In the Land of Punk Fred Conrad/The New York Times Punk, Live: A 1977 photo shows the Dead Boys playing at CBGB's on the Bowery. CBGB was going down to Georgia. So was I. XLrator Media Punk, Recreated: In the new film "CBGB," the Dead Boys include, from left, Justin Bartha as Stiv Bators, Rupert Grint as Cheetah Chrome and Bronson Adams as Johnny Blitz. It was the spring of 2012, and I had just read that the movie director Randall Miller and the actor Alan Rickman would be in Savannah to take the legend of the New York punk club CBGB to the world. Why not check this out while I was there? The bar that Hilly Kristal (its founder, played by Mr. Rickman) had imagined as a folk spot in 1973 had instead become the showcase for the likes of the Ramones and Talking Heads, the vanguard of a rebellious rock movement that would be known as punk and then new wave. CBGB symbolized a battle between this edgy surge and the rock that had lost its roll. I knew where I stood and wanted to know where the movie would. Many of my friends, fellow baby boomers, didn't like punk, didn't understand it or both. To me it was catchy choruses, wild guitars and much more. It reinvented rebellion, laughed at corporate rock. It embodied why we had become fans - and players - in the first place. We were driven by rock. Many of us were musicians, some were drummers, all were critics. Being a bass player, I was sort of in the first grouping, and definitely in the last. In New York, and on my Long Island, radio was where rock lived, specifically WNEW-FM. But the station was showing its years. One Friday, Scott Muni seemed to take a step forward on the "Things From England" segment of his show. He introduced the Sex Pistols! He played "God Save the Queen." It roared, snarled, thrilled. It faded out at the first chorus! The Professor, as Mr. Muni was known, couldn't take it. He shut it down and out. Just as Elvis Presley's 45s were shattered on the air, and Beatles LPs were burned in bonfires, Mr. Muni and WNEW had turned their back on rock "n" roll. And now I on WNEW. Like the public, most of my pals shared Mr. Muni's view. The rest of us turned to the Bowery. The cultural association that had begun in the 1960s with Andy Warhol's anointing of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground at the Electric Circus had moved to the new club, CBGB. There you could hear the yelping guitars and howling lyrics of Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell's band Television. There, too, was Patti Smith, a close friend of the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, and Talking Heads. Video by PRI Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer" Live at CBGB, 1975 Soon after he helped open the doors of CBGB, Mr. Hell left Television, and he canonized everyone associated with the movement as the "Blank Generation," the rootless, searching pack that had found its place there among the poets and painters, drunkards and addicts of the East Side. I was a little late to the Beatles invasion; maybe this was My Generation. My friends had formed a group and played at CBGB on open mic nights. I once heard them on the radio while driving. The excitement was tempered by a tear. That could have been me. Still, helping to load in and out, being alone with them in CBGB, sort of made up for it. And later, when another friend started playing there, I would tag along, taking in the soundcheck done on the most powerful P.A. ever assembled, walls just plastered in stickers, the bathroom just covered in ... stickers. I tried to look as if I belonged, and maybe I did. So it was with this insight I made my journey into Savannah in search of "CBGB." There were many observers, but they did not seem hell bent for leather; it turns out we were right next to Paula Deen's restaurant. I had to shove aside its customers to get a look at the reimagined Ramones. The Ramones were my favorite. They were everybody's. They were the only band that muttered. I had seen the Ramones not at CBGB, but on Long Island at our beloved My Father's Place in Roslyn, which had featured acts like Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne but was giving way to punk and new wave acts like Blondie, Squeeze and even the Police. The sound of New York thrived on the Island. The Ramones made it official. And I loved them for it. Under the hot Georgian sun, I peered upon these leather-clad lads and believed. They looked right. They were height accurate. Joey was towering; Tommy, tiny. They stood around looking as if they had nothing to do. Like real Ramones. And where there were Ramones, there was hope. I did not know it then, but I would soon be living where they once roamed.