CBGB the Comic Book: Exploiting the Corpse of a Punk Rock Mecca
A panel from this unreleased comic book series proclaims that CBGB “isn’t some stupid slogan on a t-shirt” however sadly the now owners of the brand have turned it into that. Once upon a time in the 70s CBGB was the club on the lower east side of New York City where punk rock really started (ha ha not England). Yet sadly a few years ago their rents went up, and by 2006 they closed their doors and then about a year later the owner Hilly Kristal died. Since then the brand has been turned into a cartoon and put onto anything, which now includes a comic book. This isn’t a shock as we live in a world of capitalism but punk rock should stand for the sprit of do it yourself, and this soon to be schlocked out comic misses the point entirely: Read more…
Looking at this clip of Guitar Hero 5 on the surface it feels so wrong: Nirvana was really about punk at heart — a do-it-yourself ethos that rejected commercialism. But sadly I know that’s a lie because the genius of Kurt Cobain was mixing punk with pop music. And that ability to bring the Sex Pistols into the shopping malls of America in the 90s was a sort of wonderful magic moment which for a few minutes made mainstream entertainment a little bit more entertaining.