Our favorite chef/author/world traveler has an essay about the 1977 music scene in the latest issue of Spin. It’s also available online.
The music and the musicians who started playing and hanging out with each other at CBGB were an appropriate reaction to the general feelings of hopelessness, absurdity, futility, and disgust of living in New York at the time. The irradiated spawn of tormented loners who had grown up listening to the Stooges and the Velvets, wannabe poets, failed romantics — anyone with enough enthusiasm or anger to pick up a guitar, it seemed, converged on the only place that would have them. And briefly (and only for a lucky few), music was good again.
More of the 1977 content from Spin here. I’ve not read every article, but I think they didn’t mention that I was born that year. Lame.
Yeah, saw this and thought it was awesome. A great, humorous write-up. Actually a good issue of the magazine. A few albums in the punk list I don’t yet own. But will…
Fact: Bourdain’s a poser.
Also, from New Jersey.