Music history

Two different revolutions, four blocks apart, about six years and one enormous cultural gap between them.

The Fillmore East

Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East at 105 Second Avenue in 1968, in a former Yiddish theatre. For three years it was the most important rock venue on the East Coast — a seated, acoustically decent hall with a serious light show and two shows a night.

Almost every significant act of the period played it. A remarkable number of live albums that people still listen to were recorded in that room. Graham closed it in 1971, saying the scene had outgrown what he wanted to do.

The building later became a nightclub and is now residential. There is a plaque.

CBGB

CBGB opened at 315 Bowery in 1973. Hilly Kristal intended it for country, bluegrass and blues — which is what the initials stand for — and it became instead the birthplace of American punk and new wave, essentially by accident, because he was willing to let unknown bands play original material.

The room was narrow, filthy and famously good-sounding. The bands that formed their audiences there over the following few years reshaped popular music.

CBGB closed in 2006 after a rent dispute. The space is now a clothing shop; the awning was preserved.

Why here

Both venues existed because the neighbourhood was cheap and nobody in authority was paying attention. Large old buildings could be had for very little, noise complaints were not a priority in a half-abandoned district, and the audience lived within walking distance.

That is the recurring pattern in this neighbourhood's cultural history, and it is also why very little of it survives — the conditions that made it possible were the conditions of a neighbourhood in trouble.

What is left

The buildings, mostly, and not much else. Joe's Pub and The Public Theater at Astor Place continue as serious venues. Small rooms still book live music across the neighbourhood, and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on East 3rd Street has run continuously since the 1970s as a home for poetry, performance and music that came out of Loisaida.

If you are walking to look at sites rather than see a show, the Bowery and Second Avenue between Houston and 14th cover most of it.