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.

 
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…

 
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.
 

 
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.
 

 

A fake Hilly Kristal (Alan Rickman) in front of a fake CBGB.
 

Paula Deen on the Bowery?
 
Via The Village Voice.

 
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.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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.
 

 
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…

 
Rare Japanese documentary footage of The Dictators, Suicide, Bad Brains, Mink DeVille, James Chance, The Ramones and The Dead Boys at CBGB, 1978. The Plasmatics at Cbs 1980 from NYC cable show ‘Innertube’.  Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, also from Innertube, 1979, at Max’s.