Country Bluegrass & Blues
You probably already knew that's what CBGB means
Talking Heads, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Blondie, Paul Jacobsen.
A family, if ever there were one. Mentioned in the same breath more often than not.
All are music acts that played shows, early in their careers, at the fabled NYC venue CBGB.
The difference being that the first four acts were early in their careers at essentially the same time, which also happened to be the apex of fabled NYC venue CBGB.
In my case, mentioning “playing CBGB” shines brighter as a bullet point or resume blurb than as a paragraph. But, I’m a paragraph-writer, so here goes.
I had forgotten but upon looking back to write this, I realized I actually played CBGB twice. Two consecutive months, even.
See? It looks nice. Impressive, even, for those with even a cursory sense of the history of rock ‘n roll music and the NYC punk scene. It’s a solid namedrop. And you best believe it’s in whatever bio I send to promoters or artists or producers or whoever.
But once you get into the unabridged, paragraph version, things get a little….less impressive.
For starters, it was the early 00’s, in the twilight of the venue’s existence as a venue (before it transitioned into solely being trendy t-shirts worn by decidedly non-punk celebrities), and a good thirty-plus years after its heyday as the epicenter of the early rumblings of NYC punk.
Some things never change, though. I can report, for instance, that in 2004 the bathroom was still an on-brand level of disgusting. Graffiti everywhere (and not the hipster, bougie, we-commissioned-some-artist-to-come-here-and-tag-the-walls-beautifully graffiti; no, this was the genuine, profane, not-all-that-artistic restroom scrawlings of names and numbers and expletives and cartoonish phalli). The toilet handle required jiggling. The sink was cold water only. The mirror was half-cracks, half-scrawlings. And the cleanliness (sic) made anyone sane schedule a Hepatitis screening the next day. Ah, the golden age of punk.
The sound guys, too, were still somehow Too Cool For Whoever’s On Stage1 while also being markedly Not Very Good At Their Jobs. Their mixing was clearly better suited to overloud punk guitars and howling vocals, and not quiet me with my acoustic guitar and my friend (Sunfall Festival drummer) Chris Peterson2 playing brushes on his drums. There was definitely a ceiling to the “rocking out” that Chris and I could do, and it was mostly beacause a) my acoustic guitar couldn’t really go nuclear, and b) I was still discovering my voice and hadn’t yet figured out how to push my voice at all. I’m still not the world’s most charismatic, let-it-loose performer, but I’ve come miles from where I was in 2004.
The bill was Chris and me sandwiched between a Heavy Metal Spoken World Poet3 (this was the actual description on the flyer) and a performance troupe called Slutty Puppets4, who were just about what you might imagine (and probably some things you might be better off not imagining). It was right around the—I can’t believe I’m about to write this—puppet boom of Crank Yankers and Avenue Q; CBGB was known for its welcoming of left-field “transgressive” type art. I’m sure they were a naughty hoot.
That bill was my first experience with exploitative bills that aren’t built for a cohesive Night Of Music, but are far more interested Three Separate Groups of Paying People. There was zero intent to curate a night of music and 1000% intent to, in the vernacular of restaurants and wait staff, “turn over the tables” and make the most money possible. Nobody from the first guy was gonna be into me with my acoustic guitar. And nobody there for me and my acoustic guitar was gonna be into the performance troupe. The chance for me (and the poet and puppets) to make new fans on a bill like this was comically smaller than, say, a bill with me plus some other acoustic singer/songwriters (even if that might get boring even for me). Maybe not impossible. But not likely.
I dug up this recap post on my old website about the show:
Thanks to everyone who showed up to the CBGB show. Good turnout, good show. Probably the most "interesting" bill I've ever been on, for better or for worse. Probably not better. Here was our setlist to satisfy your collective insatiable curiosity:
Missing - Doomed - Pen To Paper - Stupid Little Things - Ooh La La (Faces cover) - Black & Blue - Don't Say Goodbye - Fearless Johnny Tapias
A setlist including a cover song and two songs—Stupid Little Things and Fearless Johnny Tapias— from an album that wouldn’t come out for another 4 years? Very on-brand.
And my recap is right: we had a really good turnout, thanks to some solid word-of-mouth marketing between our LDS singles5 congregation and my Ogilvy & Mather coworkers. I don’t think I dazzled anybody, but the promoter loved an unexpected Tuesday night crowd and booked me again four weeks later—with diminishing returns. Between another nonsensical, ill-fitting bill and really bad sound and markedly reduced interest from the local LDS singles6, I declined to try my Third Time’s A Charm luck. Two was enough.
Even when I booked the show, I knew “playing CBGB” was better on paper than reality, and asterisked by “*…in 2004.” I knew I’d missed the CBGB party, not by hours or even days, BY DECADES. The circus had left ages ago, leaving just a gross bathroom and pissy soundguys to hold down the grimy fort. But, with the venue now shuttered, I’m just glad I can say I did. It’s a notch in the belt. It’s cool to say I played the same stage as some of the best bands to ever do it7.
From there, I played worse, harder-to-get-to venues8 for fewer people until eventually Dominic Moore & I (Chris had moved) played for nobody but our wives at venues that no longer exist.
Those were really good shows, honestly.
This is not always true. I’ve had some incredible sound guys (and girls) in my time. But the general reputation for surliness and apathy is earned.
I do remember feeling a nice flutter of DIY “If I Can Make It There, I’ll Make It Anywhere” magic as we packed Chris’ drum kit in and out of cabs to get to the venue. Honestly, I could make the case that the feeling of loading his drums out of the cab onto the sidewalk in front of the venue is the actual core memory. (The feeling of loading the drums back into another cab to take Chris uptown is decidedly less romanticized in my minds after the reality of playing an ok-only show in NYC set in and my patented overthinking began.)
I tried to track down the name of the guy and my Sherlocking leads me to believe his name was Duncan Wilder Johnson. I listened to one bit I found online and it’s pretty aggressive and angry about Counting Crows’ cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” (not a great cover, if we’re being honest). He’s performed his material opening for punk legends like Jello Biafra and Marky Ramone, so it’s pretty clear which of us actually belonged at CBGB.
Slutty Puppets were a CBGB fixture I see now, looking back at the venue website archives. I declined to google the group because I don’t want the algorithm to start sending me extra-weird stuff, thanks though.
Basically, anyone over 18 and unmarried and in a certain geographic area goes to church together.
My songs are probably just too sexy for chaste makeout sessions, right?
There are a few of these—stages that were once a big deal but have since lost their shine—that I can claim: CBGB, The Bottom Line, The Bitter End. Springsteen played some mythic shows at The Bottom Line. So did Tom Waits and Miles Davis. The list of people who performed at the Bitter End is insane. (Weird. I’m not on the wiki-list. But one of my favorite recorded live performances—Donny Hathaway singing “Jealous Guy”—is. Also James Taylor and Neil Young are rumored to have bombed at The Bitter End, which is strangely comforting.) And then there are the tons upon tons of venues I’ve played that no one has ever heard of nor ever will because they barely existed at the time and don’t exist at all now.
At the peak of our promotional ambition, I recall Dominic and I hitting it hard, handing out little flyers for our show all over. We’d target shows and venues that we felt overlapped with our potential audience. We handed out burned CDs (lol) outside a Jeff Tweedy show and flyers at a Ryan Adams show. One freezing night, I stood shivering outside The Living Room, a cozy little venue I would have loved to play (and, frankly, I would’ve been a great fit, if I may be so bold). I’d seen Teddy Thompson and Leona Naess and Rachael Yamagata and others perform there, and I loved how it was a dedicated listening room with an audience that came to really listen. After about 15 minutes, THE NORAH JONES walked out (some of her early buzz-generating gigs were at the Living Room), gave a hug to the bouncer, and trundled off to her apartment or subway stop. I said nothing to her because I froze (and was freezing) but vividly recall wishing I could just be part of her little NYC musician scene. As I watched her disappear down the street to the tune of Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver”, I heard a voice behind me, “HEY!” I snapped to attention and whirled to see the bouncer was talking to me. He pointed at my flyers, which I’d been distributing for a quarter hour between shivers, and asked, “are those for a show HERE?” I tried on my most rogue-ish grin (which is to say, probably a very cringey smile) and said, “I wish!” He frowned and said, “you can’t pass those out here.” I protested, “hey! I would play here if you’d book me!” Surprisingly that didn’t change his mind. I walked to my subway stop, dejected. Not only could I not get booked to play The Dang Living Room, I couldn’t even hand out flyers for my rinky-dink show at a no-name venue in the bitter freezing cold outside of The Dang Living Room.