Sunday 8 July 2012

CBGB Festival at Central Park Summerstage, 7th July 2012 - featuring Guided By Voices, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, The War On Drugs and Cloud Nothings

by Carrie Quartly

6 years ago legendary Bowery rock club CBGB closed it's doors due to rent disputes and other legal entanglements after over 30 years on the scene as a breeding place of punk. As is well documented, The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television and many others cut their teeth on it's dirty, graffiti covered stage. 

All negotiations, campaigns, benefit concerts and the rally at Washington Square Park organised by a few frustrated artists failed to save the club, and it seemed that founder Hilly Kristal not only succumbed to complications from lung cancer at the time of his death, but also of a broken heart. Since clothing designer John Varvatos took over the lease in 2007, the original CBs site has transformed into a soulless menswear boutique, with only half-hearted attempts to preserve the temple of punk's past glories (some graffiti remains on the walls next to a few trendy album sleeves).
Gentrification and commercialisation continue to claim New York's former legacies, and increasingly it has become a home for the cloistered rich who sneer at noisy, downmarket establishments like CBGB, which played a fundamental role in shaping the character and soul of the city and making it a sought after place to live to begin with.

Now investors are reviving the name, launching a festival and eventually hope to reopen a club in a new location (a move Kristal also spoke of in desperation during the final days of battle with the building's landlords).

So the first inaugural CBGB Festival kicked off last Thursday and concluded Saturday in the scorching NYC summer heat with the damp, fetid air rippling like a steam room full of sweaty gym patrons.

The festival featured 300 bands (including appearances from scene veterans Cheetah Chrome, Tuff Darts, Tommy Ramone and Glen Matlock) and 30 different venues across the city, large and small. In addition to music events, there were film screenings and a whiskey festival offering ticket holders the chance to sample the best artisan spirits from a number of up and coming small distilleries. The full lineup and schedule can be viewed here

As the struggle between artist and capitalist rages on, responses to these plans have been mixed, with lots of people outspokenly bemoaning the sanitised greed of a venture that would have "Hilly turning in his grave". Others, including Hilly's daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, who oversaw the buyout, are relieved to see the name live on. The intentions of the investors in their own words: “We’re never going to recreate that moment in time. We’re trying to continue the idea of supporting live music, making a lot of noise and being a part of New York City. The festival is one way we can do it. Eventually the club will be another way we can do it.”

Regardless of politics or how Hilly ran the original CBGB, with the numerous safety violations and the smell of puke omnipresent, the spirit of the place and the power of the music is undeniable, and something the city needs today more than ever.

Saturday's free Summerstage concert featured prolific low budget production indie gods Guided By Voices, New York's own The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Cloud Nothings (who were the first band to receive the 'best new music' award accolade on Pitchfork), and the droned out Americana of Philadelphia, PA's The War On Drugs.

The bands seemed scheduled in order of expectation, and Cloud Nothings took the stage at 3:00, opening with "Stay Useless", a full-throttle yet catchy summer anthem in the same indie pop punk tradition as Superchunk. Dylan Baldi's raspy voice and quick riffing is full of youthful angst and conviction which makes the song instantly likeable and identifiable. What came after was a lot of protracted guitar squall wig outs offset by controlled bursts of emotionally charged growls from Baldi, as they played "Fall In" and the epic "Wasted Days" from impressive latest album Attack On Memory. An amplifier couldn't cope with the heat and blew up which extended the aimless noise jam a little more while the crew scurried to find a replacement. Ultimately the set's pacing would have benefited from adding a few of the more direct and charming pop songs from their earlier albums to show off their instinctive melodic skills, and I just couldn't help but feel they seemed infinitely more comfortable performing "Stay Useless" than any of the songs that followed. Drummer Jayson Gerycz also stole the show with his manic attack style drumming which was highly entertaining to watch.

The War On Drugs were on at 3:50 and shone briefly with "Baby Missiles", singer Adam Granduciel stretching his nasal Dylan-esque tenor as far as it would go against the quivery, feel good keyboard line, but they suffered from a lack of variation and played somewhat meandering psychedelic grooves after more equipment failure kept us waiting, which was frustrating and increased the overall flatness of the performance. In many ways, the stifling temperature became the focus of the event, with constantly malfunctioning gear and Granduciel complaining inbetween songs about a 4th of July sunburn which was like he "dipped his legs in red paint" and how he spent the 5th recovering by "smoking weed all day and putting aloe on his legs".

Next up were The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, and they lifted the atmosphere with an earnest and energised performance of short songs with a brightly jangling melodic punch. Frontman Kip Berman proclaimed "Not a dry band member allowed on stage!" before they sweated through "Come Saturday", enhanced by keyboardist Peggy Wang's subtle, sugar-coated harmonies and the swooning "ooh-ooh-ooooh" making it the perfect pop singalong , a triumphant "This Love Is Fucking Right!", "Heaven's Gonna Happen Now", "Heart In Your Heartbreak", The Body", "My Terrible Friend", "Young Adult Fiction" and the b-side to their second single and namesake tune "The Pains of Being Pure At Heart", featuring the anthemic chant of "We will never die, no, we will never die", and Kip's wispy, fragile vocals melting nicely along with the sparkling guitars. They just seemed much more alive, capable and with it than the previous two bands, and it was a more than admirable effort considering the extreme heat and resultant technical problems.


GBV strode onto the stage at around 6:00 to rapturous applause, classic early lineup guitarist Mitch Mitchell embodying nonchalant rock star cool with a cigarette perpetually dangling from the corner of his mouth. Robert Pollard was obviously a little lubricated, not enough to be incoherent and sloppy, but rather the precise amount for a loose-limbed swagger and confident bravado as he twirled the microphone cable and scissor kicked his way through the set, his right leg tapping along like a jackhammer the entire time. Now in his mid fifties, it seemed Pollard was happily savouring his cult hero status, and there was very little to trouble him (not even the 100°F heat) as he informed the crowd, "We were showing people how it's done in the 90's and we had to come back to show people how it's done again today." Most of his other stage banter involved celebrating beer and other controlled substances, quoting Benjamin Franklin ("Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.") and pondering why you're told not to take the brown acid ("They just want to keep you away from the good shit."). The set was mainly focused on newer material from Let's Go Eat the Factory and Class Clown Spots a UFO, which wasn't as immediately gratifying as some of the old gems they tossed in ("Game of Pricks", "I Am a Scientist", "Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory", and "Echoes Myron"), but they played really well so there's not much to gripe about. Robert Pollard was like a king entertaining his loyal indie fan subjects, and he knew it - all hail the king!

And so the four day celebration of some of the best bands and clubs NYC has to offer under the newly resurrected CBGB banner closed out with a bang which would probably have made Hilly Kristal very proud indeed.




 

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