I first went to CBGB's in the summer of 1978, an MC5 album which I'd overpaid for at Bleecker Bob's tucked under my arm. Chris Frantz, who played drums with the Talking Heads, eyeballed the record jacket and struck up a conversation. Joey Ramone lurked nearby. A band called The Erasers blew piercing shrills through silver whistles and flung nervous riffs from the top of the stage.
Marc Bell had just left Richard Hell's band to reinvent himself as Marky Ramone, sprawled on the floor inside the club's wooden phone booth. A humid discharge oozed from the Bowery. Everything smelled like urine and stale beer. "CBGB's was a dump. No doors on the toilets, and the dog that lived there shit all over the place," recalls Marky on a Saratoga night a lifetime away from the city that no longer exists.
"The only good thing about CB's was the sound system. You could sit and watch all these groups that were eventually changing music, like Blondie. It was our home. But I always made sure I knew where the exit was."
I am 17 years old. It's Saturday night and the only sign of life in the sleepy East River Queens neighborhood is a restless flicker across living room windows fronting rows of identical brick two-family homes. Weary men in sleeveless undershirts watch Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. New York City is broke, there is trash is piled up in the streets, and some whack job is going around shooting people in their cars because his neighbor's dog told him to do so.
"New York in the 1970s: there were homeless people all over the streets, and garbage strikes," Marky says. "I lived in a cold-water flat. No hot water. And the tub was in the kitchen. The only thing you could get was cigarettes and beer. That's how we lived- Avenue A and 9th Street. It was pretty rough. One night I'm in CBGB's, at the bar, and Dee Dee comes over and goes, 'Hey, Marky. You wanna join the Ramones?'"
-- excerpt from the book, "Saratoga Stories: Magic and Loss," by Thomas Dimopoulos. (June/2015)
