I figured the guys over at Punk Marketing might write something about this, but they haven’t, so I guess it’s up to me to put a marketing/PR spin on an obituary mainly relegated to the music scene.
Hilly Kristal, the man who put punk rock on a stage and let it scream at the world, died on Thursday at age 75 from complications of lung cancer. Kristal was the owner of the seedy New York club CBGB’s, a venue that put early punk and new wave on the map — and gave performers like Ramones, Blondie, Television, Patti Smith and Talking Heads their start when they had few other options. (That’s him on the right, sweeping up outside the club sometime in the 1970s, probably.)
CBGB’s, which closed last October, was the birthplace of punk rock, and Kristal was punk’s father figure. In the words of The New York Times‘ obit, Kristal, “with his bushy beard and ever-present flannel shirt … cut an unusual figure as the paterfamilias of the noisy downtown music scene. But for nearly 33 years his club was an incubator for generations of New York rock bands, and performing within its dank, flier-encrusted walls became a bragging right for musicians everywhere.”
So what does it have to do with higher ed marketing? Absolutely nothing — at least not on the surface. But punk rock never was an overt operation. Punk was underground and viral, and its roots are entrenched and entwined in Kristal’s dingy club at 315 Bowery.
As Alex Remington explains in his tribute to Kristal (linked below): “The music that blared across the Bowery soon emanated across the Hudson and ever outward from there. In London it got politicized by anarchists and spiked with eyeliner by goths; in Los Angeles it snarled faster harder until it became hardcore; and here in Washington it turned into an underground movement described by two phrases: DIY (do-it-yourself) and emotional hardcore. It could credibly be described as the parent of both indie rock and current emo, whether or not it recognizes its own paternity.”
The roots of punk — with its DIY ethos, amateurish attitude, underground vision and scabrous, anti-corporate stance — have sprouted an above-ground movement that flourishes in today’s disintermediated marketplace. We who make our living in trying to keep everyone “on message” in a world where the middleman is quickly vanishing have Hilly Kristal to thank for making the traditional aspects of our jobs more difficult — and the less traditional aspects much more interesting. Punk gave rise to The Cult of the Amateur, which writers like Andrew Keen disdain. Heck, you could even trace blogging’s roots to punk rock, maybe. The idea that “any idiot can do this” — whether it’s play three power chords, scream 1-2-3-4! into the mic, or create a blog on the Internet — is a very punk thing to do. Of course, even more punk would be to not do any of these things, a sentiment which probably makes no sense to some of you, and makes absolute sense to others.
But I digress. This is a Friday Five, after all. So, in memory of Hilly Kristal (may he rest in raucous rock-n-roll heaven), here are five links that have something to do with him, CBGB’s or punk rock:
Andy writes! 