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Category / Movie / Music / Book Junkie

How to Introduce Agnès Varda to the Next Generation

Agnès Varda throughout her career was seen as belonging to the older generation. A pioneering photographer, writer, filmmaker and artist, at the beginning of her career and at barely 30 years old, she became known as the “grandmother of the New Wave.” But Varda was the cool kind of grandmother, the one with a thousand…

Guitars, Wash Boards, and Tea Chests: How Skiffle Became the 1950s Punk

Before rock and roll would sweep through the landscape and the consciousness of the youth, a forgotten musical genre held a nation in its grip. A rhythmic, urgent music of expression and movement that was simple and accessible due to the addition of improvised homemade instrumentation, it let anyone form a band, and many did. In…

Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Paris Catacombs

For our latest adventure on the Don’t be a Tourist in Paris web series, we go 30 feet beneath the city to discover the subculture  of iconic midnight movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show just in time for Halloween. Below ground, we’re in the subterranean cinema of Alexander J E Bradley a photographer, filmmaker and catacomb-dweller (aka. cataphile).…

From the Beatles to Britney Spears, a History of Hidden Messages in Songs

The history of backmasking goes back to the early 20th century with occultist Aleister Crowley, who in his 1913 book Magick, suggested thinking backward by “external means,” such as listening to a phonographic record in reverse. It started as a fun urban legend. Musicians recorded secret messages backwards, inserting them into their songs. The Beatles…

Before the music died, he recorded and rescued it for the ages

Perhaps you remember the feeling of unearthing a really great gem at the record store – a forgotten band from another time with an original sound that sends those feel-good electric impulses to your brain. Imagine making it your lifelong mission to find that feeling; following it far past the local record store, to the…

A Brief Compendium of Fascinating Archives to Explore

If there’s one thing we love, it’s sticking our nose where it doesn’t belong. Or at least, where others seldom dare to tread. Our jewel box of a planet is overflowing with secrets, stories, and forgotten treasures, and we like to try and keep a finger on the pulse of the best archives, vaults, and…

The Unsung Queen of Folk, Not Just Bob Dylan’s Girlfriend

The perfectly angelic voice of Joan Baez weaves through our guard to remind us of what has been lost or perhaps what should have been found. Laments for worlds lost or yet to come, Joan will forever remind us of our common humanity. Perhaps most poignant, her haunting rendition of The Night They Drove Old…

Tune into the Forgotten Dial-a-DJ Jukeboxes of Yesteryear

Isn’t she a beauty? I had one of those hallelujah moments while browsing the collectible pages of Ebay today when I came across this seldom seen “Empire State Building” jukebox circa 1935. Invented by Ken Shyvers, the same guy who invented pinball machines, the Shyvers Multiphone is about 50cm tall with a 19cm square base and…

Lost Films: Hitchcock, Gatsby and Oscar-winning Movies that Vanished

Who made the better Gatsby?  Did DiCaprio pull off a pink suit as well as Robert Redford did in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 adaptation? There is another version of The Great Gatsby, although we won’t be making any comparisons with it because the 1926 silent film by Paramount Pictures has simply ceased to exist. Very few are even…

Footnoted as Modigliani’s First Muse: The 13 Voices of a Modernist Pioneer

It’s the first decade of the twentieth century, and you’re in London reading the avant-garde weekly magazine, The New Age. A writer you’ve been enjoying, a women’s suffrage advocate named Beatrice Tina has been arguing, via the “Letters to the Editor” section, with someone called D. Triformis. But recently, they’ve managed to find some common…
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