Larry Kirwan: Goodbye CBGB's

[Black '47]

There we are. Three fists in front. Singing every word with Larry. Killing Crown like it's going out of style. Enjoying every minute. I just found this picture on Black '47s flickr page and it brought back a ton of great memories from that night. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever come back from a Black '47 show without a story or twelve. We would later talk to him, get some CDs signed and, more than likely, annoy him to no end by telling him how much his music means to us. Thanks for putting up with us, Larry. We can't wait until you come back through...

GOODBYE CBGB'S by Larry Kirwan
"As is often the case at events on the Lower East Side, the first person I ran into was Shane Doyle, founder of Sin E. But I was looking for someone else. It took a lukewarm bottle of beer before I realized just who - myself, or rather a younger version thereof. I had loved playing CBs: the stage, the lights, the sound, and always the promise of many other things after the gig. There was a glamour to this kip, a seedy magnificence. To strut the boards of CBs meant that you had arrived. You might go no further but you had crossed a certain threshold, and that was something in and of itself. Oddly enough, I was one of the few banned from playing the place - for being too 'demonic.' But that's a whole other story and no ban lasted long in CBs.

"Though I hadn't been in the club for years, nothing had changed; I could have walked through it blindfolded and still found my way downstairs to my favored urinal. Hilly had originally lit the place with beer signs and there they glowed above the bar in their dingy glory. Pabst had even gone out of business and returned to hipster favor since Hilly first hung the Blue Ribbon shingle. And now I was glad for this dimness because as figures slouched past I could see them as they had been twenty-five, even thirty years previously; then, when they squinted in at me, I caught them as they look now, more lines, less hair, often wiser but with dreams still undiminished. People, who I even remembered not liking, threw their arms around me; all the little tribal rivalries forgotten or charitably laid to rest. Ladies that I'd had crushes on paraded by in violently hennaed hair, heels and tight leather skirts, young men in tow - boy-toys, I surmised, until introduced to their sons. And here we were, a reunited family, dysfunctional as ever, eyeing each other cautiously, but basking in the glow of the amazing music that had been created within these postered, stickered, dust-encrusted, stone-deaf walls."
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