How to use this Page

Profiles in History is a huge movie memorabilia house and they’re having a HUGE three day auction that includes some amazing old movie costumes that you would never have thought even still existed. Like Tom Tyler “Captain Marvel” costume from the 1941 Adventures of Captain Marvel serial. Starting bid: $10,000 OR Dick Purcell’s “Captain America” […]

Fin de siècle Hungary was a progressive country. It had limited sovereignty as part of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, but industry, trade, education, and social legislation were rapidly catching up with the Western World. The emancipation of Jews freed tremendous energies and opened the way for ambitious young people to the professions in law, health care, science, and engineering (though not politics, the military, and the judiciary). Excellent secular high schools appeared challenging the already established excellent denominational high schools.

The post Beyond Budapest: how science built bridges appeared first on OUPblog.

By Liz Wollman

Colony Records, which will close on Saturday, September 15th after 64 years of business, is no mere record store. A cavernous, crowded, and never particularly tidy place, Colony has kept one foot firmly in its Tin Pan Alley past, and the other in its media-saturated present. The largest and easily most famous provider of sheet music in New York City, Colony also houses cassettes, CDs, DVDs, karaoke recordings, an absolutely enormous collection of records, and all kinds of memorabilia: pop music action figures and Beatles mousepads; signed, fading photographs of A-, B-, and C-list celebrities from every decade that the store has been open; novelty key chains and promotional buttons from countless Broadway musicals; old concert programs, playbills, and t-shirts; Ramones coffee mugs and “Glee” lunchboxes; and locked shrines in dank corners, filled with dusty Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley collectibles. The staff, depending on whom you talk to, is comprised either of snobbish, standoffish jerks or brilliant, walking encyclopedias who can help you locate a piece of sheet music within seconds of your humming a few notes from the song in question, no matter how obscure. I suppose that genius and churlishness, just like Tin Pan Alley and rock and roll, are hardly mutually exclusive; the owners’ understanding of this is, in the end, likely why Colony managed to last as long as it did.

Photo by William Ruben Helms. Used with permission.

Colony Sporting Goods became Colony Records when its owners, Harold S. (“Nappy”) Grossbardt and Sidney Turk, took it over in 1948. Their sons, Michael Grossbardt and Richard Turk, are the current and will be the last owners. Initially located at 52nd Street and Broadway, Colony moved in 1970 to the Brill Building, at Broadway and 49th Street, where it has remained. On a typical day, visitors to the store include tourists from all over the world, members of the theater industry, professional and amateur musicians, and record and memorabilia collectors. Countless celebrities have patronized Colony in its six decades: Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Elton John, Neil Diamond, and Jimi Hendrix. The bizarrely image-conscious Michael Jackson used to make furtive visits via a back entrance, specifically to buy up enormous amounts of his own memorabilia. According to lore, both Bernadette Peters and Dusty Springfield decided to become entertainers after merely walking by the store and hearing music emanating from it. When James Brown visited, he apparently exclaimed, “This smells like a music store!”

He’s right; it does. And before paying my last visit to Colony this past week, I’d completely forgotten what a music store smells like. Also, what one looks like and feels like.

I am no stranger to Colony. I’ve bought plenty of sheet music from them in the 25 years that I’ve called myself a New Yorker. In that stretch of time, I have been, at various times and sometimes simultaneously, a reasonably good vocalist, a truly terrible pianist, a middling guitar player, and a music scholar who writes frequently about the post-1960 stage musical. I’m not an atypical patron, I think. In the weeks since news of Colony’s closing broke, I’ve heard plenty of people mention that they used to go there regularly when they dabbled in trumpet or in cello, or taught guitar or voice lessons, or before they decided to quit pursuing a career in the theater, or before Amazon started carrying everything they needed.

Yet despite how much it has served us New Yorkers — not to mention the millions of tourists who stroll, sometimes maddeningly slowly, through Times Square at some point during their visit here — I wasn’t terribly surprised by the news that Colony had fallen prey to declining sales, the Internet, and (the final straw) a landlord who plans to quintuple the rent of the store. None of this is shocking, especially when it comes to commercial real estate in Manhattan, which at this point heavily favors conglomerates. Really, the big news to me, at least initially, was not that Colony was closing. It is that Colony has managed to stay open for so very long.

Think about it: Colony opened in 1948. During the 1950s, rock and roll arrived, purportedly to destroy Tin Pan Alley in one fell swoop. During the 1960s, again purportedly, young people en masse abruptly turned their backs on the musical tastes of their elders. During these decades, Colony only grew in size — —so large, in fact, that its owners had to relocate. Its move, in 1970, coincided with one of the darkest periods in New York City’s history. Mired in financial crisis, and inching dangerously close to bankruptcy, New York was hardly a happy place in the 1970s. Times Square, Colony Records’ new home, had become internationally notorious — a sleazy, crime-ridden example of everything that had gone wrong with the urban jungle.

And yet Colony survived it all. It outlasted Beatlemania, psychedelia, disco, punk, hair metal, and hip-hop, MTV, VH1 and the first two decades of the Internet. It outlasted Napster and the dot-com boom. It outlasted Tower Records, HMV, Patelson’s, and Footlight Records. Arguably, it even outlasted, for a while at least, the neighborhood around it; Times Square was given a Disneyfied “facelift” in the early 1990s, which has resulted in a more tourist-friendly and seemingly safer, if also increasingly generic and corporate urban environment. Since it first opened in the postwar era, Colony has grown with and adapted to the times in ways that none of its past competitors managed. My initial reaction, then, was merely to praise Colony — not to mourn it for a second — because in the end, sixty years is a pretty impressive run for a family-owned business in the middle of Times Square.

But then I went to visit, and my logic gave way to a surprisingly emotional wave of nostalgia.

James Brown was right: it’s the smell of the place that gets you first — a mix of old, comfortably dusty things; of vinyl and paper and cool, musty formica. The sounds, too: a mix of Beatles songs blasted through the speaker, competing with several languages being spoken by as many tourists. “Look, honey, a Lady Gaga backpack!” a woman with a thick Long Island accent shouted down the aisle at her absolutely mortified pre-teen son. A man in a suit and sunglasses paced back and forth through the brass section while he talked shop on his phone. “We need to give them more bang for the buck this year,” he said. “Maybe we could get another few animals up on the stage this time around?” As “Strawberry Fields” came on over the speakers, I wandered through the aisle of picked-over cassette tapes, passed a group of Italian women looking at Beatles memorabilia, and found a huge basket of promotional pins from past Broadway musicals. I grabbed three, almost at random, from shows that all flopped at least a decade ago: Nick and Nora, Mayor, James Clavell’s Shogun: The Musical. The producers of those shows would have killed for even a fraction of the run that Colony has had.

Photo by William Ruben Helms. Used with permission.

I was about to leave, but then I started rifling through music books for the sake of rifling through music books. New ones, used ones, ones for woodwinds, piano, violin, voice, and guitar. They are, I am sure, all available online should I ever decide to become a terrible violinist or a horrible oboeist. But wandering through so much sheet music, being able to reach out and touch it, page through it, admire the quality of the paper is — much like spending an hour or two in a store flipping through records, or cassettes, or CDs — something I’d completely forgotten the pleasure of. I’ve spent a great deal of my life killing time in stores like these. I miss them, even as I understand that times change and modes of commerce with them. The automats are gone, too, from Times Square. So are the dime museums, the grindhouses, the arcades and the penny restaurants, and yes, the notorious if occasionally hilarious XXX theaters (a favorite marquis post from the early 1980s: “Hot As Hell! A Potent Groin Grabber!!”). I am sure that whatever chain store opens up in the place of Colony — be it a Gap, an Urban Outfitters, or a particularly snazzy Applebees — will, someday, also eventually close up shop.

I ended up purchasing the three pins, along with two used books of classic rock and pop songs “for very easy guitar,” which is about my speed these days. Warren, the longtime Colony employee who rang me up, gave me one of the pins for free, and then called my attention to the song that had come on over the speakers. “Man, this is the Beatles before they even sounded like the Beatles, you know?”

“Sure,” I replied, snapping out of my fog of nostalgia to focus on his. “Because it wasn’t their song, right? It was one of the songs they covered. It was originally by — by –”

“It’s ‘Matchbox,’” he said. “Carl Perkins. 1955? No. 1956.”

I chuckled. “Thanks.” I said, taking my bag and preparing to leave Colony for the last time, and realizing that my eyes were welling up. “For everything. I’ll miss you.”

He didn’t look surprised at all. “I know,” he said, gently. “We’ll miss you, too.”

Elizabeth L. Wollman is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College in New York City, and author of Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City and The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig. She also contributes to the Show Showdown blog.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only music articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
View more about this book on the  

Ours is probably the only household on the block with no cell phone and cable or satellite TV. Our Internet service clunks along at DSL speed--which means slow--although we did succumb to wireless, which is great for early Sat. mornings out on the patio, surfing the Web.

Consequently, much of 21st Century tech has bypassed me. No apps for an IPhone I don't have, etc. So, when I got word from Drollerie Press that my short story Memorabilia had been accepted for their anthology Needles & Bones, this segment made me realize how behind the times I was: "N&B will be available in PDF, Microsoft Reader format, Mobipocket format, ePUB, Sony Reader, and HTML reader for Windows."

My ignorance began after the word PDF. Drollerie's editor Deena Fisher asked which format I wanted. I didn't know what to tell her, nor which format might one day be of use to me.

Anyway, here's where you, the La Bloga reader, can become the beneficiary of my technological uncouthness. I'll run a contest for a week and the winner will receive a copy of Needles & Bones in whatever format he, she or it desires. Before I explain the contest rules, here's a bit about the book so you can decide if it's your copa de té.

Blurb from the publisher:
"Needles & Bones is a collection of poems and short fiction by a double handful of brilliantly creative artists-with-words. It begins gently, with fairy tales, but its tendrils of surreality spread from the stories of our childhood, into our adult world, and on to places beyond our own. We visit heaven, and hell, and places we might never imagine, peopled by creatures who are only sometimes like us."

There's also a link about the authors, and you'll find that these are twenty-two contributions from a great pool of talented and well-published novelists, poets and short story authors. To get a better idea, you can read two excerpts if you go to Drollerie's website. Or you can buy it for the strange price of just $8.46.

My story Memorabilia uses a premise from the epilogue:
“Surely all material things have a form of sentience, even the inorganic: surely they all exist in some subtle and complicated tension of vibration which makes them sensitive to external influence and causes them to have an influence on other external objects, irrespective of contact.” [from “Edgar Allan Poe”, Studies in Classic American Literature, by former N.M. resident D.H.Lawrence, 1923]

If that doesn't pique your interest, I'll say Memorabilia is the crazy story of Tomás Chaneco Martinez, a near-immortal Aztec shaman-sorcerer, who finds himself in contemporary, rural, northern New Mexico. He's gotta clean out decades' worth of knick-knacks that somehow found their way into his adobe. It seems that his nemeses, some ancient dragons, have taken possession of the things and are threatening to disturb more than his sleep. What starts out as a spring housecleaning turns into a series of fantastical encounters that Harry Potter would never have survived. Anyway, if you enjoy fantasy, dragons, azteca lore, No. New Mexico, and maybe a little humor, I expect you'll like this one.

Now for the contest:
Compose a 50-word (more or less, but not much more) synopsis of what a book entitled Agujas & Huesos (needles & bones) might be about. Everything is up to you--any genre, any authors you want to include, any hyperbole you care to wield. Do it scholarly, humorous, satirical, in Spanish--whatever. "Best" synopsis wins. Post your entry by clicking the Comments section below. Must be posted by Friday, midnight, June 26th, 2009. No more than two entries per person, please.

P.S.: In the event my fellow La Bloga contributors enter, they won't be destined to win.

Rudy Ch. Garcia

Hotel Aranyhomok - Kecskemet, Hungary

Beautiful luggage label for Hotel Aranyhomok. The hotel still exists.

image via itton.hu

Share This

Grand Prize goes to MidcenturyMaude 2nd Prize goes to Abby S

©2009 Grain Edit

Hotel deutschland, Leipzig, Germany luggage label

Check the bird in the logo. Very similar to the Braniff Airlines logo designed by Alexander Girard.

also worth checking:

Hotel Rigi Luggage label

Share This

©2008 Grain Edit

SAS Airlines dinner menu 1958

Dinner Menu celebrating the 1st Anniversary of the Scandinavian Airlines North Pole Route from Copenhagen to Tokyo.

Share This

©2008 Grain Edit

British Railways Services and Fares booklets for the Riviera (L) Sept 1962 (R) May 1959

Tony Hillman has put together an amazing collection of British Railways publicity material. His site features posters, menus, booklets, brochures, tickets, timetables and commercials. Put some time aside because there is plenty of good stuff too look at here.

(Huge round of thanks goes to Tika Viker-Bloss for sending this my way)

British Railways logo designed by Design Research Unit

Also worth checking:

British Airways Playing Cards.

Share This

©2008 -Visit us at Grain Edit.com for more goodies.

Brasil Mapa Geral - from 1969

I picked this up a couple of years ago and I flipped when I saw this cover. This puts to shame my US Texaco maps. Unfortunately, the map part is missing. All I have is the cover and a few bits of text that were inside. What secrets did that map hold? I bet it was a treasure map that led to a top secret cave filled with barrels of almond milk. Dang, I love that stuff.

Can anyone translate the text on the cover?

Also worth checking:

1960s Brazilian book cover designs by Gian Calvi

Share This

British Airways standard playing cards - 1970

Woah, British airways on acid! Anyone know who designed this deck of cards?

Share This

When my son was little he struggled with his temper. A doctor sat him down one day and told him about the Anger Monster. He explained how his behaviour was like a little Anger Monster who got really big when he allowed it. He told him that when this happened the monster was stronger and became the boss of him. Like most small children, my son didn't like anyone being the boss except him.

Wow, I have recently returned from a trip to Northern Territory I feel so inspired by the landscape and itching to paint. I was surprised I would enjoy this area so much. I had the most incredible trip with my daughter and fell in love with a man who has in recent months handed his life over completely to God’s will. This man loves us dearly and spoilt us with the very best accommodation and