CBGB's Battle of the Bands

Which is it gonna be: the funk band wearing 3-foot-tall velvet hats, or a hardworking ska outfit who traveled here all the way from their Massachusetts high school? That's just one of the many questions I faced while judging a recent battle of the bands contest, where 10 unknown acts?and their immediate families?packed the CBGB lounge for nearly seven hours of live music. Yes, they was all representin' that night: the indie rockers whose set sounded so fresh one imagined that due to strict NYU dorm sound ordinances they had never picked up instruments before in their lives; acoustic singer/songwriter John Michael Norman, whose backup vocalist wasn't afraid to dress like a little girl, complete with oversized bow, not to mention adding a folksy, Sophie B. Hawkins sexuality...

You can see my problem: how could one possibly proclaim any of these groups better than the rest? Fortunately, I wasn't alone. The two other sponsors of this event had sent in their own judges. The Virgin Megastore guy (who bore a striking resemblance to Richard Branson) must have been handpicked for his knowledgeability and experience in these matters.

"How long does each band play?" I asked the promoter.

"Too long," the Virgin judge answered, raising a drink to his lips, while behind him a Virgin banner slipped off the wall and slowly fell to the ground.

The second judge was less approachable. In fact, my only interaction with him came just before the first band took the stage, when I inquired as to how he'd been picked to preside over these festivities.

He pointed at the sticker on the beer in his hand, which read "Bass Ale." He then turned away from me, stubbed out a butt and reached for his next Marlboro Red, no doubt seeking a private mental sanctuary to prepare for the task that lay ahead. In fact, I never saw him interact with anyone else that evening, aside from a brief encounter with the bartender when he held up his now-empty bottle and again pointed to that Bass Ale sticker. No one was going to influence the voting on his watch.

At length it was time for the show to begin, with a little help from a power trio of well-fed attorneys, who kept an improvised jam going a solid 15 minutes while the guitarist went to his car for another E string. (I knew that because at one point I heard the drummer yell offstage, "Check your car!")

"You want four shots of Jack Daniel's?" the bartender asked me incredulously. She'd been instructed earlier by the promoter to let me drink for free. I had some friends in town from San Francisco who'd never seen the inside of CBGB. I'd gotten them this far by meeting the pair of them out front, licking the stamp on the back of my hand and then pressing it onto theirs (which must be in Steal This Book). It turned out fairly well (they've got powerful stamps at CBGB), and soon we were ready for some rock 'n' roll, hoochie koo. Only problem was...these other people weren't.

After all, this wasn't the Stooges' CBGB, this was the latest addition, the lounge where they throw book parties with cash bars and blame it on the new economy. We needed a way to get upstairs to the real club without paying a separate cover. As fate would have it, if you head past the bathrooms in the downstairs lounge, hang a left and open the gray door, you're in the loo of CBGB proper (that's probably in the new afterword to Steal This Book), where, yes, people still actually perform oral sex.

A quick jog up the steps and here's where it all happened: the stage where Television played their first shows, the bar where Connie punched Dee Dee and... But hey, how long can you live in the past? Besides, my friends had also expressed an interest in visiting another bar nearby, Motor City. Of course they didn't know how to get there, and seeing as they were my guests... Naturally I had my trusty score card with me when we left (plus a special column I'd devised for rating the bands' names; the losing name was Mmmm) and every intention of going back in time to catch the next set...

Motor City, probably because it is so close to CBGB and other preferred rock venues, has become the touring band's bar of choice. So if catching their show doesn't fit into your Saturday night, you might be able to find them Sunday morning, winding down in the wee hours at this small Lower East Side public house, or rather that's what happened to me one night with the Unband, when, I'm informed, I asked the bassist if he was "on heroin."

It was much of the same at Motor City that night, where our evening quickly went Technicolor, which is a nice segue into my treatise on the evils of brown liquor. Now, for those of you who have a life, or have long since moved on to something "harder," take note that alcohol is like any other drug?there's as much difference between Xanax and Ritalin as between schnapps and cognac. Let's take bourbon, the drinker's drink, for example. You're looking at some Keith Moon-style property damage and a few apology phone calls the following day. Whiskey is a fistfight with your best friend, and scotch is for older people who pretend they don't want to do that crazy shit anymore. But generally speaking, if alcoholism, Irish, Native American or all three run in the family, stick to vodka. The exception being rum, which is a pothead's drink...

But back to the bands and the contest, which had its ups and downs. By the end the place was packed, although at one point someone did hurl a pizza crust toward the stage. More importantly, let's talk about the winner, which in my mind was hands down those Massachusetts boys (Westbound Train), and not just because they were the only ska band I've ever seen who weren't wearing suits. The lead singer really had something. If you put enough money behind them, they could cut a number-one record. However, I would replace the horn section with 15-year-old girls, or at least put a few of them in bras. But that's just my expert opinion.

There's a Battle of the Bands (BoB) on Sat., Feb. 23, at CBGB Downstairs Lounge, 315 Bowery (Bleecker St.), 677-0455.