RAVE - CBGBs

I learned several things watching this film.

First, CBGB stood for Country Bluegrass and Blues - none of which featured in the real-life club, or this movie.

Second, American use of the word Punk to describe music is very different from the way it's used in England. For me, Punk means The Stranglers, Sex Pistols, The Damned, and so on. For Americans, it's more of a punk-ish attitude, rather than music and fashion movements. That's the only excuse I can find for featuring performances by Tom Verlaine, Patti Smith, David Byrne, and (ha ha) Sting, all of whom would get thrown out of any decent Punk band for being too dull.

Alright, the club did see the birth of The Ramones, and played host to early Lou Reed and Iggy Pop (or at least the film did), and so deserved its notoriety.

Alan Rickman was perfect as the legendary club's owner, Hilly Kristal, and despite my irrational bias against anything that professes to be about the birth of Punk yet leaves out the British contingent, I still enjoyed this movie.