CBGB's 70s Punk

August 1973: the Mercer Arts Center collapsed. A nineteenth-century hotel on Broadway and West Third Street, its ballrooms and theaters hosting glam, proto-punk, and downtown weirdness, suddenly rubble. Suicide, the Fast, the Magic Tramps needed somewhere to play. The New York Dolls had already proven that glam with a streetwise edge could work in Manhattan's downtown, but the Velvet Underground's ghost was the real inheritance. Make rock that matters again. By late 1973, a former biker bar at 315 Bowery, in a derelict stretch of the East Village between First and Second Streets, was ready.

Hilly Kristal opened CBGB on December 10, 1973, on the ground floor of the Palace Lodging House, a nineteenth-century saloon space. Nobody there thought they were watching history get made. The full name, CBGB & OMFUG, stood for Country, Bluegrass, Blues, and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers, and it reflected Kristal's actual plan. He defined a gourmandizer not as a gourmet but as a person with refined taste, someone who appreciated quality. He wanted roots music. Instead, he got the Ramones.