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Forget that shitty ‘CBGB’ film, ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ from 1978 takes you inside the real CBGB


 
Three aspiring musicians: Richard Hell, Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd were looking for a place “where nothing was happening” for their band Television to play. If nothing was happening then the bar owner had nothing to lose. One day, down in the Bowery, Verlaine and Lloyd spotted a place initialed CBGB-OMFUG. They sidled across, went inside and talked to the owner a former singer and musician Hilly Krystal. As Lloyd recalled in Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s essential oral history of punk Please Kill Me, Hilly wanted to know what kinda music they played. They answered with a question:

‘Well, what does ‘CBGB-OMFUG’ stand for?’

He said, ‘Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gourmandizers.’

So we said, ‘Oh yeah, we play a little of that, a little rock, a little country, a little blues, a little bluegrass…’

And Hilly said, ‘Oh, okay, maybe…’

 
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In fact, the only real stipulation for appearing at CBGB’s was to play new music, and although Suicide and Wayne County had already appeared at CBGB’s (after the demise of the Mercer Arts Center), it was not until Television, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and The Dead Boys started taking up residency that CBGB’s changed from something where nothing happened to somewhere it all happened.
 

 
If you were disappointed by the shitty CBGB’s movie made a couple of years back starring Alan Rickman, then you will get a better sense of the energy, talent and musical revolution that took place at CBGB’s in the mid-1970s with this hour-long TV documentary Blitzkrieg Bop . Focussing on The Ramones, Blondie and the The Dead Boys, Blitzkrieg Bop mixes live performance with short interview clips and a racy newscast voiceover. It’s recommended viewing.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.25.2015
10:55 am
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‘TV-CBGB,’ the 1981 punk rock public-access ‘sitcom’
01.17.2014
02:54 pm
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TV-CBGB logo
 
The This Ain’t the Summer of Love blog has uncorked a real gem on the Internet—with the help of one of its loyal readers. Four years ago, TATSOL unearthed a 1982 Billboard article describing a CBGB-produced cable access show to “include interviews, comedy skits, and live performances.” A few days ago Stuart Newman, a member of the The Roustabouts, a band that was featured, uploaded a YouTube video of an episode of “TV-CBGB” and passed on the link to TATSOL. Victory! And a coup for a worthy blog.
 
CBGB Billboard
 
The episode is peculiar and mildly riveting. It’s 90% performance but not true concert footage. There’s a bizarre opening sequence hosted by “Jo Thompson” (actually Wendy Walker), although it’s unclear why her MC duties necessitated a fictional character—in her bit, she walks through the club introducing us to a half-dozen CBGB employees, including Hilly, who are obliged to hold a freeze-frame pose for quite a long time while she tells us about them using the third person.

Of the somewhat overpopulated “sitcom” portions, the dialogue is predictably muddy and you never really know who anyone is or if they’re “fictional” or “real”—Hilly does his best playing himself. The bits attempt to portray something of the day-to-day experience of working at CBGBs. It’s completely incompetent as sketch entertainment, but nonetheless touching to watch a typical cross-section of unmistakably downtown fashionista wastoids gamely mimic a smash hit sitcom—there’s even a laugh track! The intermittent scenelets that feel a little SCTV outtakes or perhaps one of those short films shown during the Chevy Chase era of SNL—albeit with cable access production values. Furthermore, the birthday party for a pregnant co-worker feels entirely inauthentic; the brief scene in the scuzzy bathroom in which two women indulge in a bit of gossip feels a lot more true to life.

Here’s the lineup of bands: Idiot Savant, The Roustabouts, The Hard, Jo Marshall, Shrapnel, and Sic Fucks. None of the bands are great, but every single one is peppy and utterly enjoyable; unlike the scripted bits; the music performances feel absolutely like what it must have been like to attend CBGBs on a regular basis—a useful reminder of just how rousing and vital the median CBGB act was. (I was way too young to experience any of this, so my notions of the bands’ “authenticity” are the merest guess at the truth.)
 
CBGBTV logo
 
The episode is an odd glimpse of a CBGB identity that never took shape, as a cable access mainstay; maybe someday it would have migrated to MTV and become a national TV icon. It never happened, but the sturdy format of bands just playing good rock and roll always works.

The only question now is, what else is out there?? The indefatigable TATSOL inquires: “Were there any additional episodes filmed? And if yes, where is the footage of those episodes? Hope we don’t have to wait four more years to find out…” Amen to that!
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Young punk icons at CBGB New Year’s Eve party in 1975
CBGB in its pure raw beautiful nasty self

Posted by Martin Schneider
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01.17.2014
02:54 pm
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