Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Friday, August 16th, 1974, was a hot summer day in New York City. It was 31 degrees,

but the humidity made it feel a lot hotter. And if you were down in the bowery amidst all the concrete,

it was hotter still. And it smelled. This part of the city was, to be honest, rather uncivilized.

Okay, it was a slum. Lots of garbage, broken windows, abandoned buildings, drug addicts, and homeless

people. But there were also businesses and

places to hang out. Like this dive bar at 315 barry at Bleaker called CBGB. Even though it was a

Friday night, there was almost no one in the bar. There was the owner, the owner's dog, two people

from a transvestite band from San Francisco called the cockettes,

the manager of another band called Television, an artist from the neighborhood who had moved up from

Chihuahua, Mexico, and a scenester named Legs McNeil. And that was it. That was the entire

population of the bar. Sometime after nine o'clock, four guys in leather jackets, t-shirts, torn jeans, and

Converse high tops got up on the tiny stage.

They counted off this one song, Leggneal remembers, and it was just this wall of noise.

They look so striking.

These guys were not hippies.

This was something completely new.

Fifteen minutes after their set started, it was over.

They had blown through all their songs.

And they had also found time to fight about which song was next and to struggle with broken

guitar strings.

...