CBGB: History and Key Facts

CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal and his ex-wife Karen Kristal at 315 Bowery in the East Village in Manhattan, New York City. The club was previously a biker bar and before that it was a dive bar. The letters CBGB were for Country, Bluegrass, Blues, Kristal's original vision for the club, but CBGB soon emerged as a famed and iconic venue for punk rock and new wave bands, including Poly Styrene and the X-Ray Spex, Ramones, Dead Boys, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Patti Smith Group, Blondie, and Talking Heads. The club has been identified in academic scholarship as a linchpin of early American punk culture. Histories of punk have positioned CBGB as the venue at which the genre took root in New York before its transatlantic spread to the United Kingdom.

Other bands affiliated with CBGB included Agnostic Front, Murphy's Law, U.S. Chaos, Cro-Mags, Warzone, Gorilla Biscuits, Sick of It All, and Youth of Today.

One storefront beside CBGB became the "CBGB Record Canteen", a record shop and café. In the late 1980s, "CBGB Record Canteen" was converted into an art gallery and second performance space, "CB's 313 Gallery". CB's Gallery was played by music artists of milder sounds, such as acoustic rock, folk, jazz, or experimental music, such as Dadadah, Kristeen Young, Medeski Martin & Wood and Toshi Reagon, while CBGB continued to showcase mainly hardcore punk, post punk, metal, and alternative rock.

313 Gallery was also the host location for Alchemy, a weekly Goth night showcasing goth, industrial, dark rock, and darkwave bands. On the other side, CBGB was operating a small cafe and bar in the mid-1990s, which served classic New York pizza, among other items.

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