Byline: David Hinckley
NEW YORK _ For obvious and legitimate reasons, Hilly Kristal was best known for nurturing the mid-`70s underground musical explosion thrown together under the umbrella of "punk" or "new wave."
CBGB, the club he ran for 33 years at 315 Bowery, seeded that music as surely as the Waldorf-Astoria spawned the Waldorf Salad.
But CBGB never would have happened at all if Kristal, who died Tuesday at 75 after a long battle with lung cancer, hadn't understood and applied a larger and even more admirable lesson: All good music is worth hearing.
He grew up listening to classical music and opera. He studied classical violin and popular voice. By the ...