Marquee moon, paperback/bryan waterman

Two kids in their early twenties walk down the Bowery on a spring afternoon, just as the proprietor of a club hangs a sign with the new name for his venue.

The place will be called CBGB which, he tells them, stands for ``Country Bluegrass and Blues.

`` Thats exactly the sort of stuff they play, they lie, somehow managing to get a gig out of him.

After the first show their band, Television, lands a regular string of Sundays.

By the end of the summer a scene has developed that includes Tom Verlaines new love interest, a poet-turned-rock chanteuse named Patti Smith.

American punk rock is born.

Bryan Waterman peels back the layers of the origin myth and, assembling a rich historical archive, situates Marquee Moon in a broader cultural history of SoHo and the East Village.

As Waterman traces the downtown scenes influences, public image, and reputation via a range of print, film, and audio recordings we come to recognize the real historical surprises that the documentary evidence still has to yield.