Popular Music

Did you miss CBGB?
I did. Well, I should say I missed it in its heyday.

By the time I landed in New York City, the iconic establishment was just a tired bar living off the fumes of its former glories. Listen, I am certainly glad to have made the pilgrimage a handful of times and experienced it well before John Varvatos moved in, but the energy and congregation of locals that helped cultivate a movement of music that still resonates to this day was long gone. All that remained were the aromatics of misguided booze, beer, and smokes... and, of course, their infamous urinals. So before the tears (of regret or nostalgia) begin to well up, we have a way to relive this vibrant 

This has been the come back year for mega superstar Jennifer Lopez. Not only has she graced the pages of some of the top-selling magazines such as Vogue, People and Glamour to name a few, she has also become a judge in the award winning reality television show American Idol.

The photographs that you see here were taken on a tour of the Bridgeport, CT Columbia Records factory in 1946. They provide a fascinating look at how music was reproduced in those days. The records we see being made, inspected, and shipped in these images are 10 inch discs that would have been played at a speed of 78 RPM. Today collectors refer to them by their speed - "78s" - but back then they were simply called records.

What do The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, Elvis Presley, The Velvet Underground, and Woodstock have in common?  They were cultural symbols and products of the Sixties. The Sixties gave birth to a popular culture in film and music that reflected and influenced the decade's social upheavals: the rise of Cold War politics, civil rights movements, student protests, and the Vietnam war all profoundly affected American society and culture. 

When I was a child in the 1960s and 70s, I was convinced that everybody was having a good time but me... As it turns out, I was right!

Here at Dongan Hills Library, we have formed a #WUSEUM... a collection of material relating to all things Wu-Tang Clan. The collection of CDs, DVDs, and books associated with the Staten Island rap group is curated by Dongan Hills Library staff members Imer Ardolic and Steve Herman. Many of the items in our #WUSEUM are highlighted in this list!

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Until the advent of recorded sound, the indigenous music of England, Scotland, and Wales was passed down through the generations by word of mouth.

I met this girl, when I was 10 years old
And what I loved most, she had so much soul
Lyrics from "I Used to Love H.E.R." by Common

Former Actor and California Governor, Ronald Wilson Reagan was the President, while in New York City Edward Irving Koch was nearing the end of his Mayoral run. The Cold War was nearing its end and for many kids growing up in the South Bronx in the early '80s, there were more important things to worry about, than what Communists were doing on the other side of the globe. Crack Cocaine and HIV/AIDS had their grip on nearly every inner city community across the country and ruined households. Gun related 

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of the great music that library users have suggested we acquire!

Provided are some great preview tracks for each. Just click on the titles to be taken to the Catalog.

Personal heartache and loss seem to be in the news a lot this week, and all of the world knows why. New Yorkers need no reminder, yet some music can’t seem to help but recall moments of heartache. The best music rises above and creates beauty, like the Eels masterpiece Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

The New York Public Library's Office of Central Collection Development fields dozens of requests to purchase new material from our patrons each month. It is a great way to enrich our collections and cover lesser-known titles and areas of interest.

I have the pleasure of fielding those requests for music and have been introduced to some great new music this way… music I would not have known about otherwise. This list is a monthly compilation of my own personal favorite patron requests for music. I hope you will check out some of this great music your fellow library users have suggested the Library acquire!

Nick Tosches is the author of In the Hand of Dante, Hellfire, Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, The Devil and Sonny Liston, Trinities, and numerous other books, poems and articles, some of which have been collected in the 30-year retrospective anthology, The Nick Tosches Reader. On Friday September 9th, Nick Tosches will give a rare in-person reading after-hours in the main reading room of the Jefferson Market Branch Library in celebration of his new release on Kicks Books Save the Last Dance for Satan. Doors open at 8pm.

Slam poetry is a new and unique development in modern literature. Activism through poetry, however, has been around for as long as the art form itself has. I’ve never had a cup of coffee and talked shop with any of the Urban Word Masterpoets, but I’d love to. I want to share some of the history and tradition of activism in African-American art and culture. Best of all, books and CDs of all of the artists mentioned here are available at your local NYPL. If a library doesn’t have a copy on the shelf, you can always request materials be sent to your local branch at catalog.nypl.org or nypl.biblicommons.com.

Years have passed since my younger self first had his heart broken and thought for sure the world itself would never survive the trauma. It did, yet I am still amazed at just how intensely the heart can feel. I don't know how that works, that palpable knot you can get in your chest when experiencing emotion. There must be some biological explanation. The other internal organs don’t feel much if at all, unless something is seriously wrong with them. But emotions can manifest as an actual physical sensation, one that we acknowledge when we say something is "heartfelt." And I suppose this is how the heart came to be symbolic of love, because that is where you feel it; 

Hey... looks like that soft-hitting journalist is back at it again! You better watch out! I heard her articles are like cotton candy — they're sweet but they don't exactly leave you satiated.

Jennifer Jane from down on the lane is here again with everyone's favorite anarchist, Bobby Pins! Today's interview is based on a photo of Pins in a KISS costume. Is he a young boy struggling with fandom or a future leader of America?

Jefferson Market Library's Summer Art Display, Valhalla Hospital: The Art of the Moody Wallen Band, exhibits over 50 line drawings, watercolors, acrylics, and oil paintings throughout the entire building, as well as a visual installation display and rotating video program every Thursday from 5 to 6 p.m. through August 18, inside the program room.

I’ve had a long-standing fascination with bands that go through dramatic style shifts, bands whose evolutionary stages must be discovered by digging through their back catalog like some fossil-rich strata of sedimentary rock, revealing forms very different from what is more currently known.

When Bill German was a teenager, he created a zine about his favorite band, The Rolling Stones, called Beggars Banquet. The year was 1978, and little did he know, but the pages he was diligently printing at his Brooklyn High School would later lead him to become the band’s official historian for over two decades. He traveled the world with them, stayed at their homes, witnessed their concerts, recording sessions, and in-fights and lived to write a book about it: Under Their Thumb. Saturday May 21st 2pm at Tompkins Square Library, Bill German will share humorous Stones anecdotes and never before seen photographs.