...or was it colonel mustard in the kitchen with the handgun? or maybe it was real estate profiteers with the rope in the billiard room? either way, gentrification put a bullet in the brain of pop culture in this town and i'm sure the bastard had something to do with it. i mean i go to starbucks, not because i'm a shill for corporations but because the "local places" i would buy coffee from were filled with ill mannered goth girls that would never give me the time of day if that was my thing at the time and more importantly, the coffee sucked ass. like 5 day old diner coffee sucked. so at a place like starbucks, i still get ill mannered service but the coffee is good. jz, the bastard's brother in law (or is it former brother in law, i'm still trying to work out all these post divorce semantics) hates all things corporate and goes out of his way to avoid them to the point that i would percieve it as inconveniencing yourself to "stick it" to a corporate entity that doesn't know you exist anyway. but people equate this sort of behavior as a contribution towards the end times. but in the case of cbgb, i make an exception. cb's is a crappy, filthy, dirty, hole in the wall that lowers property values and should stay in the bowery forever. and it won't because after 30 some odd years, the birthplace of punk rock is closing forever. 
stevus christus invited me out to see his guitar teacher's band play so i turned out to view the body. i hadn't been to cb's since december so i wanted to one last visit in. the teacher's band went on after the generic fallout boy sounding rock act. i think they were called "insert clever name here". anyway, i meet the members of the band at different times and they are all very nice enough people. the teacher who sang and played gits was drunk and that is a special kind of way to be before a show. the fact that he missed my hand on the initial handshake and then apologized for missing made him alright in my book. 
alright, i won't go into length about the band, or their sound or any of that crap because, it wasn't my taste. one of stevus' friends said they used to sound like blink 182 but now they sound different. more like some other band that sounds like some other band. i mean hell, blink 182 is a band that sounds like "all", who sounds like "the descendants" which sounds pretty much like all punk bands from berkeley who sound like the "stiff little fingers". so i'm seeing a band that sounds like a band that sounds like a band that sounds lie a band. hell, one of the songs did sound like a living color song that i used to like so i have to give them props. oh...wait...i said i wasn't going to get into this. don't get me wrong, these guys are incredibly talented. the rhythm sections was goddam incredible. one of the best i've heard in years this guitarist has incredible chops and i dig on his voice but, he's very safe. like alot of bands out there that are safe. cintra wilson one time lamented the fact that there are no cock rockers out there anymore and she was right. a guy like iggy pop wouldn't get up between songs and say, "this next song is about...this next song is about...this next song is about". no, he'd spit at the crowd, tell me to go fuck myself, kick some chick in the head, then cut him and perform "now i wann be your dog". sorry, this is just how i feel about music these days.
after the show, i was talking about the bad brains to stevus' friends and one of them left dismissing the conversation as the two of us rehashing the past. it wasn't a rehash, it was a lesson, shiteyes. recognize!!! anyway the singer came out and those who stayed told him how much they loved the show and while it lacked the energy of the blah blah blah show 3 months ago, it was still really good. i said they were pretty good in and amongst that exchange and the teacher paused and asked me, "waitaminute, did you just say we were pretty good"
"yeah, i said you were pretty good"
"stevus..? what the fuck"
"well you remember that thing you said earlier about the discerning tastes of new yorkers?" piped up stevus
"they're all fucking posers"
yeah, i left that part out. during the show he had something to say about how new york audiences are all a bunch of stiffs. oh yeah, and we're all fucking posers. (the phrase poser has a special meaning for me since i got the shit kicked out of me over that very term but that's another story). talking crap about my town especially with reference to how your music failed to blow me away always wins points with me. iggy?
—the bastard
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