment was playing there with a couple of my bands back in the early 90s. maybe about 5 shows in total, hardly to any more than a handful of people at each show - a few nyc folks we philly guys knew plus the a&r folks we could convince to come. what a great stage to play on...big, sounded great. all that history on the walls in the form of band writing and graffiti. RIP Hilly. Thanks to you (and Louise) for making me part of the rock and roll history of the place.
Theresa @ 43:
Thanks, Theresa.
I went to NYU, passed in and out of CBGB on a fly-by basis, cannot remember any nights of distinction except for the one night an ex-boyfriend told me to come over to see him with his band. Our crowd was more a Ritz-going crew. Miss those days of the late 70s, early 80s. Lots of fun, dancing, drinking, laughing, living.
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