When spring arrives, our wonderful neighborhoods are alive with activity. Many more people are out and about, enjoying the unique beauty of our slice of the big city, where you can see the blue sky and the greenery of gardens, trees and flowers. The multitude of green spaces in our neighborhoods beckon at these times. And […]
On April 15, 2001, Rock and Roll lost a true legend. On that day, Joey Ramone died of lymphatic cancer. That night, U2’s Bono told the audience at a concert in Portland Oregon how Joey and the Ramones had changed his life. He sang “Amazing Grace” in his honor, and then went into “I Remember […]
This is one in a series of posts marking the 50th anniversary of the designation of the Greenwich Village Historic District. Click here to check out our year-long activities and celebrations. In the 19th century, the neighborhood around the north side of Washington Square Park was a prestigious residential neighborhood. Developers looked to expand this […]
The East Village is generally credited with being the birthplace of punk music, which emanated from CBGB in the mid-1970s and the bands who played there, including the Ramones, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and the Dictators. The music’s roots also can be found in the neighborhood, especially from bands like the Velvet Underground […]
We all know that New York University has an enormous presence in Greenwich Village and the East Village — one that has grown tremendously in recent decades, and is continuing to grow with the construction of their “NYU 2031” expanded campus on the Washington Square Village and Silver Towers superblocks south of Washington Square. The […]
There’s no shortage of sites in the Village and East Village where great makers of popular music lived or performed. Less well known, however, are the multitude of sites that were the backdrop for iconic album covers, sometimes sources of inspiration for the artists or just familiar stomping grounds. Today, many are hiding in plain […]
Deborah Harry, lead singer of the seminal punk and new wave band Blondie, was born July 1, 1945. Both she as an artist and the group Blondie grew out of the ferment of the downtown scene of the Village and East Village in the 1970’s. From modest beginnings, they would go on to leave an […]
The following is an updated re-posting originally authored by Dana Schulz. As May is Lower East Side History Month, we at GVSHP thought it would be nice to revisit a post from 2012 which gives a nod to ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects,’ the British Museum’s BBC radio series and book.” We […]
On April 23, 1976, the Ramones self-titled debut album was released, changing the face of music forever. Clocking in at just 29 minutes, ‘The Ramones’ was the absolute antithesis of the bloated, album-oriented, arena rock of the era. It was quick, it was simple, and anyone could play it in their basement or local bar […]
On March 30, 1974, the Ramones played their very first public performance. The Ramones are of course considered the inventors of punk rock, as well as the ultimate downtown band and the embodiment of the CBGB’s scene. The Ramones’ lightning-fast performances rarely lasted more than a few minutes.
On this day in 1979, The Talking Heads released their single ‘Life During Wartime‘ from the album Fear of Music. The song not only went on the be a classic of the band’s, the era, and the genre, but perhaps no song better captured the anarchic, chaotic, and ultimately creative feeling of the East Village/Lower […]
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life and work are synonymous with the East Village/NoHo art scene of the 1980’s. From his early years as a burgeoning young artist while studying at City-as-School, a progressive high school Village Preservation proposed for historic district designation which operates on the principles of John Dewey’s theory that students learn by doing, Basquiat was […]
We have two great birthdays in the world of punk to mark. The two celebrants straddle the East and West Village, and both sides of the Atlantic.
The Ramones sprung onto the scene in mid-1974, revolutionizing rock music and performance by reinjecting energy, simplicity, and humor into a genre which had become increasingly serious, self-important, and bloated. In the midst of presidential scandals and resignations, urban decay, and disintegrating social fabric, the Ramones called for a new order based upon three chords, […]
CBGB, the legendary rock club on the Bowery and Bleecker closed its doors on October 15, 2006, due to lease issues, 33 years after it opened. The last evening at CBGB’s featured a headline set by Patti Smith, an unforgettable evening outlined by one fan in a recent blog post.
On September 6, 1981, the infectious and other-worldly sound of Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” was unleashed upon the world. The song became a club hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the decades since its synthetic riffs have become among the most recognizable, and the most sampled, in pop music history. […]
The Village and East Village have long been the home of music-makers and music venues; their streets and sites on more than one occasion the inspiration for song-writers and the subject of many a song line. But perhaps nothing has imprinted an image of these neighborhoods in the popular music-consuming consciousness in the same way as their depiction on the […]
