timmmmmmmmmmmmmmay!!!!!

CBGB’S shuts down this weekend.

There’s not too much left to say about the character of the joint. It’s the most famous rock ’n’ roll club in the world, the most famous that there ever has been, and it’s just as famously a horrendous dump. It’s the archetypal, the ur, dim and dirty, loud, smelly and ugly nowhere little rock ’n’ roll club. There’s one not much different from it in every burg in the country.

Only, like a lot of New York, CBGB’s is more so, way more so. And of course, for three or four years in the mid-70’s, it housed the most influential cluster of bands ever to grow up — or to implicitly reject the concept of growing up — under one roof.

On practically any weekend from 1974 to 76 you…