Last night, the legendary Blues artist Buddy Guy headlined the stages of the B.B. King Blues Club for their final event. Yes my friends, as we’ve noted in a previous post, the illustrious Times Square venue has closed its doors. We’ve already noted how a skyrocketing rent was the root cause and this is something we are hearing in NYC all the frigging time nowadays and its becoming boring. The greed of the regions property owners are making all of the things that make our city special go away. It sucks. Now as a scribe whose spent a considerable amount of time supporting shows in this venue for the past thirteen years, I had been on a mission this afternoon to snap a shot of the “Thank You” message that a friend showed me was on the marquee last night. After attending the Ghost press conference, I headed uptown to Times Square and I was left speechless by what I saw when I reached my destination.
Sadly, B.B. King’s no longer even existed by the time that I got there and all of the marquee signage was gone along with the neon and the photos that adorned it among numerous other lights for all of Times Square to see. Staff was zipping in and out with stuff and when I asked someone why this was so quick an occurrence they said that they needed to be out by tomorrow (Tuesday). Clearly the thrill was gone and I will miss this place very much. I still have to do a massive compilation of my very favorite performances here for you to enjoy but its taking me a little longer than I expected it to since there are quite a few. In my announcement about the closing, I had miscalculated my contests for the place and there was only “80” of them and not “92” as I previously reported. I did still put over “600” fans into the shows in the place so that is all that matters to me.
The loss of this venue also breaks some of the pre-gaming rituals that my friends and I would have. Generally, we would find ourselves assembling and catching up at the nearby Smith’s Bar and then heading over once all had joined in and the show was relatively close to starting. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve covered shows here and how many different bands all get added up but will say its at least “200” on the show review scale and probably around “600” for individual bands. Though its been said that there is interest in finding another location, one has to wonder if there will there even be time to focus on that with the brand new Sony Hall having absorbed most of their programming while some other shows have been taken over to the Highline Ballroom. I’m sure going to miss this place and thank all of the staff who helped me to do my thing for so many years in these confines. Eternal thanks for that matter.
Hopefully they hang this somewhere special. Perhaps the Hard Rock Cafe should look into this along with the smaller neon logo we just shared above.
No one appearing tonight. No one coming soon. Sadness.
To learn more about the partnership between the Blue Note Media Group and Sony Music please click HERE to access the post that we shared about the news.
Official Website: http://www.bbkingblues.com