Punk rock

Opening Night At CBGB

Recovering my lost amplifier

Chad Davis from Minneapolis, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Few musical venues boast the history and cachet of CBGB’s on the Bowery in New York City. Its birth and inception marks a significant cultural moment for punks worldwide.

I am not a “punk” (in musical terms anyway), and never was. So, how did it happen that I attended the very first performances at CB’s on the very night it opened? It was all a coincidence that had me witness a piece of musical history. I’m sure there are armies of fans who wish they could make the same claim.

I spent most of 1973 on the road with a Holiday/Ramada Inn-type show band playing places like Pittsburgh, Terre Haute, Ft. Pierce (Florida), Rochester, Burlington, and Richmond — usually six days at a time. While we were almost fully booked, there were a few weeks we didn’t work — enough that I decided to rent a room for $15/week from a friend who was the superintendent of a building under the Brooklyn Bridge. Crashing with mom wasn’t making it on the off weeks, and the $60/month was worth the expenditure for peace of mind.

Josh (the super) was a fledgling bass player who’d just purchased a Fender Precision and was getting pretty decent on it. As the owner of three different amplifiers, it didn’t make sense for me (nor did I have room in the car) to tote all three around from city to city. I left one in Josh’s care so he’d have an amp to practice with.

By December, I was through with the band and quit to pursue greener pastures in the big city. Upon returning to my crib under the bridge, I discovered that Josh had lent my Sears Silvertone to some guy he barely knew and wasn’t clear about his or my amp's whereabouts.

Sensing my anger at his irresponsibility (ancient guitar players understand that a Sears Silvertone, though a shitty amp, had a great sound for rock and roll guitar), Josh chased down my property and within a day or two announced, “Your amp will be playing a gig at a new club on the Bowery tomorrow night. We’ll go, and you can reclaim it.” And that club on the Bowery was CBGB on its opening night!

I’d like to tell y’all that it was an epiphany equaling the occasion that dad took my brother and me to the Apollo to see James Brown when I was 8 years old. Hardly! There were three bands. None impressed me.

The first was a bluegrass group whose guitar player had my amp. I let him play his show and then hauled my equipment off the stage without too much of a problem. I have no recollection of their sound. We stayed to see the next two bands once I had stashed the amp in my car trunk.

Band #2 was TELEVISION, who gained a cult following over the years. Similarly, I remember nothing about them.

But I do remember the third act! Three girls (one of whom turned out to be Debby Harry) sang “The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” extremely poorly while a three-piece band (drums, bass, guitar), none of whom knew anything about playing the genre, attempted to back them.

The highlight of their show came courtesy of the guitar player whose amp kept cutting out, causing him to punt the fucker in frustration. Finally, on the last kick, the amp fell off the stage and caught fire—best moment of the show by far.

Anyway, there was no way in the world I thought I’d just witnessed a historic moment. And with just a rare exception, the entire punk rock revolution escaped me. (I liked “My Sharona.”) As I told one of my neighbors about the phenomenon, “Punk rockers are trying to make up for lack of expertise on their instruments with ear-crushing volume.”

The problem was that I moved into the neighborhood at age 24, having already spent a year on the road being the only chord instrument in a show band that played a lot of jazz. I wanted to be an all-around player and reader. Going punk rock would have been completely against that ethos.

I’m sure many music fans would say, “If only I’d been there! It’s so cool you went to CB’s on the first night it opened!” But Alas, I was never part of the East Village punk rock scene. The entire deal was wasted on me.