CBGB has been the site of roughly 35,000 performances, most of them better than the one by the Zeppelin clones. Over the years the New York City dive has helped invent punk and new wave, served honorably during the grunge revolution and become arguably the most legendary rock club in the world. ID December, as CB’s turns 20, its most celebrated alumni will return to perform or to help emcee a month-long anniversary bash: David Byrne, Deborah Harry, Joan Jett, Ric Ocasek and Joey Ramone among them. CB’s will also showcase more recent grads, like Sonic Youth, Living Colour and the Lemonheads; there are even rumors the mighty Pearl jam and Guns N’ Roses may show up. Punk-inspired music runs riot on the charts today–the latest from both Pearl jam and Nirvana debuted at No. 1, and Guns N’ Roses just released a rambunctious album of covers called “The Spaghetti Incident?” The early CBGB bands are now forefathers. Says Ramone, “It makes you feel like Abraham Lincoln.”

Early next year the first CBGB franchise will open its doors in Miami Beach. Atlantic Records will re-release the long-out-of-print compilation “Live at CBGB’s.” And, later in 1994, Warners will distribute a live CD and a documentary dedicated to the club’s 20th birthday. Many, no doubt, won’t mind watching all the commotion from a comfortable remove. CBGB is not even a hole in the wall–it’s a hole in the earth. “Every new-wave Place was a dump,” says B-52 Fred Schneider. “At least CB’s had good graffiti.” Performances at the club can be transcendent, but wallflowers beware. in “Hannah and Her Sisters,” Dianne Wiest takes Woody Allen to CBGB, thinking he might enjoy some punk and cocaine. “Can’t you feel the energy?” Wiest shouts. “The room’s alive with positive vibrations!” Allen, nonplussed by the menacing band, shouts back, “I’m frightened! After they sing, they’re gonna take hostages!”

How did CBGB become Woody Allen’s idea of hell? In 1973, Hilly Kristal launched the place as a country-music joint. (The club’s full name, CBGB & OMFUG, stands for the following mouthful: Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gourmandizers.) Kristal, now 62, was a frizzy-haired ex-marine whose drink of choice is said to have been cognac and Fresca. He’d served in Korea, sung bass in the chorus at Radio City Music Hall and managed the venerable jazz spot the Village Vanguard. CB’s was born beneath a flophouse on Manhattan’s famously dismal Bowery. Early on, its patrons included derelicts and Hells Angels, whose headquarters was nearby. In his book about CBGB, “This Ain’t No Disco,” Roman Kozak calls the area “one of the few places in the Western world where the influx of punks and hard rockers actually upgraded a neighborhood.”

CB’s had a brief, undistinguished tenure as a country-music venue. In 1974, Kristal turned to rock and roll and, because there were virtually no other clubs for struggling bands, CB’s quickly became a hothouse for unsigned acts: the taut guitarband Television, the singer/poet Patti Smith, the minimalist Talking Heads, new wavers like Blondie and the B-52’s, breathless punks like the Dead Boys and the Ramones. Early audiences heard tell of rock lobsters, psycho killers and hearts of glass. Smith did her feminist extrapolation of Van Morrison’s “Gloria”; the Ramones sang tunes like “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment.” “We used to just hang out at CB’s because you never knew when you were going to catch something brilliant,” says David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads. “The music ranged all over the place. It was like Lollapalooza in a club.” No one cared that it was a dump. “It wasn’t like I was going to eat dinner off the stage,” says Joan Jett. “To me, the hotter, the better. If you don’t sweat when you play, something’s wrong.”

CB’s best bands were soon snatched up by major labels, but punk and new-wave clubs remained few and far between. “We tried touring the U.S. in 1977,” says Byrne, “and we were playing pizza parlors and Beefsteak Charlie’s.” The British punk invasion may have been imminent, but the unschooled CB’s sound still ran counter to the musical spirit of the times. “It created a whole new language,” says Ramone. “What was happening musically was journey and the Eagles and ‘Disco Duck.’ Cities across America had disco balls on the ceiling. That’s what we were up against.”

Now the punk esthetic has slipped into the mainstream. Eddie Vedder, of Pearl jam, can sing “Get out of my f—ing face” and set sales records. You’d think that groups like Pearl Jam would be too famous to bother playing CBGB again. After all, the club only has enough oxygen for 350 fans. But the anniversary offers an assurance to young bands whose careers have gotten too complicated: you can go home again. Fans can expect something greater still. They’ll get 20 years’ worth of rock and an occasion to ruminate on brain teasers like, Can we blame Madonna on Deborah Harry?

After 20 years Kristal still sits at a desk just inside CB’s door, kvetching about his rent, which reportedly jumped from $900 to $3,000 in the mid-’80s. Asked if CBGB has helped shape rock and roll, Kristal demurs, saying very, very quietly, “It pleases my ego to think so.” Others are willing to elaborate. “If there’d been no CBGB, the music might have died on the vine,” says Byrne, now a solo artist and the chairman of an imaginative world-music label, Luaka Bop. “A club owner says, ‘I’m going to let this stuff be heard,’ and all of a sudden the kids go home and write their asses off. They’re writing songs because they know those songs are going to get heard.” Even if, at first, they’ll be heard only by a bartender and his dog.