Hilly Kristal, owner and founder of CBGB, writes a brief history of the club that for the past twenty seven years has become synonymous with underground music. CBGB.com presents this history as it is written in sequential installments.

Installment Vol.1

The question most often asked of me is, "What does CBGB stand for?"
I reply, "It stands for the kind of music I intended to have, but not the
kind that we became famous for: COUNTRY BLUEGRASS BLUES."
The next question is always, "but what does OMFUG stand for?" and I say
"That's more of what we do, It means OTHER MUSIC FOR UPLIFTING
GORMANDIZERS." And what is a gormandizer? It's a voracious eater of,
in this case, MUSIC.

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've been asked those questions.
Alot of people believe that OMFUG stands for something dirty, but the truth is, I felt CBGB sounded so pat that I wanted something to go with it that sounded a little uncouth, or crude.

The obvious follow up question is often "is this your favorite kind of music?"
No!!! I've always liked all kinds but half the radio stations all over the U.S. were playing country music, cool juke boxes were playing blues and bluegrass as well as folk and country. Also, alot of my artist/writer friends were always going off to some fiddlers convention (blue grass concert) or blues and folk festivals. So I thought it would be a whole lot of fun to have my own club with all this kind of music playing there. Unfortunately- or perhaps FORTUNATELY- things didn't work out quite the way I 'd expected. (© CGBG NYC)

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