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Earliest known Plasmatics footage, unseen for decades, surfaces
05.05.2017
09:25 am
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The Plasmatics, formed by lead singer Wendy O. Williams and manager Rod Swenson in 1977, were at the forefront of the first wave of American punk, getting their start at the legendary CBGB with their first gig in July of 1978. Their taboo-busting stage show gained them a huge cult following through the early 80s, featuring the shock antics of Williams, who was prone to wearing little more than electrical tape over her nipples and short school-girl skirts, while chainsawing guitars in half and blowing up cop cars onstage. Wendy O. Williams, who sadly passed in 1998, was one of rock’s all-time ballsiest performers, and her act lead to 1981 obscenity arrests in Cleveland and Milwaukee, where she was also beaten by police and received a charge of battery to an officer (which was later dropped, along with the obscenity charge). 

Rod Swenson, the Plasmatics manager, shot all of the band’s conceptual videos and many of their live shows. Much of that show footage has never been released and was thought, for a time, to be lost. 

During a recent move of Plasmatics/Wendy O. Williams archive material, a cache of unlabeled boxes was found, containing footage of the early shows shot by Swenson. Though much of the material had degraded over time, a restoration and salvage job saved many of these historic performances.  A DVD release has been prepared and is currently available as a pre-order. The DVD contains sixteen songs recorded at various venues between 1978 and 1981.

Dangerous Minds has obtained a clip from this footage, which is the earliest known Plasmatics live video, and you can see it after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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05.05.2017
09:25 am
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CBGB’s awning being auctioned by Sotheby’s is expected to fetch at least $25,000
12.01.2016
09:23 am
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Man, who knew rock ‘n’ roll was so posh? Earlier this week, we alerted you to the sale of Dennis Hopper’s extremely modest record collection for only about 1500 times its probable value. This is unrelated, but it feels like a part of the same stupidity: an awning from CBGB, the Bowery dive bar that in the ‘70s became the Ur venue for the musical insurgency that would come to be known as punk rock, is being auctioned by the elite house Sotheby’s, and is estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $35,000.

The club was never really home base for people who could afford that kind of cash outlay for an outsized souvenir—the bands that played there were decidedly low-rent. The bands that made the place a Mecca included the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Blonde, Talking Heads, the Cramps, and the Dead Boys (who recorded their live album Night of the Living Dead Boys there), well before they became marquee names. After a long and legendary run, the club closed ten years ago, and was “resurrected” in name only as we shit you not a restaurant in the Newark Airport (one and a half stars on Yelp). That restaurant has a small-scale replica of the club’s iconic awning. One of the several actual awnings that adorned the club’s doorway over the years lives on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but while the Sotheby’s web site claims that the awning for sale is the original, Time Out New York says that’s incorrect:

Though the venerable auction house is listing the item as the “original awning for punk mecca CBGB,” that’s not actually the case. It’s a version rescued from the trash in 2004 by former club manager Drew Bushong. Bushong’s find was one several iterations of the iconic sign, beginning with the first one hand-painted by CBGB owner Hilly Kristal. That awning is believed to have been stolen one night in the 1980s by the band Jody Foster’s Army (JFA), after the group played a gig. It’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Yeah, that’s fucking hilarious. I didn’t realize I could love JFA more!

The auction is scheduled for Saturday, December 10th. I’m sincerely hoping some CBGB O.G. gets it, but it will probably get sold to a fuckin’ pharma bro.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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12.01.2016
09:23 am
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Of punk rockers, Bad Brains, CBGB & ‘Quincy’: Charming local news segment on hardcore, 1982
05.23.2016
10:36 am
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This is another one of those fun, seen-in-retrospect “time capsules” about how allegedly scary punk rock was supposed to be, whilst presenting footage of kids who seem anything but scary. Misfits? Sure. Scary? No.

The time was pinpointed by one of the people interviewed as either 1982 or 1983. The segment was from something called called “2 on the Town” and I’m gonna guess that this was something seen on the local CBS affiliate in New York at the time. Dig the “Let’s Get Physical” location of the host wraparound. Instead of using an actual hardcore punk soundtrack, for some (bad) reason, they decided to cut it to David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors. Despite this, there’s a choice clip of the Bad Brains and a look at the sort of explosive melee they inspired. We also see a bit of the infamous “punk” episode of Quincy followed by some disgruntled teenage commentary about it.

There’s even an interview with a cool mom!

See it after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.23.2016
10:36 am
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The Monkees’ Peter Tork plays Bach and Elvis at CBGB during the height of the punk era
05.02.2016
12:34 pm
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A bearded Peter Tork, around the time of his 1977 CBGB solo set. Can we call this his “head” shot?

In 1977 The Monkees TV show was nine years in the rearview mirror, the Monkees hadn’t been active for six years, and an outfit going by the name Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart had released an album a year earlier.

The post-Monkees years had not been easy for Peter Tork. He tried to start a band with his girlfriend Reine Stewart that was to be called “Peter Tork and/or Release,” but they never, ah, “released” anything (Tork says that he possesses Release demos to this day), and in 1972 he got busted for possession of hashish and did three months in an Oklahoma penitentiary. By 1975 he was a teacher at Pacific Hills School in Santa Monica.
 

This pic comes from the September 22, 1977 issue of Rolling Stone—the same issue that memorialized the passing of Elvis Presley
 
As improbable as it sounds, in 1977 Tork played a solo set at CBGB, the legendary venue catering to punk and new wave on the Bowery in Manhattan. The date was July 31, and no less a personage than Lester Bangs wrote a review of the show for the Village Voice.

Tork’s jaunty, amateurish set was all over the map. Playing some guitar but mostly piano, Tork played “Prelude #2 in C Minor” as well as a two-part invention by Johann Sebastian Bach and Elvis’ “Don’t Be Cruel” and Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come” and Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” and Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” One of the numbers was a Russian folk tune titled “Kretchman” that I recommend a certain DM contributor adopt as his new personal anthem. He played “I’ll Spend My Life with You”  off of Headquarters and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” off of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.
 

This CBGB ad appeared in the Village Voice, August 1, 1977 issue
 
Lester Bangs quotes Tork as saying before the show, “This is pretty much a one-shot for me; I was booked in here by a journalist friend of mine who’s helping me do a book on the Monkees trip, and after it’s over I’m gonna go back to California and teaching. I couldn’t do this on the West Coast; CBGB’s is psychedelic.” (To which Bangs blandly responds “If you say so.”)

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.02.2016
12:34 pm
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Unreleased Talking Heads track recorded live at CBGB’s show, 1976
12.30.2013
02:44 pm
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Talking Heads
Talking Heads, fresh-faced and downright cherubic.

When this song was recorded, Talking Heads were still a three-piece band—keyboardist Jerry Harrison had yet to join—and though the track lacks just about anything that would allow one to guess it was Talking Heads, David Byrne’s voice is unmistakable when he announces “This is an instrumental; we call it ‘Theme,’ but then we just keep it to ourselves.” The group opened for Television for that show.

Other than that, you can hear bits and pieces of the band that would become Talking Heads, but this is still pretty amateurish stuff. I, for one, find it comforting. It’s nice to be reminded that even Talking Heads weren’t always Talking Heads.
 

 
Via NME

Posted by Amber Frost
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12.30.2013
02:44 pm
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CBGB in the raw: ‘The Blank Generation’
10.14.2013
11:48 am
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If you’re a regular Dangerous Minds’ reader than you most likely know how much I hate the newly-released CBGB movie. It makes Tommy Wiseau’s The Room look like Citizen Kane. Over the weekend CBGB sold a miserable $4000 worth of tickets in New York City, the one place where the movie might have had an audience. That translates to less than 300 attendees (tickets are $14).. Dire. The upside: the film will have negligible impact on the way the club is perceived by future generations. Unless, of course, it finds an audience on Netflix. There it could turn into the next Birdemic.

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 dangerous again.

And for those of you who think I’ve got it in for the hacks who made the new CBGB movie, you’re right. I do. For several years in the 70s, CBGB was my church and I get upset, real fucking upset, when people piss in the holy water.

The Blank Generation
with

  Richard Hell
  Patti Smith Group
  Television
  Ramones
  The Heartbreakers
  Talking Heads
  Blondie
  Harry Toledo
  Marbles
  Tuff Darts
  Wayne County
  The Miamis
  New York Dolls
  The Shirts
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.14.2013
11:48 am
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CBGB in its pure raw beautiful nasty self
10.02.2013
11:04 am
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Okay, I got a lot off my chest regarding the celluloid shitstain of a movie called CBGB and its piss poor treatment of some of punk’s legendary pioneers. Well thanks to Dead Boys drummer, the amazing Johnny Blitz, we have some incredible raw footage of Cleveland’s finest pulverizing the audience at CBGB in 1977.

Stiv, Cheetah, Johnny, Jimmy and Jeff were among the handful of musicians who really brought something genuinely epic (sonic-wise) to the stage down on the Bowery. They not only had the attitude, they had the chops that put them into the same sphere as The Stooges, The MC5 and The Clash. For a fistful of years, these cats were a force as formidable as rock has ever seen.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.02.2013
11:04 am
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The new trailer for the ‘CBGB’ film looks like a big steamin’ pile o’ shit
08.07.2013
06:52 pm
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Malin Akerman as Debbie Harry and Taylor Hawkins as Iggy Pop.
 
Not to be all “Hey, smell this, it smells like shit,” but this looks AWFUL.

Okay, so it’s just a trailer and maybe I shouldn’t be too judgmental. I’ll leave it up for you fine folks to decide for yourselves… Yikes.
 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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08.07.2013
06:52 pm
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CBGB’s toilet: Museum recreates punk rock’s legendary pisshole
05.09.2013
04:52 am
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The Metropolitan Museum Of Art’s “PUNK: Chaos to Couture” exhibition includes a re-creation of the legendary bathroom at CBGB’s, the Mecca of merde. But, as we see in the above photo of the museum’s replication of the tortured toilet, duplicating mayhem is impossible. Like most forms of wildlife, if you remove it from its habitat you kill it.

As someone who waded into that hellhole with the regularity of a bottom-feeding crustacean with a bad beer habit, this feeble installation doesn’t come close to evoking the dank horror of the place. The shithole at CBGB’s was punk rock’s Petri dish, spawning a virus that would radiate outward and forward into the future changing pop culture forever. Rock ‘n’ roll’s DNA was re-tooled in this stool garden.  Oh, how I miss it.

For the sake of historical accuracy, the bathroom’s floor should be soaking wet, the toilets overflowing with shit and piss and shards of broken beer bottles everywhere.

This was one of the few bathrooms in Manhattan where it was impossible to snort a line of coke discreetly and every bowel movement was performance art. The toilet truly lived up to the appellation of “throne.” You had to ascend a small staircase to reach it. You defecated from on high while below drunken rockers staggered around the urinals trying to hit their mark in an appallingly comical version of Sin City’s dancing fountains. This was Las Vegas for cockroaches.

Here’s a photo of the real deal. Lean into the monitor and smell the stomach-churning aroma of punk rock.
 

 
Via The Gothamist.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.09.2013
04:52 am
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The House that Punk Ate: CBGB Gingerbread House
12.17.2012
11:56 am
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I noticed this CBGB gingerbread house has been making the rounds on Facebook. I’m not exactly sure who made it, but from my incredibly thorough Google sleuthing it appears Lizz Trudeau‘s Flickr stream may be the original source.

The Bowery bums give it a nice, historically accurate touch…

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.17.2012
11:56 am
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Zen rockers: Talking Heads performing at CBGB in 1975
08.03.2012
03:21 pm
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Seven months after their first gig at CBGB (an opening slot in June of 1975 for The Ramones), Talking Heads were videotaped performing a set at the legendary club.

1. Psycho Killer
2. Tentative Decisions
3. With Our Love
4. I Wish You Wouldn’t Say That
5. I’m Not in Love
6. 96 Tears
7. No Compassion

When we were performing at CBGB’s alongside Television, The Ramones, Patti Smith, and Blondie, there was never any doubt in my mind that something unforgettable was going on. To me it was obvious that history was in the making; in no small part thanks to Hilly Kristal who owned CBGBs and gave these bands a stage to play on when no one else would.” Chris Frantz.

David Bynre, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz still finding their feet as a band but the essence that made them great is all there.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.03.2012
03:21 pm
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Photos from the CBGB movie set: Way south of 14th street
07.10.2012
08:26 pm
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Here’s some shots from the set of the CBGB movie currently filming in Savannah, Georgia. The facade of the club has been re-created on Congress street in Savannah’s historic district. Set designers seem to have done their best to revive the grubby look of the Bowery in the 1970s but something just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s the way the Georgia sun lights up the streets and buildings with a kind of tropical glow. And man is that one shiny Yellow cab.
 
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A fake Hilly Kristal (Alan Rickman) in front of a fake CBGB.
 
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Paula Deen on the Bowery?
 
Via The Village Voice.

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.10.2012
08:26 pm
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Chris Stein’s photographs of the last days of CBGB
06.03.2011
12:15 am
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Chris Stein of Blondie is not only a fine musician and songwriter he’s also an accomplished photographer. These photos of the last few days in the life of CBGB must have been heartbreaking for Stein to shoot. Blondie, along with some of the most significant bands of the past four decades, started their career on the ancient stage at the east end of one of the funkiest bars in the known universe.

Beneath these layers of band stickers and graffiti are more layers of band stickers and graffiti. They’re like the rings of a mutant tree, each layer representing a phase of CBGB’s evolution. Radiocarbon dating the walls of the club would have revealed the raw ages of the pre-history of punk rock.

It is a sad to see the once great disheveled beast gutted and splayed like a rock and roll King Kong fallen from the skies onto the yuppiefied streets of the new Bowery.

There are more of Stein’s shots of CBGB, as well as photos of Blondie, punk pioneers, Graceland, H.R. Giger and more, at Chris’s fascinating website Rednight.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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06.03.2011
12:15 am
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The Ramones and Dead Boys: ‘Punking Out’ 1977

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These clips of The Ramones and The Dead Boys at CBGB in 1977 capture the birth of punk in all of its raw glory. Taken from the film Punking Out directed by Maggi Carson and Ric Shore, this is the scene as I remember it: unpretentious, fun, full of energy and kind of goofy.

Punking Out is a terrific time capsule of a time and place and really should be more widely seen. You can order a DVD copy at the film’s website.  The site hasn’t been updated in a few years, but the ‘shopping cart’ appears to still be functioning.

Dee Dee’s glue rant is hilarious.
 

 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.01.2010
11:00 pm
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Bad Brains live at CBGB 1982: 58 minutes of hardcore bliss
11.18.2010
02:32 am
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Here’s the classic Bad Brains video culled from 4 hours of footage shot over the course of 3 nights of performances at CBGB in December of 1982. Hardcore rock/reggae doesn’t get any better than this. While most of this footage has been available in bits and pieces of varying quality on Youtube, here’s the entire video with superb sound and visuals.

You can buy this on DVD from MVD Visual here.
 

 
More badness from Bad Brains after the jump…

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Posted by Marc Campbell
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11.18.2010
02:32 am
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