There is rarely a club as iconic as CBGB’s. While the club shuttered in 2006 due to rent disputes and is now the location of a John Varvatos store, the location was pivotal to musical culture and the New York music scene throughout the 1970’s and 80’s. 315 Bowery will always be a special place for fans of New Wave and acts like Bruce Springsteen, The Ramones, The Talking Heads, Blondie, Television, Patti Smith and The Cramps. It even hosted the first American performances by The Police. It later became a go-to location for the hardcore punk scene. The driving force of that was Hilly Kristal who was born on this day in 1931. He would have been 80 years old.
Hilly Kristal started out as a musician and later a manager for the Village Vanguard. After co-founding the very popular Central Park Music Festival, Kristal shifted towards owning bars and clubs in the Lower East Side. After a failed bar, Kristal opened up “CBGB and OMFUG” and the rest is pretty much history. It was a venue meant for original artists who were given a chance to play. That’s not how it worked back then when you needed a label and a big record to hit the stage. CBGB, standing for Country BlueGrass and Blues, was a pioneer for how we experience music today. Kristal died in 2007 due to complications from lung cancer.
