Punk nostalgia alone won't save CBGBs

It's the shirt of the season in the city. As New York basks in a glorious Indian summer, chests advertising CBGBs prowl the streets. You'd expect to see them downtown, yet threads plugging the infamous rock hovel on the Bowery also seem to have replaced The Ramones as the tee of choice for uptown hipsters looking to slum it a little at weekend brunch soirees.

Chances are most of these fashionistas have been nowhere near the club in years. Sure, they may have stepped by to pay their respects at the Joey Ramone shrine, but there have been few musical reasons for this lot to go anywhere near CBGBs over the last few years.

To be honest, the venue is no longer the place nostalgia suggests it once was. The musical form has changed significantly. What was home away from home for the city's punk pioneers and musical mavericks back in the day has become a breeding ground for stodgy emo- rockers and down-at-heel hardcore dullards. Even hardened Bowery bums couldn't be bothered hassling that lot for change at throwing-out time.

But the club's in the news and this is what has probably provoked the current interest in all things CBGB. Club owner Hilly Kristal has been in dispute with his landlord for the last five years over rent and lease issues.

The current lease expired at the end of August and the landlord (the Bowery Residents Committee, a nonprofit outreach agency working with the home- less) does not wish to renew it and intends to start eviction proceedings to oust Kristal. Because there are lawyers involved, this will take time so, in the meantime, the doors are still open and the bands are still playing.

When Kristal arrived on the Lower East Side in late 1973, most people thought he was plain crazy. Located under a flophouse in a part of town which was as hellish as they came back then, CBGBs should not have worked.

But when a host of punk rock kids who couldn't get a gig anywhere else shuffled into his office one afternoon, Kristal's plans to promote country and bluegrass gigs were long- fingered.

CBGBs was where Talking Heads, The Ramones, Television and Blondie cut their teeth. Many, many other NYC bands came downtown with sneers and snarls, but those four are the marquee names which everyone associates with the club and its golden age during the mid-to-late 1970s.

Look through the pages of CBGB and OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Rock, a just-published coffee- table photo book on the club, and it's faces like Debbie Harry, Joey Ramone and David Byrne that stand out. They were - and still are - the club's trump cards.

As the years went by, the quality dipped. There were still some mighty shows (I remember seeing Bad Brains blow the house down in the early '90s), but there were also some duds (I also remember seeing Slowdive play there a few nights later). While every new city band of note played the venue, they did so because it was on the circuit. There were plenty of other venues cropping up in the city which new scenes gravitated towards and CBGBs became a punk Hard Rock Café, albeit one with the skankiest toilets imaginable.

Naturally Kristal has been working the club's heritage like a pro in the current row with the Bowery Residents Committee. The mayor's office has been roped in to make some sympathetic noises, various rallies have been called to rouse the rabbles and Kristal has been shouting about moving the club to Las Vegas. Yet despite fund- raisers featuring Ric Ocasek from The Cars, Kristal can only stall the inevitable for a few months at best. Barring a miracle, the game is up.

Of course, Kristal could open for business somewhere else, but even he must realise that it just wouldn't be the same. A venue is only as good as the bands who grace its stage and the current crew of CBGBs regulars just don't have the same excitement or verve as those acts who went before them.

No matter what happens, though, T-shirt sales should continue to be healthy.