CBGB Festival: Seymour Stein to Be Honored, Viacom’s Van Toffler to Give Keynote

This year’s CBGB Music & Film Festival has announced that Seymour Stein will be honored with the inaugural CBGB Icon Award and that Van Toffler, former president of MTV Networks and current president of Viacom’s Music and Logo Networks, will deliver the keynote address at this year’s confab, scheduled for Oct. 9 to 13 in New York.

The Icon Award was created to reward those who support artists and music in truly meaningful ways. “For the first ever CBGB Icon Award, there was really only one possible choice, and that is Seymour Stein,” reads the official announcement. “Seymour’s career in the record industry stands alone as something truly amazing. One must applaud the fact that he took so many of the early CBGB bands like the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads out from the Bowery to successes beyond measure. We are humbled that Seymour has agreed to accept this award on Oct. 8.”

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Now in its second year, the CBGB Music & Film Festival aims to be New York’s largest-ever showcase of music, film, art, social awareness, and entertainment industry workshops and conferences. Last year’s fest counted 125 speakers and approximately 300 artists over four days of events in July, which culminated in free concerts in Times Square and at Central Park’s Summerstage featuring Superchunk and Guided by Voices, respectively. Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic was the keynote speaker, and Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses made an appearance at the Times Square stage.

This year the organizers announced that some 500 artists will play in over 175 venues in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The event will also see roughly 125 speakers and 100 films, for a total of 700 live events. Sponsors for this year’s fest include Fender and Netflix.

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One of the 2013 edition’s centerpieces is the premiere of CBGB, a film about the legendary New York punk rock club and the fest’s namesake. Throughout the night of Oct. 8, the festival will take over the entire Sunshine Theater on Houston Street, where the film will screen in each theater.

CBGB: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, featuring the Talking Heads, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Dictators and other bands who played significant roles in the New York rock scene of the mid-1970s, will also be released on Oct. 8, on Omnivore Recordings.

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