My Ode to Hilly Kristal

Hilly Kristal, who died yesterday, would stand sort of by the door at CBGBs, lingering back behind a desk, just watching over the club, the scene that he'd created. Every time I was there, he was there, or it just seemed that way...never said much but ala Andy Warhol, his aura just made things happen. Benign neglect? Happenstance turned business plan? Whatever the case, I'll say that he deserved every accolade he's gotten and is going to get; CBGBs deserved every laud ever paid to its influence and its place in the New York - the world's - rock and roll history.

It was mythical already by the time I started going in Sept 1982. As a Columbia freshman from a few hours away suburb, broke or at least on tight budgets, I'd subway down. The first time, a crew of us, with only a vague idea of where it was and what the city grid was like, took the wrong train and ended up threading our way there, grumbling but excited. The area was seedy, dirty, and so was, famously, CBs. The Bowery was empty, a bar or restaurant here or there but nothing and no one else save legions of old-fashioned winos from the missions.

Typically, the nights were late - the band you usually were there to see went on around 2am, and the clubs haphazard booking policy mostly meant nothing good to see until then. But you could stay for hours just by paying the 6 or 8 dollars it cost to get in, or nurse a cold beer along the long, scarred bar, sitting on a stool behind kind of a wooden corral. Then, after, an hours long trek home on graffiti-filled freak-show subway trains, running intermittently in the dead of the night.

Back then, it seemed like there were only a couple of clubs that all the good bands (the ones Christgau "Picked" in his Choices) played at, but primarily it was CBGB. In this rush, here's what I can remember: 10,000 Maniacs, Del Fuegos, Butthole Surfers, Replacements, Meat Puppets, Camper Van Beethoven, Didjits, Flaming Lips, some benefit with Wayne Kramer and Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Yo La Tengo..dozens more headliners and hundreds more openers. It was often packed to the rafters, but more than once I remember being there at say 3am with three or four others in the room.

Alas, once more band-friendly clubs opened in the early 90s, the bookings went down hill fast, and they were never very consistent in the first place. My last hurrah was just perfect: a set by the Avengers last year during the run up to CBs closing. Hot, sweaty, packed, loud, dirty...and late. I'd already said goodbye to CBGB, but now, sadly, it's time to say goodbye to Hilly Kristal.