Eat The Press

Life Imitates Art: CBGB's Closes, SNL Spoofs It With Eerie Prescience

NYT |  YouTube |  Posted Monday October 16, 2006 at 12:47 PM

There's no question it's an end of an era: CBGB's closed last night, incredibly, with a farewell concert featuring old-school mainstay Patti Smith, who bemoaned the club's closing, saying "It's a symptom of the empty new prosperity of our city." She gestured toward the club. "Used to be able to go from here to here and you'd meet five poets." Actually, she didn't, but that's how spot-on SNL's "New York Stories: CBGB's" was last week. In a sketch featuring Amy Poehler as Smith and the usually-mugging Fred Armisen playing it straight as Lou Reed, the lines between reality and farce blurred a bit (especially since you sort of agreed with them, man). This line was of particular note in the spoof: "It's the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out!" Except that actually that line wasn't in the spoof, but came from a fan outside the club last night, and is quoted in the same NYT article linked above. As for "God loves CBGB's" — that one's from ex-voidoid (and current BlackBook scribe) Richard Hell here, though you can sorta hear it coming as the kicker to this line, spoken in front of the club with an air of disgust: "You know what rock and roll even is? It's not on your iPod. It's right there."* That one's from Lou Reed. The fake one.

Either way, the SNL spoof seems to say a lot more about the prevailing spirit of CBGB's than this: "Punk-rock never promised that it was built to last. The songs always seemed ready to self-destruct; simple and brief, they were often just three chords and a burst of frustration or pugnacity or humor." Neither the fake nor the real Smith is quoted saying "pugnacity."

CBGB Brings Down the Curtain With Nostalgia and One Last Night of Rock [NYT]
Rock N' Roll High School [NYT]
End of a Punk-Rock Institution Whose Attitude Won't Die [NYT]
New York Stories: CBGB'S [SNL]

*For a quote about the iPod that seems to prove fake-Lou Reed's point, look to Steve Jobs with one of the more ridiculous, uncomfortable analogies ever to appear in Newsweek (see bottom of page).