Paying respects to NYC punk and hardcore

While A7 and CBs were never going to last forever, I'm glad they still exist in some form because they could have been turned into banks or condos. 

(Newt and Sol, outside CBGBs)

At CBGBs - it was pretty horrendous to see $130 designer Slayer shirts being sold.  They said, many parts of the original interior walls are preserved including graf, stickers and posters. 

At A7 - the back room is still there a "stage" so you can really get a sense of the space.  The bathroom was also pleasantly demeaning and the bar up front had really good blues music on. 

For more background on these places I recommend watching New York Hardcore Chronicles. You can see the A7 stage in the trailer  

Near CBs is Joey Ramone square: 

Random pic of a cool biker

At Generation Records that night.  

Iron Maiden @ Prudential Center (NJ), Oct 21 2022

 

The is the first show with my long time college friend and fellow music maniac Sol.  He's in NY and Maiden was playing in NJ so I made the drive down.  

There were some opening bands but we spent the whole time in the Pru lobby checking out the rad T-shirts and gear that people were sporting.  

I wish I had a picture but the prize for most interesting couple went to two guys:  one with a Ted Nugent shirt, one with a Burzum shirt.  Sub-urban Trumpers or people with a fantastic sense of humor?  

Onto the main event. 

When we went upstairs to find out seats we were politely told that they "don't exist" and that we should talk to Martha in section blah blah.  🤔  Well that's never happened before!  In the end we got upgraded to some killer seats, as shown in the first pic.  I could actually see Nicko!  We were in an open accessibility area and joined by other non-existent seat holders.  There was a younger guy there with his girl.  This dude was PUMPED to see Maiden.  His girl, not so much.  She was a "trooper" (haha) and chilled out in a seat the whole time while he head banged to every song. 

Maiden played a killer set, good mix of tunes and fantastic stage settings which changed through out the night.  Bruce even had these bad ass flame thrower arm things, shown in the video below.