Singing Streets

30/07/2024

Happy 66th Birthday to Kate Bush!

While still a teenager, the singer moved to Wickham Road in Brockley, living in the middle flat with one brother above her and another below!

She later moved to Wuthering Heights, in Eltham, where she lived for ~18 years.

Find these and dozens of other sites among the thousands of music related locations in Singing Streets, available for free from the App Store: http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

07/07/2024

A very Happy Birthday to Ringo Starr!

The Beatles drummer, leader of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, and all round good guy, was born Richard Starkey in an upstairs bedroom at 9 Madryn Street on 7 July 1940.

When he was a child, the Liverpool neighborhood was repeatedly hit with bombs during World War II.

Ringo’s parents, Richard and Elsie Starkey, rented the house for 10 shillings a week before moving to a smaller, less expensive house in nearby Admiral Grove around which time Ringo's parents separated.

His grandparents, with whom he would often stay, lived down the street at number #59.

Having sat derelict, the house was saved from demolition that had been planned by Liverpool City Council in 2012 and instead refurbished and sold.

Located a stone’s throw away was The Empress Public House, which was the family’s local pub. A photograph of The Empress pub was used for the Ringo Starr's first solo record, 'Sentimental Journey'. An album of standards, it was released on 27 March 1970.

Ringo’s mother Elsie worked here and, according to The Beatles Anthology book, he first heard the songs he recorded on the album when Elsie and her friends would return from the pub and have a sing-song.

The cover features Ringo in a tuxedo superimposed at the front-door of the pub and family members in the windows.

The pub closed in recent years but, as can be seen from the photos, the building has been put to good use.

We visited the area in 2022: https://youtu.be/eQJjhKChvWc?si=33W0sO8PfGYpCsKn

Singing Streets, available for free from the App Store, has hundreds of music related locations to visit in Liverpool, and thousands more in the US, UK and Ireland: http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

06/07/2024

On 6 July 1980, Bob Marley performed his final outdoor concert at Dalymount Park in Dublin.

During the concert, he referenced "the Irish struggle" before performing 'Redemption Song'.

Marley’s played his last gig proper at The Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA, in September 1980, before his death the following May.

Dalymount Park, home of Bohemian Football Club and one time home of the Irish international football team, also held Dublin's first major open air rock festival on 21 August 1977, at which Thin Lizzy and the Boomtown Rats played.

In January 2022, Bohemians secured the rights to use an image of Bob Marley on its 2022 away jersey - see: https://www.shop-bohemianfc.com/products/marley-away-jersey-2022

Singing Streets, available for download from the App Store, has hundreds of music related locations to visit in Dublin, and thousands more in the US and UK: http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

01/07/2024

Thanks to friend of Singing Streets and bassist extraordinaire Eddie Carlson for sending in these photos of sites in Brooklyn that he's discovered using our music location app.

* Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, a former movie theater that helped introduce Brooklyn to jazz, where artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis played. Rock and Roll package tours, featuring Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly also played.

* Man's Country was a former bath house where, according to guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, New York Dolls played their first paying gig on August 10, 1971. It's now St Charles Jubilee Senior Center.

* Saint Ann's School, is a private school in Brooklyn whose famous attendees include: MIKE D and Lucy Wainwright Roche.

* St Ann & the Holy Trinity Church is where Jeff Buckley made his public debut on April 26, 1991. He performed here at a tribute to his father, Tim Buckley. A few years earlier, Lou Reed and John Cale performed 'Songs for Drella', their Andy Warhol tribute here.

Find all these sites and more in the FREE Singing Streets app, available from the App Store.

27/03/2024

A big thank you to good friend of Singing Streets, Karl McDonald, for sending us his photos from when he recently used our app in Woodstock, New York:

* The famous Cafe Espresso folk club, where Bob Dylan is said to have written much of ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan’, now home to ‘ Folkadelic Acoustic Instruments’.

* The site of Joyous Lake (now SILVIA restaurant), a celebrated cafeteria and club where musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Tim Hardin, and Paul Butterfield would play.

* The Woodstock Playhouse, where THE BAND recorded ’Stage Fright’ in 1970. The theatre was established in 1938 and the current building, which opened in 2011 after a fire destroyed the original, remains fully operational.

* The location of Sled Hill Cafe, where Van Morrison would drink scotch with The Band’s Richard Manuel and recruited musicians for his album ‘His Band and the Street Choir’.

Singing Streets is a two-man operation that relies on our users to help drive content for the almost 5,000 (and growing) music related locations across the USA, UK and Ireland that are to be found in our free app (http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261).

We welcome any input from our users, particularly photographs of any locations that we may not have yet been able to visit in person (we will make sure to credit you any time we use them!).

23/03/2024

Last weekend, Singing Streets visited the great city of Manchester ahead of the release of Singing Streets Manchester later this year.

Among the music locations we visited were:

* The site of the legendary Haçienda night-club, run by Factory Records and the heart of the Madchester acid house and rave scene, but now an apartment block.

* The Lesser Free Trade Hall, where the S*x Pistols played their legendary June 1976 gig (arranged by Buzzcocks and famously attended by Morrissey, Tony Wilson, Martin Hannett, the future members of Joy Division and, em, Mick Hucknall) and site of the famous Bob Dylan “Live at the Albert Hall” concert. Now The Edwardian Manchester, hotel.

* The Boardwalk, where Oasis played their first ever gig (before Noel joined the band) and an early performance and rehearsal venue for The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Inspiral Carpets.

* The house Morrissey lived in Stretford, where Johnny Marr showed up at in May 1982 and asked him to form a band.

Singing Streets, available from the App Store for free, has thousands of music related locations to discover in London, New York, Dublin, Liverpool and Belfast, with more to come!

http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

25/12/2023

Born on Christmas Day 1957, Shane MacGowan would have been 66 today.

During a bitterly cold New York week in November 1987, The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl filmed the video for what would be the greatest of all Christmas songs.

The opening to the video, set on Christmas Eve in the drunk tank, was shot at the former 23rd precinct of the NYPD at 138 West 30th Street, a stone’s throw from the Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building.

The video features a young Matt Dillon, playing a police man, leading our hero into the cells for the night.

The building now houses the NYPD Citywide Traffic Task Force.

Happy Christmas from Singing Streets!

https://youtu.be/j9jbdgZidu8?si=xSMrlbHP_elgbNVJ

24/12/2023

In addition to over 1,700 New York locations, the new release of Singing Streets also has many new spots to discover around London, including:

The album cover locations of Rod Stewart’s ‘Gasoline Alley’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘The Song Remains The Same’.

The houses around the corner from each other in Hammersmith where S*x Pistols’ drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones grew-up.

Where Iggy Pop stayed when he wrote ‘Raw Power’ and where the Eagles lived when they were in London to record their debut album.

guitarguitar in Camden, storied live venues such as Brixton Jamm, and the site of Man In The Moon on King’s Road (where X-Ray Spec played early gigs).

Download now for free from the App Store: http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

08/12/2023

All these album cover locations are now in Singing Streets!

Download now at the App Store.

Lou Reed BOB DYLAN, The Clash Billy Bragg Wilco The Feelies Led Zeppelin NAS New York Dolls Ramones The Rolling Stones Bruce Springsteen Steely Dan The Strokes Bill Withers Neil Young

04/12/2023

Here are just a few of the sources that we used to populate our Music Locations Map for New York.

Thank you to all of the authors: Barney Hoskyns, Bruce Springsteen, Debbie Harry, Lizzy Goodman, Will Hermes, Crispin Kott, Tony Fletcher, Kembrew McLeod, Warren Zanes, Legs McNeil, Howard Sounes

01/12/2023

New York!

Singing Streets is here!

More than 1,700 music history locations in your phone.

Check into the locations you visit and earn virtual prizes.

Download now at the App Store.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

30/11/2023

On 30 November 1994, Tupac Shakur was shot five times and robbed in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios.

2PAC, who was 23 years old at the time, felt that the robbery and shooting had been a set-up. The incident has subsequently been seen by many as the event that ignited the East Coast/West Coast beef, which resulted in the death of two legends in hip hop.

Located on the corner of 7th Avenue and West 48th Street, just a block away from Times Square, Quad Studios remains in operation today.

Other acts that have recorded here include Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys, The Notorious B.I.G., L’il Wayne, Beyonce, Yoko Ono, Post Malone, Sam Smith, Cardi B, Coldplay, Jamie Foxx, Wu-Tang Clan, Boyz II Men, Shakira, Doves, Martha Wainwright, My Morning Jacket, Norah Jones, Missy Elliot, and The Killers.

Download Singing Streets from the App Store for free to discover over 1,700 New York music locations - available from tomorrow!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

27/11/2023

Our new release of Singing Streets will be out later this week.

Singing Streets New York contains 90 different Bob Dylan related locations including: Dave Van Ronk’s apartment on West 15th Street, where Dylan ( ) slept during his early days in New York, where Dylan signed his first contract with Columbia Records, and the sites of many of his most iconic album covers, such as “Highway 61 Revisited” (outside the Gramercy Park home of Albert Grossman) and “Oh, Mercy” (outside a Chinese restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen).

As well as over, 1,700 New York sites, the new release of Singing Streets has a total of almost 3,000 music related locations to discover in London, Dublin, Liverpool, and Belfast!

20/11/2023

As we get ever closer to the release of Singing Streets New York, today we visit one of our favourite locations, the Hotel Chelsea.

Built in the 1880’s, the Hotel reopened in 2022 as a luxury hotel after a number of years of uncertainty.

Bob Dylan lived here while he was writing 'Blonde on Blonde’ and ”Staying up for days in the Chelsea hotel, writing 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’” for his wife Sara. His friend and band-mate Robbie Robertson lived in the hotel at the same time.

Leonard Cohen stayed in room 424 in the Spring of 1968. He later wrote 'Chelsea Hotel #2' about his encounters here with Janis Joplin, when she was roaming the hotel looking for Kris Kristofferson and they “fell into each others arms through some process of elimination”.

In 1969, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe lived in #1017, the cheapest room at $55 per week. While here, Patti befriended eccentric music collector Harry Smith, who collated the Anthology of American Folk Music and lived in #705.

Also in 1969, The Stooges, having recorded only three songs for their debut record at The Hit Factory, wrote the rest of them at the Chelsea the night before the next session.

Alex Chilton stayed here in the mid ‘70s before joining Chris Bell in Big Star.

S*x Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, seemingly fatally stabbed his girlfriend 20-year-old Nancy Spungeon here in Room 100 on the hotel's first floor, waking on the morning of 12 October 1978 to find Nancy dead in the bathroom. Room 100 was demolished and incorporated into another unit to avoid having a pilgrimage spot for the morbidly curious.

The El Quijote restaurant downstairs, which first opened in 1930 and specialises in dishes from the Basque Country, is an extension of the Chelsea hotel's lobby and shares in the building’s rich history.

From their website: “Patti Smith, wrote in her memoir ‘Just Kids’ that she walked into El Quijote’s bar one afternoon in 1969 to find “musicians everywhere, sitting before tables laid with mounds of shrimp with green sauce, paella, pitchers of sangria and bottles of tequila.” Jefferson Airplane was there. So was Janis Joplin and her band. Jimi Hendrix sat by the door.”

Also in the building is ‘Chelsea Guitars’, which opened in the late 1980’s and has sold picks and strings to Patti Smith and Dee Dee Ramone, while Jeff Buckley was another customer. According to the shop’s website, there has been a music store in the Chelsea Hotel as far back as 1908.

19/11/2023

As we get closer to the release of Singing Streets New York, today we visit the iconic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.

Lou Reed lived in a loft above the bar for much of the 1970’s, and would play gigs at the nearby Bottom Line on West 4th Street.

Site of the famous Stonewall Riots, a milestone event in the gay rights movement in June 1969, the bar continues to thrive today.

In June 2019, Taylor Swift performed her song ‘Shake It Off’ when she made a surprise appearance here during the 50th anniversary Stonewall celebrations.

18/11/2023

Continuing the countdown to the upcoming release of Singing Streets New York, we have 300 West 23rd Street, where Suzanne Vega lived in the mid 1980’s.

Vega wrote the hit song ‘Luka’ while living here, about a boy that lived in the same building.

In 2014, she told the New York Post: “Luka was written on Eighth Avenue and 23rd Street, half a block away from the Chelsea Hotel.

I lived there for two years, and there was a Luka who lived upstairs from me. Unlike the song, he was not an abused child, just a kid I knew from the neighbourhood.

I was struck by his name because I couldn't tell from it what nationality he was. The song came out in '87, and I had moved away by then.

I know he knew about the song because my [former] roommate told me that he came to the door one day with a girl and said, 'Can you tell this girl that Suzanne Vega really did live here?'

If I had any idea how popular the song would be, I probably would have thought twice about using a real name."

The video for the song, which reached #3 in the US Charts, was shot at various locations around New York: https://youtu.be/VZt7J0iaUD0?si=XxyjMhdDTnDQXRDv

17/11/2023

On today’s countdown to the release of Singing Streets New York, we visit the Nancy Whiskey Pub on the corner of West Broadway and Lispenard in Tribeca.

The photograph used on the cover of Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five's 1983 single “Super Rappin' No. 2” was taken on the side of the building.

Established in 1967, the Nancy Whiskey remains in operation today, just one of the many, many pubs with to be found in Singing Streets (which is just as well as discovering our thousands of music related sites can be a thirsty business).

14/11/2023

For today’s countdown to the release of Singing Streets New York later this month, we visit the heart of Times Square, New York.

Now the Hard Rock Cafe, the Paramount Theatre opened in 1926 as a showcase theatre and the New York headquarters of Paramount Pictures.

Frank Sinatra played for four weeks at the Paramount, starting on 30 December 1942, which marked the beginning of "Sinatramania”. The Beatles played here for the final date of their first US tour, on 20 September 1964.

Time Square was also the site of the cover photo for PJ Harvey’s Mercury Music Prize winning album 'Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’.

13/11/2023

Continuing our countdown to the release of Singing Streets New York, this was the location of The Almanac House on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village.

The Almanac Singers, a collection of leftist, anti-war singers that included Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Millard Lampell, and Lee Hays, established their second ‘Almanac House’ at 130 West 10th Street in 1941 after having been evicted for not making the rent at their first location on East 12th Street.

Seeger and Lampell lived on the third floor, Guthrie on the second, and the first (ground) floor was used as communal space. They put on performances (hootenannies) in the building’s basement, for which they charged 35 cents.

The musicians released multiple albums during this time and Guthrie wrote ‘Bound For Glory’ while living here. It was also during this time that Seeger began to attract the attention of the FBI for his left wing politics.

The singers stayed here until their eviction in early 1942. Some of the residents during this period included Alan Lomax, his sister Bess, Butch Hawes, Agnes 'Sis' Cunningham, Burl Ives, Arthur Stern, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee.

The building is beside the fire house of Squad Company 18 of the NYFD and next to the entrance to #130 there is a plaque honouring those firefighters that lost their lives on 911. The plaque aptly contains a quote from a Walt Whitman poem.

12/11/2023

As we continue our countdown to the release of Singing Streets New York later this month, this was the location of Mastertone Studios in midtown Manhattan.

The studio, which started out on 8th Avenue, moved to 130 West 42nd Street in 1961.

Van Morrison spent a week here working on his amazing album ‘Moondance’ in the summer of 1969, before completing it at nearby A&R Studios. The version of ‘Glad Tidings’ that features as the album’s closer (as well as in a memorable episode of The Sopranos), was recorded during the sessions at Mastertone.

Other notable works that were recorded at Mastertone included Fred Neil's 1965 album ‘Bleecker & MacDougal' and parts of The Stooges self-titled debut album.

The studio closed in the late ‘70s. When we visited last month, WeWork had an office there, but not for long.

11/11/2023

In advance of the release of Singing Streets New York later this month, we are posting some of our favourite locations that we visited recently.

Janis Joplin briefly lived at 139 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village not long before her death in 1970.

The building dates back to the 19th century and was the location of Renganeschi’s Old Place, a restaurant beloved of artists and writers around the turn of the century.

Subsequently home to multiple bars and restaurants, playwright Edward Albee got the name for his play “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, after he saw the phrase scrawled in soap on a bathroom mirror here in 1954.

During Joplin's time here, a steakhouse called the Ninth Circle was located in the basement of the building. Owned by Mickey Ruskin of Max's Kansas City, Jimi Hendrix used to come here, as would Joplin herself, on occasion performing for customers.

10/10/2023

Singing Streets caught an amazing gig by the legendary Terry Reid last night at the Half Moon Pub.

This painting is prominently on their walls., can anyone name all of the musicians?

15/09/2023

Thrilled to see Phil Lynott in between two Singing Streets Dublin locations (The Academy and Wigwam) on Abbey Street last night. Directly across from the site of the Adelphi cinema, where The Beatles played their only ever shows in the city!

Available for free from the App Store, Singing Streets has hundreds of locations to find around Dublin, and thousands more in London, Belfast, and Liverpool: http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

06/09/2023

Over the weekend Singing Streets visited a Nirvana site in Shepherd's Bush.

See how we got on in the latest in our series of videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/

Singing Streets visited the Dalmacia Hotel in Shepherd's Bush, where Nirvana stayed in 1990.

12/08/2023

The Sugar Club in Dublin has a moving tribute to Sinead O’Connor, which Singing Streets visited yesterday.

Sinead played here on 8 November 2006, previewing songs off her album ‘Theology’. The concert was later given a limited release through her website as ‘Live at the Sugar Club’.

https://youtu.be/abUxePtuA1M

https://www.hotpress.com/music/sinead-oconnor-live-at-the-sugar-club-dublin-2895557

29/07/2023

Musician and author BP Fallon photographed his friend all over the world. Here are some of his favourite shots

23/07/2023

Some of the places we visited in last week ahead of the release of Singing Streets USA later this year include:

The site of Reciprocal Recording studio, where Nirvana recorded their first demo session in January 1988, returning a few months later to record their debut album ‘Bleach’.

The studio moved to this Ballard location in 1986 with bands such as Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, and Mudhoney also recording at Reciprocal. Reciprocal closed in 1991, subsequently becoming the rehearsal space for Death Cab for Cutie and later Fleet Foxes, and is now Hall of Justice Recording Studio.

The ‘Sub Pop on 7th’ shop of the iconic Sub Pop Records label.

WESTIN-Seattle, the album cover location of Modest Mouse's brilliant 1997 record ‘The Lonesome Crowded West’.

Eagles Auditorium (now Kreielsheimer Place, home of ACT Theatre), where The Doors, Janis Joplin, and the Grateful Dead all played, and Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on his only ever visit to Seattle.

Singing Streets, available for download for free from the App Store, has thousands of locations to discover in London, Dublin, Liverpool and Belfast, with thousands more across the US coming later this year!

http://apps.apple.com/ie/app/singing-streets/id1487395261

11/07/2023

Today Singing Streets took a trip to Aberdeen in Washington State to visit the childhood home of Kurt Cobain and Kurt Cobain Memorial Park.

Kurt moved to East 1st Street when he was two and a half years old. His mother Wendy continued living here until 2013.

Kurt Cobain Memorial Park is located a short walk away, on the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, where Kurt used to fish. The setting inspired songs such as ‘Something In The Way’ and is a moving tribute to him.

Singing Streets USA, coming later this year.

Nirvana

01/07/2023

A very Happy 78th Birthday to Debbie Harry!

Born on 1 July 1945, she formed Blondie with Chris Stein in 1974 and regularly played in New York’s legendary club CBGB.

She is still delighting folks on Blondie’s current set of dates around Ireland and the UK this summer, which conclude at the Dog Day Afternoon festival in Crystal Palace Park today.

Singing Streets USA, coming later this year!

25/06/2023

Happy 80th Birthday, Carly Simon!

In 1965, during an early visit to London, Carly rented the top floor of ‘Toad Hall’ at 6 Wilton Place in with her sister Lucy.

In her memoir, "Boys in the Tree”, Carly writes that she “loved it on first sight, even the five-flight walk up to our bedrooms overlooking Kinnerton Street”.

Later, in 1971, Carly was photographed for the cover of her second album, ‘Anticipation’, at the gates of Queen Mary's Garden in Regent's Park.

She wrote the album’s title track, which also uses a photo taken at the gates as the cover (with the B-Side 'The Garden'), while waiting on Cat Stevens to pick her up for a date.

Download Singing Streets from the App Store to discover thousands of music related locations.