"Heart of Glass" is a song and single from the 1978 album, "Parallel Lines", by Blondie. The album was released on Chrysalis Records (EMI) and was produced by Mike Chapman.
The album has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and is the band's most successful release. Six of the album's tracks were released as singles, including the big hit "Heart of Glass". "Heart of Glass" was written by Deborah Harry and Chris Stein and produced by Mike Chapman.
The single was released in January 1979 on Chrysalis Records and was a #1 hit in many countries, including the UK and the U.S. This video version of "Heart of Glass" is not seen as often as the Studio 54 version and makes an interesting comparison, especially regarding Deborah Harry's appearance.
CBGB (Country, Blue Grass, and Blues) was a music club at 315 Bowery at Bleecker Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.
Founded by Hilly Kristal in 1973, it was originally intended to feature its namesake musical styles, but became a forum for American punk and New Wave bands like Ramones, Misfits, Television, the Patti Smith Group, Mink DeVille, The Dead Boys, The Dictators, The Fleshtones,
The Voidoids, The Cramps, Blondie, The Shirts, and Talking Heads. In later years, it would mainly become known for Hardcore punk with bands such as Agnostic Front, Bad Brains, Murphy's Law, Cro-Mags, Warzone, Gorilla Biscuits, Sick of It All, and Youth of Today performing there.
The storefront and large space next door to the club served as the "CBGB Record Canteen" (record shop and cafe) for many years. Eventually, in the late eighties, the record store was closed and replaced with a second performance space and art gallery, named "CB's 313 Gallery".
The gallery went on to showcase many popular bands and singer-songwriters who played in a musical style more akin to acoustic rock, folk, jazz, or experimental music, such as Dadadah, Toshi Reagon, and The Shells, while the original club continued to present mainly hardcore bands and post-punk, metal, and alternative rock acts.
The club closed in October 2006. The final concert was performed by Patti Smith on October 15. CBGB Fashions (the CBGB store, wholesale department, and online store) stayed open until October 31 at 315 Bowery. On November 1, 2006, CBGB Fashions moved to 19-23 St. Mark's Place, but it subsequently closed in the summer of 2008.
CBGB, a then-little-known rock club, was founded in December 1973, on the site of Kristal's earlier bar, Hilly's on the Bowery, which he ran from 1969 to 1972. Originally, Kristal had focused on his more profitable West Village nightspot, Hilly's, but complaints from the bar's neighbors forced Hilly's to close, leading its owner to concentrate on the Bowery club.
The full name is CBGB & OMFUG which stands for "Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers"*. Gormandizer (gourmand) usually means a ravenous eater of food, but according to Kristal here it means "a voracious eater of ... music".
The club was also affectionately called simply "CB's". As its name implied, Kristal intended the bar to feature country, bluegrass, and blues music (along with poetry readings), but it became famous as the birthplace of the American punk movement. Perhaps most notably, the punk rock pioneers The Ramones had their first shows there.
In 1973, before Hilly's on the Bowery became CBGB, two locals, Bill Page and Rusty McKenna, convinced Kristal to allow them to book concerts. Although the term "punk rock" was not applied to these acts, Kristal's son believes they helped lay the musical foundation for the bands that followed.
After the Mercer Arts Center collapsed in August 1973, there were few locations in New York where unsigned bands could play original music, and some of the Mercer refugees, including Suicide, The Fast, Wayne County and the Magic
Tramps all played in the very early days of CBGB.
At the third Television gig on April 14, 1974, Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye from the Patti Smith Group were in the audience. The band went on to make its own CBGB debut on February 14, 1975. Other early performers included The Stillettos, featuring Deborah Harry, Elda Gentile and Amanda Jones on vocals, and Chris Stein on guitar), who supported Television on May 5, 1974. The newly-formed Blondie (under its original name of Angel & the Snake) and the Ramones both arrived in August 1974. Mink DeVille, Talking Heads, The Shirts, The Heartbreakers, The Fleshtones and many other bands followed in quick succession.
CBGB had only one rule for a band to follow in order to play at the venue: they had to play primarily original music. No cover bands were booked to play there. However, most of the regular bands played one or two covers during their sets. Kristal's son claims the policy was meant to help the club avoid paying ASCAP royalties for the compositions being performed.
As CBGB's reputation grew, it began to draw more acts from outside New York City. The club hosted the first American gigs by The Police, on October 20 and 21, 1978.
Though CBGB was utilized as a hot spot for touring bands to hit when they came through New York, the scene that kept the bar alive during the 1980s was New York's underground hardcore punk scene. Sunday at CBGB was matinee day (also named "thrash day" in a documentary about hardcore). Every Sunday, a handful of hardcore bands took the stage in the afternoon to dinnertime hours, usually for cheap. Bands made famous by matinees include Reagan Youth, Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, Murphy's Law, Cro-Mags, Leeway, Warzone, Gorilla Biscuits, Sick of It All, The Misfits, Straight Ahead, and Youth of Today.
Over the years, CBGB's matinee became an institution. In 1990, violence both in and out of the scene caused Kristal to refuse to book hardcore shows. However, CBGB later brought hardcore back at various times, and for the last several years of its existence, had no rules about what genres could and couldn't be featured.
In 2005, a dispute arose between CBGB and the Bowery Residents' Committee. The Committee billed Kristal $91,000 in back rent, while Kristal claimed he had not been informed of increases in his $19,000 monthly rent. After the lease expired, they reached an agreement for the club to remain for 14 more months while Kristal dropped his legal battles and his attempts to get historic landmark status for the club.
Kristal planned to move the club far from its roots with a new CBGB in Las Vegas, Nevada. The owner planned to strip the current club down to the bare walls, bringing as much of it to Nevada as possible.
"We're going to take the urinals," he said. "I'll take whatever I can. The movers said, 'You ought to take everything, and auction off what you don't want on eBay.' Why not? Somebody will."
The club finally closed on October 15, 2006. The last week featured multi-night stands by Bad Brains and The Dictators, along with an acoustic set by Blondie. More contemporary acts, such as Avail and The Bouncing Souls, opened shows throughout the week.
The final concert was performed by Patti Smith and broadcast live on Sirius Satellite Radio. Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers attended the show and even performed on a handful of songs with Smith and her band. Flea turned 44 at midnight, and the band and crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to him. Television's Richard Lloyd also guested on a few songs, including a reworked version of the title track to "Marquee Moon". Toward the end of their set, Smith and her band played "Gloria", paying tribute to the Ramones during the chorus by alternating between the original lyrics and the "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" of "Blitzkrieg Bop". In her final encore, the song "Elegie", Smith read from a list of musicians who had died since they last played at CBGB.
Hilly Kristal died from complications from lung cancer on August 28, 2007. In early October 2007, Kristal's family and friends hosted a private memorial service in the YMCA near the village. Soon after, there was a public memorial where CBGB staff and others paid tribute.
After Kristal's death, his ex-wife, Karen Kristal, and daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, engaged in a legal battle over the purported $3 million CBGB estate, settling in June 2009 with Burgman receiving "most" of the money that did not go to creditors and estate taxes.
On November 2, 2007, it was announced that high-end men's fashion designer John Varvatos would open a store at CBGB's former space at 315 Bowery in early 2008. Varvatos expressed a desire to "do justice" to CBGB's legacy. Much of the graffiti covering the toilets was preserved, along with some playbills from the club's 10th anniversary shows in 1983 that were discovered behind a wall. The store opened in April 2008.
In February 2008, it was announced that Morrison Hotel, a SoHo art gallery dedicated to music photography, would open a second location in the former CBGB Gallery space next door. However, in June 2009, it was announced that the Morrison Hotel gallery would close.
It was also announced that the alley behind the club, officially known as "Extra Place," would be turned into a pedestrian mall. The New York Post quotes Cheetah Chrome of The Dead Boys as saying "If that alley could talk, it's seen it all," and "All of Manhattan has lost its soul to money lords."
Cherie Currie
The Runaways (Cherie Currie) performing at CBGB in New York City on August 2, 1976.
Cherie Currie (born November 30, 1959) is an American singer, actress and chainsaw artist. Currie was the lead vocalist of The Runaways, a hard rock band from Los Angeles in the mid-to-late 1970s.
Currie's parents were Don Currie and actress Marie Harmon. She was raised in the Encino district of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. Her brother is Don Currie Jr., and her sisters are actress Sondra Currie and her twin, Marie Currie.
Currie was the teenage lead vocalist for the all-female rock band The Runaways with bandmates Joan Jett, Lita Ford, Sandy West, Jackie Fox, and Vicki Blue. Bomp! magazine described her as "the lost daughter of Iggy Pop and Brigitte Bardot".
Currie, at age 15, joined The Runaways in 1975. The teen rock anthem "Cherry Bomb" was written for her at the audition. Attitudes to her impact at that time differ; one reviewer has written that "the received wisdom that [the Runaways] carved out new territory for female musicians is hard to justify – it's doubtful that the predominantly male audience who flocked to see the 16 year old [Currie] in her undies picked up any feminist subtext".
After three albums with The Runaways, (The Runaways, Queens of Noise, and Live in Japan ), Currie went on to record three other albums. She recorded Beauty's Only Skin Deep as a solo artist for Polygram Records. With her twin sister Marie, she recorded Messin' With The Boys for Capitol Records and Young and Wild for Raven. She then worked as an actress, starring in movies such as Foxes, Parasite, Wavelength, Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Rosebud Beach Hotel, Rich Girl, and others, as well as numerous guest spots on TV series (Matlock and Murder She Wrote, among others).
Currie struggled with drug addiction throughout much of her younger life, which largely factored into why her career ended so abruptly. She later wrote a memoir called Neon Angel recounting life in the band and her traumatic experiences with drug addiction, sex abuse and her broken family. The Runaways movie, a 2010 musical biographical drama film (which was executive-produced by Joan Jett), focuses on the group's early beginnings and explores the relationship between Currie and Jett. In the film Currie is portrayed by Dakota Fanning.
Currie was married to actor Robert Hays in the 1990s and they had one son together, Jake Hays. They are now divorced.
In 2008, Currie contributed to Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna's book, Cherry Bomb.
Currently, Currie is a wood carving artist who uses a chain saw to create her works.
Currie is putting the finishing touches on a new album, produced by current Velvet Revolver drummer, ex-Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum, due out in 2011. This will be Currie's first album since 1980. During an interview with Cherie Currie and Matt Sorum on That Metal Show, Matt revealed that ex-Guns N' Roses and current Velvet Revolver band mates Slash and Duff McKagan as well as Smashing Pumpkins vocalist Billy Corgan, who has written and sings a duet with Currie, are also on the album. The rest of the album's line-up was also revealed on the Road Runner website
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Great article!
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