A Brief Compendium of Lost Albums, Stolen Songs and Unreleased Music

If there is anything that can make a strident music fan salivate in anticipation, it’s the idea of an unreleased track or lost album from a favourite band. It’s like catnip for the musicologist and can become like a biblical quest for a lost chalice of sound for the collector of rare grooves and scrapped…

I Wish I Could’ve Partied with the Prince of Saint-Germain

If you were living in Paris during the years that followed World War II and liked to party, you’d better have known Boris Vian. In 1950, he wrote the original guidebook to bohemian Paris and pioneered a movement which brought back the city’s “joie de vivre” that had been lost during the German occupation. Along with Jean Paul-Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Boris…

Have you heard about the world of Habibi Funk?

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. Habibi Funk is one of the few indie record labels bringing the sound of the Arab music world to the west,…

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…

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…

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…

Forget Versailles, Tune into the Forgotten Château that Became France’s Abbey Road

Imagine the sweet sound of a duet between Elton John and Frédéric Chopin, or a Van Gogh painting interpreted in song by David Bowie. What if the lyrics for a Fleetwood Mac verse or a Pink Floyd anthem were ghost written by the famed 19th century female novelist George Sand? There’s only one place that…

Backstage with the Real “Almost Famous” Queen of Groupies

If someone told you their earliest romantic encounters were with David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Mick Jagger, you’d either slap them or roll your eyes. Unless that someone was Bebe Buell, of course. In the 1970s, the American model just so happened to be in the right place, at the right time, well, countless times, solidifying…

North Korea’s Most Popular Pop Group is Everything you Expected

You could say I got a little off-track from my usual internet route today and stumbled upon North Korea’s own K-pop girl band, Moranbong Band, which is the most popular musical group in the country. It is also, as far I can tell, the only musical pop group in the country. Consisting of 18 female members,…

Electro Queens and Digital Divas who Pioneered Electronic Music

There isn’t one clear inventor of electronic music, although if you start looking, you’ll find that an overwhelming number of early pioneers who shaped its history were women. On both a technical and creative level, women have and continue to revolutionalize electronic music. As the genre developed throughout the 20th century, a hidden wave of…