IN THE END, it was all about the music. Before the T-shirt became ubiqitous, before the tourists got the nerve to step foot on the Bowery, even before acoustic sets at CB's Gallery , there was this new music being played -- street-smart, ballsy, striving, fearless. The Ramones, Dead Boys, Dictators, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, Television, Heartbreakers, Richard Hell & the Voidoids were only a few of the bands to make their mark at the small, dingy club before embarking on something close to worldwide domination, sowing the seeds of a genre that, if anything, is growing in influence and showing few signs of slowing down, even as the trailblazing progenitors die out or fade away.
So R.I.P. CBGBs, and here's to all the punks old and young who made it happen and kept it alive. Joey, Johnny & Dee Dee, Stiv, Bob Quine, Johnny Thunders... you can rest a little easier tonight. You did all you could to make music a little more real, a little more dangerous, a little more like New York itself -- wholly, undeniably original, and unapologetically authentic.
End of a Punk-Rock Inst
itution Whose Attitude Won't 
Die
Read
CBGB Closes
Doors shut
This must have been the place
The closing of CBGB marks the end
of New York's musical century
Daily News story
Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
By RICHARD HELL
New York TimesCLOSING TIME
James Wolcott
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