Damn!  It's already November 8th!  Where did the time go?  It seems like only yesterday when this AMOEBLOG corner of the Amoeba Music website started up. But actually it has been jumping off since March of this year - not that long ago, true,  but long enough for the accumulation of a bounty of ever-engaging AMOEBLOGS covering oodles of different topics (music and otherwise) from a stable of gifted and insightful AMOEBLOGGER's including (but not limited to) Mike Battaglia, Job O Brother, Brad Schelden, phil blankenship, Miss Ess, Gomez Comes Alive, Whitmore, and the Bay Area Crew. In all there are hundreds and hundreds (well in excess of a thousand) of AMOEBLOGS posted and available to read in the Archives right here. Just for me alone there are 170 AMOEBLOGS archived and I am only one of a dozen active AMOEBLOGGERs.


Glancing back at some of these AMOEBLOGS I have posted since May I think it is time that I should follow up on a few of them.  First up was the AMOEBLOG  (one of several) posted about the historic Paul McCartney instore at the Amoeba Music Hollywood store on June 27th that generated a ton of COMMENTS from Amoeba shoppers who were lucky to make it inside to witness the former Beatle's memorable performance. Anyways the follow up, good news, is that next week (November 13th) one of the songs from Paul's performance that day ("I Saw Her Standing There") will be released on an extremely limited edition, 12" vinyl only release, titled Amoeba's Secret. This Paul McCartney maxi-single will feature the four songs: “Only Mama Knows” & "That Was Me" (both from his latest release) plus ”C Moon” (the classic Paul McCartney & Wings song), and of course the live-at-Amoeba track, .  The sure to be highly collectable, vinyl-only Amoeba's Secret will be available in all three Amoeba Music stores next  Tuesday (11/13) and also here at   amoeba.com - priced at $6.98. (Note: that this rare release will not be released digitally or as a CD and since it is limited is bound to sell out fast)

Hilly Kristal has died.

Apparently he had lung cancer. 

It's sad to me that after fighting for years to save the seminal punk club he founded, CBGB's, and losing that battle, he then lost his life less than a year later. 

He was 75 years old.

R.I.P Hilly.


Here's a performance by the Ramones at CBGB in 1977.



And here's Blondie performing there the same year:





It's lame and depressing how almost all the cool parts of New York City are being swallowed up by rents and landlords and all that gentrifying junk.

The first time I ever went to NYC I was 19 years old and super wide eyed and I dragged my friends to CBGB.  I coulda sworn I could still smell Lou Reed and Dee Dee Ramone in the dirt coating the street there in the Bowery.  We didn't have fake IDs and we were obviously too young to get in to the club but I went into the shop next door and got a shirt and wore it proudly for about 5 years....until Hot Topic started hawking them and every mall rat across America suddenly had one...Everything rock n roll started to feel even more hollow at that point.