The Bowery Boys: New York City History
PODCAST The rebirth of the East Village in the late 1970s and the flowering of a new and original New York subculture — what Edmund White called “the Downtown Scene” — arose from the shadow of urban devastation and was anchored by a community that reclaimed its own deteriorating neighborhood. In the last episode (Creating… Read More
The Broadway Musical is one of New York City’s greatest inventions, over 150 years in the making! It’s one of the truly American art forms, fueling one of the city’s most vibrant entertainment businesses and defining its most popular tourist attraction — Times Square. But why Broadway, exactly? Why not the Bowery or Fifth… Read More
The East Village nightclub Webster Hall reopens this evening with a concert by Jay-Z after an extensive interior renovation by new owner Barclays/Bowery Presents. Have tickets to tonight’s show? Then you’ll be able to judge for yourself whether the storied venue retains its “idiosyncratic grandeur.” The hall has had many facelifts over the past 133 years, evolving to mirror the… Read More
PODCAST How did one of the greatest composers of the 20th century end up buried in Queens in a pauper’s grave? Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime”, moved to New York in 1907, at the height of his fame. And yet, he died a decade later, forgotten by the public. He remained nearly forgotten and buried… Read More
THE FIRST PODCAST Imagine if we could hear the voices of Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria or Harriet Tubman? Believe it or not, somebody was making audio recordings as far back as the 1850s. Had these techniques been widespread, we might have had the words of those famous people preserved, as well as recordings from the Civil… Read More
The plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare, as the finest examples of the English written word, were also the first recorded sounds ever made. Â The first recording ever made at Alexander Graham Bell‘s Volta Laboratory in Washington DC in 1881 was that of Bell’s very own voice reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here’s another recording of Bell’s… Read More
PODCAST The musical story of the Cotton Club, the most famous (and infamous) nightclub of the Jazz Age. The Cotton Club, Harlem’s most prominent nightclub during the Prohibiton era, delivered some of the greatest music legends of the Jazz Age — Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, Ethel Waters, the Nicolas Brothers. Some of… Read More
The music industry is the focus of Martin Scorsese’s new HBO show Vinyl just as the mob-run liquor business was the focus of his last show Boardwalk Empire, but in many ways, the two are pretty much the same. Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) runs his record label American Century Records out of the Brill Building… Read More
On Sunday The Bowery Boys join up with The Ensemblist to present a special cabaret event at 54 Below — a tribute to the great St. James Theatre! Perhaps some of you may be asking — why do a live show about a individual theater? The St. James Theatre (246 West 44th Street) was prominently… Read More
PODCAST Grab your fedora and take a trip with the Bowery Boys into the heart of New York City’s jazz scene — late nights, smoky bars, neon signs — through the eyes of one of the greatest American vocalists who ever lived here — Billie Holiday. Eleanora Fagan walked out of Pennsylvania Station in 1929… Read More
Nina Simone was born on this date in 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina. She came to New York as a student of the Julliard School, but her unique blend of genres came from her experiences in the nightclubs and cabarets of Harlem and Greenwich Village. She wowed audiences with a memorable New York debut at the Village… Read More
A ton of people on-stage at the Harlem Opera House in 1907. During this period, it was owned by vaudeville impresario Keith Proctor and called Proctor’s Harlem Opera House. Pictures courtesy the Museum of the City of New York The Hotel Theresa, subject of this week’s podcast, had a rather unusual neighbor in its early… Read More
A Welcome Debut: Our podcast this week was on the history of New York University, an institution which spent decades in the Bronx neighborhood today called University Heights. When they returned downtown to Greenwich Village, the campus passed into the hands of Bronx Community College, a part of the City University of New York system.… Read More
WARNING The article contains a few spoilers about last night’s ‘Mad Men’ on AMC, so if you’re a fan of the show, come back once you’re watched the episode. Lusty groupies, ample drug intake, smoky hallways and deafening rock music. One might have thought last night’s ‘Mad Men’ — partially centered around the backstage antics… Read More
Girl gone wild: Madonna enjoys the video opulence of Private Eyes with former boyfriend and producer Jellybean Benitez, July 17, 1984 It’s 1984, and the hottest trend in American pop culture is the music video . MTV had debuted a channel of non-stop music videos in 1981, and just three years later, most new pop superstars were… Read More