1978
CBGBs.
A rough Bowery bar.
The Hell’s Angels home
Away from the clubhouse
No one challenged their claim
To the punk rock venue.
The Angels scared off other asshole bikers
Although not every night.
The Cramps
From Memphis
First show in NYC
A packed house
Garage rock fans and some Jersey bikers.
Rocking,
As if the world was diving
Into the sun tomorrow.
Rocking
I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Strychnine, The Way I Walk.
My hillbilly girlfriend hip-shimmying
Like a drunk cheerleader.
I so loved her.
A hillbilly Alice was
Baptized by moonshine
In West Virginia
Her home
Not far from the coal-mining hollows.
She was as hillbilly
As hillbilly gets in New York
She loved the Cramps.
During the encore
Two Jersey biker chicks jumped the stage
Obviously go-go dancers
James Chance, a man of danger,
Joined the two tramps
Fondling their stripper breasts.
Their boyfriends in the front row.
The saxist stuck out his tongue.
The girls thought him funny.
Not so the bikers.
They jumped onto the stage.
Chance was skin and bones
Versus
The bikers’ motrocycle muscle.
A solid right on Chance’s nose.
Blood spurt onto his dirty white shirt
A B-movie actor
The star of BLANK GENERATION
Eric Mitchell.
Onto the stage
The half-Pawnee stepped between the bikers and Chance.
The band played another chorus of Surfing Bird.
Alice grabbed my arm.
“Not your fight.”
The biker looped a slow overhead right.
His fist impacted on the actor’s nose.
Bone on bone.
A crack louder than Surfing Bird
Blood splattered everywhere.
Eric somehow did not go down
After all he was half-Pawnee
They left without a struggle.
The 6-6 doorman
A punk version of the Addams Family’s Lurch.
Even the Angels feared Merv.
The next night Eric entered the bar with a black eye.
Chance sported a double badge of honor.
That night the two
Everyone’s darlings,
Because at CBGBS
There was never any shame in losing.

Foto by Andrey Armyagov