Muse du Jour: David Bowie’s Real ‘Lady Grinning Soul’

No one could shake it like Claudia Lennear. Or sing, for that matter. The 1960s-70s vocalist backed some of the music industry’s greatest talents, from Ike and Tina Turner to Joe Cocker; George Harrison to Stephen Still, but emerged as a powerhouse performer in her own right. “A tour de force from start to finish,”…

Don’t Be a Tourist in New York: The Soundtrack

Of course Don’t be a Tourist in New York comes with its own soundtrack! It’s less about the Franck Sinatra clichés, and more about the sounds of gritty New York in seventies and the folk singers that flocked to the East Village in the 1960s. You’ll also find plenty of talent born and bred in…

The Most Famous Band You’ve Never Heard Of

Whether you know it or not, you have definitely heard them play. Popular music of the 1960s was dominated by young bands like The Beach Boys, The Mamas & the Papas and The Monkees – bands that didn’t play their own records. Sometimes, the only members of famous bands to appear on their own records…

She Played the World’s Most Unappreciated Music, but looked Fabulous Doing it

First things first: it’s not like we hate the accordion. We like it on the occasional metro platform, and we love to hear it in a distant summer breeze by the Seine. Few things are as effective at stirring up good ‘ole Parisian nostalgia, even after all these years. It’s just, well, a lot. It…

So Anaïs Nin Was Also an Electro “DJ”

Anaïs Nin is our favorite breed of artist: the kind who just can’t be bound to a single era, movement, or category. Diarist? Definitely. Muse? To many, most notably American novelist Henry Miller. Yet her oeuvre spans a good portion of the 20th century, and includes everything from those notorious diaries (about bohemian Paris in…

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Her Tiny Apartment is New York’s Most Secret Jazz Club

For the past 25 years, Marjorie Elliot has been hosting free jazz concerts out of her New York apartment every Sunday for strangers. While serving up some of the best jazz in the city from her parlour, Harlem’s secret jazz queen of Sugar Hill is single-handedly upholding the musical legacy of a neighbourhood that nurtured legends…

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The Revolutionary ’70s Girl Group That Swept Bowie off His Feet

“They were one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time,” David Bowie told Rolling Stone magazine in 1999. They were called “Fanny,” and they were a breath of fresh air in an industry where few women, let alone all-girl groups, were given the space to rock out. Fanny saw that space, and claimed…

The Secret Symphonic Stage Forgotten 40 Feet Below a Local Piano Shop

Boston has its own phantom of the opera: a vast and forgotten 120 year-old concert theatre buried 40 feet below street level. One of the city’s best-kept secrets, the sleeping concert hall reminiscent of Italian Renaissance style, has been closed for more than 70 years, hidden away from the public below the unassuming old storefront of piano seller M. S…

The Jim Morrison Ghost Hangouts of LA

The year was 1969 and The Doors were gearing up for the release of their fifth album, Morrison Hotel. Driving around Los Angeles in a VW van, as only Jim Morrison would, the band and their photographer were location scouting for the album’s cover shoot when they came upon the Morrison Hotel at 1246 South Hope Street…

The Beatle that Got Fired

If you’re not a mega Beatles fan, or particularly well-versed in early Beatles history, that handsome chap on the drums there in a line up of teenage Greasers, might not look so familiar. That’s Pete Best, the original drummer for the iconic band, who was sacked under the direction of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison in 1962…