Hilly Kristal, the man who in 1973 opened a club in a disgruntled section of New York’s Bowery that would become ground zero for the American punk-rock movement with its name emblazoned on every third T-shirt you see today, died yesterday at 75 of complications from lung cancer. Not too surprising an illness for a man who spent night after night for 30 years in the dank, smoke-filled landmark he named CBGB, ironically an acronym for Country, Blue Grass and Blues, not a note of which was ever played on the premises. “He created a club that started on a small, out-of-the-way skid row, and saw it go around the world,” said musician Lenny Kaye. “It was a real rallying point for musicians trying something different.” CBGB’s unknown “headliners” (Talking Heads, Dead Boys, The Ramones, Television, Blondie, The Stooges, Shrapnel, Patti Smith, etc) flew in the face of disco, which was reigning supreme at the time, and literally drowned it out with LOUD FAST RULES!! The last few years saw Kristal, owing $300,000 in back rent, fighting a losing battle with the building’s landlord to keep the club open; he eventually lost his least earlier this year. At the club’s boarded-up storefront this morning, a spray-painted message read, “RIP Hilly, we’ll miss you, thank you.”