CBGB

The Oral History of NYC's Metal/Hardcore Crossover

Excerpted from the book Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, published by It Books and available May 14 New York is a music mecca—the Brill Building, Broadway, street performers, subway buskers, the Metropolitan opera—but it's not known for its abundance of successful ... More >>

Nada Surf Celebrate 20 Years With NYC Sold Out Homecoming

If you can pay rent with the money you make doing what you love, you're lucky as hell--and this isn't lost on the guys of Nada Surf, who are celebrating the two loud and fast decades they've spent together making that dream a reality. "We really love playing together," says lead singer Matthew Caws, ... More >>

Q&A: Milk'n'Cookies' Justin Strauss On The Band's History, The Powerpop Revival, And This Weekend's Reunion Show

The collector-scum world can get disturbingly insular, curtains-drawn creepy, and far removed from, you know, fun. Which is why Jeremy Thompson's label Sing Sing Records and his brand-new book, Wired UP! Glam, Proto Punk and Bubblegum European Picture Sleeves 1970 - 1976, are a welcome blast of Pop ... More >>

Live: Mamma Mia! Superchunk Bring The Heat To Times Square

Superchunk, Duff McKagan's Loaded, Upper West, Zulu Wave Times Square Saturday, July 7 Better than: The matinee showing of Sister Act. Originally slated to play a headlining gig at Beekman Beer Garden as part of the CBGB Festival, word went out early last week that Superchunk instead would play ... More >>

Live: Guided By Voices Give A History Lesson At Central Park

Guided By Voices w/The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Cloud Nothings Central Park Saturday, July 7 Better than: Sobriety in the sweltering heat. It's hard to place a band like Cloud Nothings. A group whose recent reputation brings them somewhere between saviors of guitar rock and late '90s emo revi ... More >>

How To Enjoy An Outdoor Concert On A Potentially 100-Degree Day Without Dying Of Heatstroke Or Sunburn

Tomorrow is a big day for outdoor live music in New York City! The CBGB Festival is throwing a free show in Times Square with Superchunk, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Hold Steady, and Seattle Weekly columnist Duff McKagan's Loaded; it's also sponsoring the SummerStage show at Central Park with Guid ... More >>

Q&A: Calvin Johnson Of The Hive Dwellers On Running K Records, Beat Happening, And How He's Always Wanted To Play Staten Island

Calvin Johnson is one forward-looking dude. He brought strict punk rock ethos and DIY aesthetics—supporting community, contributing to 'zines, booking shows—to underground rock, and played an integral role in revolutionizing it. Johnson's K Records (which he launched in the early '80s) w ... More >>

THE UNDERGROUND

Explore the early works of Amos Poe

Watch A 37-Year-Old Clip Of The Ramones At CBGB

​Via SOTC pal Will Hermes—whose new book about New York's music scene from 1973 to 1977, Love Goes To Buildings On Fire, comes out next week—here's a clip of the Ramones playing at CBGB sometime during the summer of 1974. (Hermes' blog has a ton of other archival footage from the p ... More >>

Jimmy Webb, Trash and Vaudeville Buyer, Speaks About the Old Neighborhood

Esther Zuckerman​Jimmy Webb leads us out of Trash and Vaudeville -- the famed St. Mark's store where he works as buyer and manager -- to a spot across the street. Over the buildings he points to a white wall that has the word "Muerte" written in block letters at its top. That's where there use ... More >>

The Ten Best Musician/Comic Artist Friendships

Grant Morrison in the video for My Chemical Romance's "Sing" Grant Morrison is a U.K. comic book writer known for known for highly singular--or insane, if you prefer, in a good way--takes on established mainstream properties like X-Men and Doom Patrol as well as his own, peyotesque original series ... More >>

Blank City: A Self-Defeating User-Friendly Primer on the 'No Wave' Science

The 10 Best NYC Clubs of All Time

​1) Studio 54. The be-all and end-all of '70s glitz and hedonism. A crazy salad populated with the bad and the beautiful. 2) Mudd Club. The anti-54, this divey new wave hangout on a side street in downtown's then-wasteland bred skinny ties, attitude, and sheer brilliance. 3) Area. A gigantic ... More >>

Live: Tom Tom Club Do Their Pee-Wee's Playhouse Thing At Irving Plaza

Try and guess the DJ's name. Pics by Rob, more below.​Tom Tom Club/Matthew Dear Irving Plaza Wednesday, January 12 Better than: A Heads reunion. Tina Weymouth: "A lot of you are too young to know this show, but it feels like Romper Room. "Chris Frantz: "This song is about all the cute little ... More >>

Q&A: White Zombie's Sean Yseult On The Band's Early Lower East Side Days: "It Was The '80s, And We Hated Everything"

​White Zombie had rules. One: no solo albums under their own names. So Sean Yseult -- the bassist in the NYC punk-metal monolith, led by growling frontman Rob Zombie, that slowly evolved from mid-'80s CBGBs punks to the '90s alterna-metal titans of "Thunder Kiss '65" and "More Human Than Human ... More >>

Week in Review: Weezy Freed

Welcome to my life, Weezy.​So Lil Wayne is finally a free man. Perhaps a lonely free man, but a free man nonetheless. It's been a hell of a two weeks for the law around here, in all honesty. After last week's barrage of club closings, this week brought news of yet more: 171 Lombardy was raided ... More >>

Someone Finally Cleaned the Silent Barn Bathroom

Would you use this bathroom? Photo via Viceland Today​After CBGB's unspeakably vile bathroom went the way of the rest of the erstwhile punk venue, the truly immortally foul New York rock bathrooms mostly moved east, across the river, taking up unfortunate new residence in Williamsburg's myriad ... More >>

Live: Yelawolf Celebrates His Fader Cover With A Motley Crew Of Friends In CBGB's Basement

He makes friends everywhere he goes. Pics by Puja, more below.​Yelawolf EP Monday, October 11 Last night's brief hailstorm and miserable downpours wasn't enough to keep Yelawolf fans away from The Fader's issue-release party underneath the old CBGBs. The open bar helped, too.

Murder City Devils+Silverghost

Announcing the First Annual "Worst Band Name In New York Award"

When this isn't the cover of your single, but something that reasonably comes up in a Google Image Search for your band name, there is a problem. As much as we love local music, New York bands have a long, inglorious history of naming themselves totally stupid shit--romanticize the glory days of CB ... More >>

Week in Review: He Did? I Love It!

Happy birthday, clowns. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne​In the week James Murphy finally squashed his beef with our own Michael Musto, we watched as another journalist-on-artist feud--M.I.A. vs. Lynn Hirschberg, who else?--heated up, adding an album cover, a response to a response to a response to a r ... More >>

Week in Review: We Are A Viking Raiding Party of Good Will and Intention

These Are Powers, Secret Project Robot, Confetti. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne​In the week that everybody finally went outside for the summer, we hung out on a few rooftops ourselves. Twin Sister? Rooftop. The SFNY party? Rooftop. Good Co.? BBQ, outdoors, ground floor. So yeah. The rain drove us in ... More >>

Agnostic Front's Victim in Pain at 25

A crucial 15-minute NYC hardcore origin story gets canonized at last

Jazz Consumer Guide: Loosening (or Tightening) Up

Or slicing, or muscling—anything but letting up, really

Week in Review: Pajamas Are Pussified

Kylie! Photo by Santiago Felipe.​In the week a tiny little boy named Falcon first captured America's heart and then threw up on that heart on live television and even rhymed about doing so in song, we swam feebly in the ocean of headlines involving both Michael Jackson and Paul Anka, DJ AM and ... More >>

'Naked!' at Paul Kasmin; Jessica Dickinson's 'Here'; 'Looking at Music: Side 2' at MOMA

News Roundup: Jay Z, Pearl Jam, Ryan Adams

​--Jay Z, who released a new track with Drake yesterday, is expected to announce today that he will play Madison Square Garden on September 11th, the day Blueprint 3 is scheduled to come out. The show will benefit the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund, created in 198 ... More >>

Week in Review: There's Only One Viable Avant-Garde Art Form Nowadays, And It's Called Indie Rock

Sam Horine​In the week a Brooklyn indie-rock band either did or didn't kick a puppy in Prospect Park (sweat-soaked August news cycle, we see you), we amused ourselves making Rick Ross "Yo Mamma" jokes and watching rap panic take New York as 50 Cent did, and then didn't, shoot your grandmother. ... More >>

Week in Review: I Have a Blog, This is What Happens.

Rebecca SmeyneThese Are Powers' Pat getting his temperature taken in China​ In the week leading up to All Points Wet (har har), vandals insulted the word "gay" in describing Coldplay, we came up with suggestions for a Beastie Boys tribute on Friday at All Points West, and there were plenty of ... More >>

Remembering the Good Old Days at CBGB with Pig Destroyer

The now departed rock club CBGB has come in for some abuse around these quarters, it being mostly a repository for evermore decrepit punk nostalgia and incredible family/scene infighting of a remarkably bitter nature--plus the fact that half the club's bookings after like 1988 were battle-of-the-b ... More >>

Tonight! Jonathan Richman Dances in the Lesbian Bar Once More

The prophecies of a teenage Jonathan Richman, drawn in 1967. Jonathan Richman's first group, the Modern Lovers, distilled the early hipster scene at CBGB down to punk. But throughout his subsequent solo career, he's favored acoustic instrumentation over sonic assault, and his songwriting has borr ... More >>

Week in Review: "I Am the Best Filmmaker in the World."

Nate "Igor" SmithFun times at Roxy Cottontail's party. This is what Zach's birthday dinner looked like too. In the week that both Zach and Roxy Cottontail celebrated their birthdays, Rob posted a great moment in Wu-based subway-ad vandalism that became a whole shitload of peoples' Facebook profile ... More >>

Gleefully Violent Hardcore Nostalgia Reigns at the A7 Reunion

Old NYC scenesters go back to the shoebox

TALL ORDER

Remembering a nightlife legend

Out of Step, Out of Time

Black Flag, white guilt, blood-red noses collide in self-congratulatory American Hardcore

1973

Saved?

CBGB's landmark fight; East Village freaks, live and on film

Music

Music

Music

Wanna Buy a Used Bridge?

U.K. and NYC post-punk and no wave revisited, selectively

Listings

Listings

Music

Casualties of Global War

Letters

Wanna Love It, But I'm Getting Blown Away

Sharks and Jets

R.O.C.K. in the USA

Hell Is Other Bands