Long time no see...

Ok, yes, it's been a long while since I posted anything on this blog. To be honest, I started a new job that keeps me busier than f**k. But more to the point I've been really fucking disappointed in NYC lately. We seem to be a City intent on destroying itself by systematically denuding ourselves of any character, guts and edge we once had. These were the qualities that appealed to me and not least among the reasons for my leaving my safe little North Cackalacky home. The words sanitized, gentrified and strip mall come to mind to me now as the perfect descriptions of NYC. Just look at what's happening with CBGBs. I spoke to someone about this last year before there were real rumblings about the possibility of it closing. I had read that their lease was up in the summer of 2005 and I was worried shitless. A friend of mine who played there regularly in the 70s and beyond tried to assure me that CBs would never close. Well, guess what? He was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Are we as a City willing to turn our heads and avert our eyes to the possibility of an icon disappearing? The writer David McCollough has said "History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are." Are we willing to forget? To allow landmarks of a seminal time in NYC, in fact, in many ways the thing that still embodies the spirit that this City once embraced; the idea that you could do anything and be anyone you wanted, are we really willing to let that die?...CBs closing is not just about a building or a club that perhaps no longer attracts a crowd or future big-name bands, it's about the ideals that it represented - that some schmucks from Queens in leather jackets and bowl hair cuts could be one of the most influential bands of our time and only came into our consciousness because of a guy who was willing to give them a chance as the house band at his then-struggling club, that an era could be defined by people not willing to roll over for Disco or get scared away because of a few Bowery bums. DIY is dead or at least gasping for its last breath...