CBGB is closing

Legendary New York rock club CBGB is apparently closing on Sunday. It's legendary for launching the careers of the Ramones, Television, Blondie, Patti Smith, and Talking Heads in the mid-'70s. Slate has a very fannish article about it by a guy named Paul Collins who played there once before giving up rock'n'roll to become a historian. I went to CBGB once long after its glory days, sometime in the '90s - whenever Victor was going to Columbia. I don't remember the band or bands we saw that night. Maybe it was even Poem Rocket, the band that Collins briefly played drums for in 1993. As he writes, "The club will always be connected to famous names like Smith, but its real glory was in nourishing the infinitely branching root system of the good to indifferent musicians — the schlubs, the schmucks, the shredders — that underlies any rock ecosystem. I know: I was one of them." That goes for the music fans who went to the shows, too, looking to complete the circuit with the shredders on stage.

CBGB lasted for over 30 years, which is a pretty long run for a rock club.