CBGB's

Smells take you back better than any other sense... like the smell of Little Tree™ Auto Freshner and Decomposing Camaro Naugahyde they zap you right back to a time and a place. Whatever that stuff is they use to assemble guitar cases... we all know the smell. How about that first time you open a new guitar in it's case, and smell that 'New Guitar' smell. The other end of the spectrum is my memories of CBGB's... on the lower east side of New York City... yeh, I would love to have said I was there moshing in front of the small stage at 1am on a Saturday night, sometime back in 1978... some punker (and puker) girlfriend next to me, with pink hair... sloshed out of her mind... but actually I happened in there at 12 midday, on a weekday. They were apparently cleaning up from the previous nights small disaster, and I (being cocky) wandered right in. Nobody was around, apart from the usual indications of odd little noises from a back room, alerting me that someone was somewhere, just not there (where I was). The place was TINY.. about one old-fashioned New York deli wide, and about as far back. Lots of beat up wood, and carpet that lacked all the distinguishing points to still be called carpet... but the smell....wow... sort of like wet mattress, beer and wet wood...and that stage that gave birth to so many great bands... long live CBGB's.....!