Major music movements have escaped me. I missed Brooklyn and the skinny jeans shaggy haired new wave. I’m not old enough to remember the hay day of the actual CBGB’s and its’ piss filled ambiance that spawned some of the greatest rock bands in America. Low lit black boxes that often act like Petri dishes of creativity.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on SummerStage in Central Park during the 2012 CBGB Music Festival.

I couldn’t help stop and have a silent moment in front of John Varvatos, as I went to the Bowery Electric – to watch a svelte black kid in tie-dye shorts screech about “Getting High” (Mykke Blanco). The store has now taken over the Morison Hotel: the rock gallery once next door.In Times Square, under the Mamma Mia sigh – Rockers play two stages, there’s the prerequisite food trucks, token shitless women; boobs out flaying in the wind, shirtless young men and wide eyed tourist. But the festival is a casualty of the heat as people watch a set and run to the air conditioning of the M&M store.

Times Square might not be cut out for a music festival, but Manhattan desperately needs one.

I still have David Johansen stuck in my head, from a few days before. One man – drummer and a stool, his lyrics voice and expression. In stark contrast to the over produced music of our day. I felt this massive connection to the past and loved it. I almost saw the sex, drugs and experimentation that birthed our modern culture.
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Tags: 2012, Bowery Electric, cbgb, column, Duff McKagan, Endless Boogie, Guided by Voices, Guy Fawkes mask, John Varvatos, Mamma Mia, Manhattan, Mohawks, music, music festival, Mykke Blanco, New York, photojournalism, review, robert pollard, SummerStage, The Box, times square, War on Drugs