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In this episode, author Crispin Kott stops by the store to chat about music landmarks with Natalie and Tara. Learn more about Record Store Society, your new favorite music podcast.
Creators & Guests
What is Record Store Society?
It's time to visit your favorite local record store; a place where music fans spend countless hours flipping through records, discuss the minutia of favorite b-sides, best live albums, and anything else music-related. If you have any questions, you can always find Tara and Natalie behind the counter ready to give a recommendation or tell you about a recent discovery. Join Record Store Society, a music podcast, biweekly to see what’s new or just to hang around for some music talk.
0:00:21 - Tara
Hi Natalie, hey Tara, how's it going? Pretty good. How are you? I'm doing alright. Any new music plans for you coming up? I know you've always got something on the books, oh yeah always.
0:00:35 - Natalie
Well, I'm going to see Beyonce next week in Atlanta at Mercedes Bins, and then I actually just bought my flight to Chicago to see Peter Gabriel live.
0:00:52 - Tara
That's incredible.
0:00:53 - Natalie
When is that happening?
0:00:55 - Tara
At the end of September. That's going to be great. Have you seen both of these artists. Have you seen them before? I wouldn't be shocked. Both are first times for you. That's rare.
0:01:05 - Natalie
Yeah, I mean, and well, I don't think that Peter Gabriel's toured in many, many years Decades even Wow, lucky you.
0:01:15 - Tara
Well, make sure that you don't throw anything onto the stage, since that's all the rage now, apparently.
0:01:22 - Natalie
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh hi, welcome to the store. I'm Tara, I'm Natalie, we'll be over here If you need us. Just take a look around. Yeah, I saw that Cardi B video where she throws the microphone at that lady.
0:01:37 - Tara
I know it's insane. It's just happening so much. I don't know what's gotten into people these days. You know, I saw a clip there was a K-pop concert where somebody straight up put a baby on the stage and the baby was just crawling around on the edge of the stage and one of the poor girls the performers had to come and, like, pick the baby up and give it back. They're really getting out of control now. Oh my gosh. Yeah, but this Cardi B thing is ooh, she's getting sued.
0:02:02 - Natalie
You know Her aim was really good, though I have to say it's very impressive.
0:02:06 - Tara
It's very impressive.
0:02:09 - Natalie
Oh, hey, look who it is Hi.
0:02:11 - Crispin Kott
Hello.
0:02:12 - Natalie
It's Crispin Cutt. Author, music lover, indeed, how is it going?
0:02:17 - Crispin Kott
Very well, thank you, what are you doing in?
0:02:19 - Natalie
Atlanta, hanging out at our store.
0:02:21 - Crispin Kott
Yes, always looking for places to buy records.
0:02:24 - Tara
This is the place to be, yeah.
0:02:26 - Natalie
So you have a couple really awesome books Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to New York City and Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco in the Bay Area, plus the little book of Rock and Roll Wisdom. That's right. You should do a Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to the South.
0:02:44 - Crispin Kott
Well, if somebody wants to pay my partner and I to do it, we'll do it.
0:02:50 - Natalie
How much we're talking here. Maybe I could just jive you around and show you some spots. We got Graceland Muscle Shoals, sun Records.
0:02:58 - Crispin Kott
I've seen all of those places in person and they all live up to what I hoped I would see when I visit them.
0:03:04 - Natalie
Yeah, have you been to all of the places in your books?
0:03:07 - Crispin Kott
No, definitely not.
0:03:11 - Tara
Is that on your bucket list?
0:03:14 - Crispin Kott
No, some of them, I think, were probably of more interest to people who are fans of some of the artists that we have in there. Maybe we included that were not really part of my personal taste, but that have some historical significance. My partner took a lot of the photographs, particularly in the first book, so he visited more of them than I ever did.
0:03:36 - Natalie
The first one is the New York Book, or San Francisco.
0:03:38 - Crispin Kott
New York was the first one.
0:03:39 - Natalie
Yeah, okay. How did you come up with that concept? It's really cool.
0:03:43 - Crispin Kott
In 2009, late 2009, we went to an event at the New York Public Library. That was a velvet underground. It was a book launch for a book called New York Art, which is a big, thick compendium of ephemera and photographs and things. That kind of talked about their time in New York City, which was very brief, at least in the first instance as a functioning band, but we kind of listened to Lou Reed talking about walking by places and hearing people sing doo-wop on street corners and then that he worked in sort of like a factory for songwriters that was in Long Island cities, which is sort of like on the edge of Queens, between Queens and Brooklyn. We thought, you know, that's interesting. Where is that place? Does it still exist? And that's sort of a built-on conversation. My partner on these books is Mike Katz, who I've been very good friends with for a very long time, and it's sort of like built up on conversations we've had over the years and so we thought, well, what the hell it's turning into a book.
0:04:39 - Natalie
Yeah, I mean, it's such a good concept. Every time I go somewhere I try to I plan my whole trip around things like that. I often visit websites like Atlas Obscura to see what random things are there and then usually, if it's especially for a music-heavy type city like maybe Nashville, they'll have a whole like self-driving tour of like Music Row and things like that. So I actually saw your book when I was visiting New York last summer and I picked it up, but I was already it was like the day before I was leaving, so I didn't get to actually put it to use but, when I go back.
I'm going to do it. I bought and it was an autographed copy.
0:05:22 - Crispin Kott
That's very happy. We signed a lot of, so I'm glad you found one.
0:05:26 - Natalie
Yeah, me too, me too.
0:05:27 - Tara
I have a question for you, Crispin. I know that you're also a musician. Can you tell us a bit about your musical background?
0:05:33 - Crispin Kott
Well, I'm not, I wouldn't. I'm a drummer, so not really a musician. What?
I play drums since I was in high school and I realized that that was the only thing that I could do without having to take lessons, and so I found it very satisfying. I was able to keep rhythm and I'm left-handed so I knew it would look weird to people to have the drums and that was appealing to me as well. So I played in awful punk bands in high school and in college I played in a pretty good funk band. That has actually become sort of the inspiration, that whole scene and that band and the people around it, sort of an inspiration for a novel I've been working on, actually that I'm going to try and sell soon. And since then I've kind of dipped in and out of music.
Most recently I have played with some friends in what we call the Hardliest Working Band in Chobiz. We all met through being fans of Durand-ur-Am and we thought, well, let's, somebody wanted us to get together and play a party and we thought that would be fun. But it would be more fun if we didn't have to actually learn the songs as they are, because we wouldn't sound like that and we don't want to have to dress up. So we thought, well, what would what would like girls on film sound like if Sonic Youth played it, or all she wants is if it was a transfered Nant song. So that's kind of that was our and that was that was really kind of my most recent band, but even that like we barely ever played. We did play some fun shows, but I like that.
I haven't really played in a long time, though like a few years.
0:07:08 - Natalie
It is kind of a cool concept to to like play songs from bands that you love, but not just like them, because that also gets you off the hook from being as good as like their, which we never would be John, no, whatever, but also it was.
0:07:20 - Crispin Kott
it was, it wouldn't have been fun just to copy them. You know it was fun for us to come up with our own vibe and and just make like a total racket and say we're paying tribute as opposed to like the tribute bands who, who you know, try to.
It's clear they're not them, like they don't look like them, they don't really sound like them and but I think you're supposed to squint and kind of and and we didn't want anybody to have to worry about that with us. We made clear that we were not trying to be that kind of band and some people liked it and some people didn't.
0:07:50 - Natalie
Have you been in New York? Or a whole career? Mostly, no, no.
0:07:54 - Crispin Kott
I was. I was my folks are both from around New York. My mother grew up in Connecticut, my dad New Jersey. I was born in Chicago and then moved back to New Jersey when I was little, lived in New Jersey and just outside of New York City until I was 10. And then my mother moved us to New York and as an adult I lived in Brooklyn for a long time. Before that, I lived in San Francisco a couple of times, los Angeles, Atlanta which I'm you know is relevant to your interests and and also Charlotte for a bit. And now my wife and I live in Oakland, which is where she grew up.
0:08:29 - Tara
Oh nice, I love Oakland. Yeah, those are all very, very like unique musical scenes too.
0:08:35 - Crispin Kott
Yeah, For sure.
0:08:37 - Natalie
Definitely. Well, I'm glad you're in the store today, because when our friends stop by the store, we often play this game called the high fidelity game, where we choose a theme and do our top five of that theme. So would you be down to play with us?
0:08:53 - Crispin Kott
I would Very much Yay Awesome.
0:08:57 - Natalie
What if we did? I don't know. Top five music landmarks.
0:09:02 - Crispin Kott
That makes sense to me. Seems appropriate Right.
0:09:05 - Natalie
Or a top five music landmarks you've visited.
0:09:08 - Tara
Oh, no, no.
0:09:11 - Crispin Kott
I've got a little of both.
0:09:13 - Natalie
Yeah, it could be whatever. Really, yeah, let's do it, okay. Okay, natalie, do you want to go first?
0:09:19 - Tara
Yeah, I'll go first, all right. So for number five, I'm going to get this one out of the way because it's it's not really an official land music landmark, it's more personal and it's kind of a recent social media phenomenon. For gamers, specifically, there's this amazing series called Persona. I'm a huge fan. The games are hugely popular, not just for the games, but also the music. Like the music of Persona is known for being fantastic just on its own. You get asset jazz, rock, hip hop. It's very eclectic, great compositions by Shoji Meguro, great bands, great singers, highly recommended.
So anyway, in the fifth game, the setup is pretty much the same in all of them. You're a high school student living life, going to school, going to work, hanging out with friends, fighting demons in dungeons, yada, yada, yada. And each location has a musical theme associated with it, and I put like 120 hours into this game so it's like the music is deeply ingrained. So the developers, they very accurately have recreated places around Tokyo and so you get used to pairing a song with a very specific location in the city. So what's cool is that in the last few years, fans online have started taking these trips to Japan and documenting themselves going to the different major locations in the game, and that just makes me so happy, and it's something that I personally would love to do, like with my headphones on so I can listen to all the music and all those different spots, because I'm a total gamer nerd. So that's my number five.
0:11:00 - Natalie
That's cool and at first, the way you're describing the music of the game said each place had like a different vibe. Yeah, but you were talking about jazz and I was thinking of cowboy bebop. Oh, yeah, yeah for sure. That's kind of what I was thinking of immediately.
0:11:17 - Tara
Kind of similar vibe yeah.
0:11:19 - Natalie
Like Western noir jazz fusion Totally, totally.
0:11:23 - Tara
Yeah, you should check it out. They've got the soundtracks on Spotify and whatnot and they're huge. There's like a little. There's a little something for everybody. They've kind of hit all of the different genres and it's very high quality, really great recordings. So, yeah, that's cool.
0:11:36 - Natalie
We need a virtual reality trip to these places with the sound playing.
0:11:41 - Tara
I'm going to go. That's on my bucket list, for sure. I'm going to make it happen. Yes, All right, so number four Amoeba music in Hollywood.
0:11:50 - Red Hot Chili Peppers song plays
Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in, the city of Angel.
0:12:02 - Tara
So Amoeba is an independent music store chain that was founded in 1990 in Berkeley, california, with two subsequent locations in San Francisco and then Hollywood, right on Sunset Boulevard in 2001. And it was one of the largest indie music stores in the world. It had everything CDs, vinyl, merchandise, memorabilia, books by Crispin Cott.
It had a second floor dedicated to DVDs in Blu-ray so just everything. I used to love hanging out there. I just drive there early on the weekend and just wander around and see what gems I could find. Famously, it hosted a lot of free shows in the store and, like everyone's been there folks from Billie Eilish to Flying Lotus, smashing Pumpkins, paul McCartney just so many people have performed there. Sadly, today, though, the store has had to relocate in 2018. It was slated to be demolished and replaced with some wack ass mixed use development. Then the pandemic hit, but Amoeba was able to keep the lights on with lots of community support, and now it's located just down the street on Hollywood in Argyle. So at least it's alive and kicking and still in a pretty cool location. Much love for Amoeba.
0:13:14 - Crispin Kott
I love that original.
0:13:15 - Tara
Los.
0:13:15 - Crispin Kott
Angeles location.
0:13:17 - Tara
Yeah yeah, that was my favorite hangout spot.
0:13:19 - Crispin Kott
The new one is good too. I don't mean to knock it, but I did. But I did really love visiting that original LA one.
0:13:25 - Tara
Yeah, it looks cool. I would like to check out the new one as well. Tara, you said you've been there recently.
0:13:29 - Natalie
Yeah, Sean and I went there because we went to Los Angeles for Coral World Fest and of course we had to stop by Amoeba. I did, intending to go to Amoeba before it moved, but they were having some sort of event in store and I didn't have tickets and I also didn't have time to really stick around. So I just kind of saw the outside and left, not knowing the future of what would happen. So I went to the new one and it was packed. I mean, there was a line through the middle of the store all the way back and on one hand I was very happy that people were buying music, but on the other I was like I don't want to be here. Too many people.
0:14:09 - Crispin Kott
That was kind of my experience in the new one too. We had to wait in a line outside. It was shortly after it opened, but it's so that was a while back. Now you're saying that it is still like that, which is discouraging to me as a consumer.
0:14:24 - Tara
How much smaller is the new location?
0:14:26 - Crispin Kott
Yeah, it is. I mean, it's still huge, but having been to the first one, it feels smaller. Maybe I don't know if the aisles are narrower, if it's an optical illusion. The books are kind of nicely placed on sort of a platform, or at least they were when I visited. The layout is great, but it just feels smaller, partly, I think, because so many people are still going there.
0:14:50 - Natalie
Right, right. Yeah, I think the aisles were really, they were really cramped, so they must have things just shoved as close as they can together, maybe just to make more room for all the stuff that's in there. It's like the strand in New York, but for records, books, everywhere you turn, you're like, ah, where do I go Upstairs, downstairs, so many books.
0:15:11 - Crispin Kott
You can find all the books there too by the way, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:15:16 - Natalie
yeah, it's kind of overwhelming, but yeah again, I love that so many people are visiting and still supporting.
0:15:22 - Tara
Do the two of you remember the web series they had called what's in my bag? We're like different artists would shop in the store and then chat about what they bought.
0:15:31 - Crispin Kott
Yeah.
0:15:31 - Tara
I was such a cute idea. I love that.
0:15:33 - Natalie
Yeah, super cool. I think they still have that going. They do, oh, okay.
0:15:38 - Crispin Kott
Comedians, the Sklar Brothers, who I know they had an episode.
0:15:41 - Tara
Nice.
0:15:42 - Crispin Kott
We bond over music anyway, so we give each other records and stuff. So it's kind of cool to see things going into their bags.
0:15:49 - Tara
Oh good, I'm glad to hear that's still going then. Yeah, all right, number three Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan. So I had to add this one, because growing up as a classical pianist, carnegie Hall was the dream right. So this venue was constructed between 1889 and 1891, funded by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Many classical greats have performed here, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, richard Strauss, gustav Mahler, on and on and on. Leonard Bernstein had his major conducting debut here at the age of 25. Another really interesting note is that Carnegie Hall was desegregated from day one, and opera singer Cicoretta Jones was its first black performer in 1892, within its opening year, and she was only 24 years old. So that's super cool. But it's not just a venue for classical music. Other performers, including jazz and pop greats from Nina Simone, duke Ellington, dizzy Gillespie, all the way to James Taylor, ike and Tina Turner and the Beatles.
This national historic landmark is made up of three performance halls, the main one being Stern auditorium, renamed for violinist Isaac Stern in 1997 in recognition of his efforts to save the building from demolition in the 60s. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, 2800 of which are located in the main Stern auditorium, laid out across five levels, which is pretty epic. Also, the New York Philharmonic had residency here from 1892 to 1962. Yeah, I long, long ago let go of my dream of playing in Carnegie Hall, but I Will at least get my butt in one of those seats before I die, that's. That's the new, revised goal.
0:17:44 - Natalie
Hey, it's never too late. Harold Bud got his big break in his 40s, or maybe 50s actually. You know, I don't know if I even want all that smoke man.
0:17:54 - Tara
I don't know if I need 2800 seats staring at me, but I definitely want to go check it out. I know they do the Franz list piano grand finals there that that would be cool to watch, so maybe I'll go check that out growing up in New York.
0:18:06 - Crispin Kott
I went many times. It is it is. You can really get a sense of the history when you go inside Carnegie Hall. Yeah, I saw Brian Wilson performs Mile there, which was you know as close I think his pop music gets the classical performance. I know you mentioned the Beatles. There's very famous photographs of them playing a show there in 1964 and and Carnegie Hall had sold so many seats that they put rows of seats on the stage around the Beatles, which I don't think Ever done before or since. It looks very strange. Everybody's incredibly well behaved, given you know that the country was kind of exploding with Beatlemania at the time, but it is. It is very peculiar to see that.
0:18:45 - Tara
That's kind of shocking to hear that they kept themselves under control. They probably had, like a electric fence, invisible Barrier yeah wow, okay, all right.
So we are in the homestretch number two, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx. So this is the location of DJ cool herks apartment and is known as the birthplace of hip-hop. Back in 1973 so cool herk, real name, clive Campbell he shared his passion for music by hosting parties in the community room of his building. He built his own sound system with two turntables. The first one was an end of summer back to school party and it was actually his sister Cindy's idea, because she needed a way to raise some money to upgrade her wardrobe before the school year started. So they charged the ladies 25 cents and the fellas 50 cents I love it and she booked her brother to DJ, who was only 16 at the time. And the magic was in the way. Cool herk could read the energy of the room and quickly switch up the records, playing only the Hypes parts, you know the percussive breakdowns which kept everybody on the dance floor. He played soul and funk, crafting what we now know as the breakbeat, and he kept those breaks looping right and from there a whole dance style emerged, for these Breaks, known, of course, is break dancing or be boing. People would shut out little chants and rhymes leading to emceeing and rap. It is. It's where it all started, which I think is really cool.
According to an NPR interview with another resident who grew up there during that time Quote that community room remains relatively unchanged from what it looked like in the 70s it has low ceilings, a small kitchen and storage closets off to one side. There's no plaque or memorabilia, nothing to suggest that a musical revolution began in this place. It was completely pristine. Wow, back in 2007, the building was deemed eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, as an exception too, because usually a site has to be 50 years old to be eligible. So I'm not sure if that status has been certified or not today, but it certainly has been for decades within the hip-hop community, that's really cool.
0:21:03 - Crispin Kott
I didn't know that that actually was on my list too.
0:21:06 - Tara
Sweet.
0:21:09 - Crispin Kott
I can add some other detail, or I can.
0:21:12 - Natalie
Yay, no, we like overlap yeah.
0:21:15 - Crispin Kott
Yeah, okay, in 2017, that stretch of Sedgwick Avenue, including the high rise at 1520, was renamed hip-hop Boulevard by the city of New York. Nice, I will say that, as you mentioned, there's no way, as there's nothing other buildings New York. One of the other reasons we decided to do these books is because New York has done a terrible job of Honoring these historic music places, and when you see something, as you do like with there's a tile thing at the bottom of a street Lamp to commemorate where the Fillmore East was, it's usually fans who did it and it's not the city. Renaming that hip-hop Boulevard was a pretty big deal, I think you know there's also Joe remote Boulevard, etc. So they're doing little bits and pieces like that, but they don't. They have not done a great job of honoring that.
And one other thing I'll say is that apparently everyone from Grandmaster Kaz of the Cole Crush brothers, grandmaster Flash Keres, one Red Alert, who I used to listen to on the radio as a kid, sherry share of the Mercedes ladies, africa, bombada, busy be in, mean Jean Apparently all these people were there, or at least claimed it's claimed to have been there. As is often the case with these big culture defining Moments, the amount of people who say they were there is often much larger than the amount of people who could possibly have fit into maybe a community Room at 1520 Sedgwick. But regardless of who was there, it is one of the great defining moments in American cultural and musical history, and it's almost 50 years ago as of the time we're speaking right now, which is kind of bonkers.
0:22:44 - Tara
Yeah, and look at hip-hop now. It's like this international just culture defining yeah, it's major, that's so cool, like what a time to be alive.
0:22:52 - Crispin Kott
I would have loved to have seen feel that energy with the people you know I was alive, but I was three years old and living in New Jersey. I Cannot claim to have been there.
0:23:02 - Tara
You were close to the action, though.
0:23:04 - Crispin Kott
I was close, I could feel it. I could feel it in my diaper.
0:23:11 - Tara
All right. Number one the shockwaves, right the base shockwaves. My number one pick is the Apollo theater in Harlem, the place where stars are born and legends are made. So in 1934, this burlesque venue, which didn't even allow black people to attend as performers or patrons, was transformed into a black performance space, in essence Preserved the cultural heritage of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly every major African-American performer has come through the Apollo in some capacity.
Of course we all know the showtime at the Apollo variety show, with the notorious amateur night, is a huge part of its legacy. I watched it faithfully growing up on Wednesday night. The crowd was never around to play games. They let you know how they felt about you and if you could win over the Apollo audience, it was basically your springboard to success. Although famous exceptions Include 13 year old Lauren Hill, who was booed that clip breaks my heart all the time it tries to be crazy and Luther Vandross, who was booed off the stage on multiple occasions I think like five times he got booed off the stage, which is just nut bar insane. Luther Vandross and and Dave Chappelle too, I think was was booed. But yeah, very, very crotchety crowd. And you can't forget tap dancer Howard Sandman Sims, who would come out with a broom and sweet performers off the stage if the crowd got too disgruntled.
It's probably futile to even like try to list Apollo alums, but I'll just name a random few. So in music, we have Ella Fitzgerald, who made her debut there at 17 years old. Jimmy Hendrix won an amateur contest in 64. The Jackson 5 won amateur 1967. Michael Jackson actually did a free concert for a DNC fundraiser in 2002 there and that was his final on stage performance before his passing. Comedians we have Jackie Mably, richard Pryor, red Fox, nipsey Russell, jamie Foxx, tracy Morgan Just everybody. Actors like Sidney Poitier, dancers, sammy Davis Jr, josephine Baker and this doesn't like remotely make a dent in the list. The Apollo did occasionally present non-black acts like Stan Getz, dave Brubeck, buddy Holly, tito Puente, and it just basically became a universal proving ground for entertainers across the spectrum. It's still going strong and expanding today, presenting concerts, performing arts, education and community outreach programs, and it is a certified state and city landmark and that's it very cool.
0:25:50 - Natalie
I would like to visit the Apollo one day.
0:25:52 - Crispin Kott
Yeah, the as with Carnegie Hall, when you go in there it is just like it's overwhelming, like I can't imagine I saw speaking of performers that that were not black performers. Durand Durand played there when I was a teenager. They've been a benefit and Lou Reed came out and played with them and that was kind of wild, that's dope I've seen a lot of things there.
I think most recently was the Daptone Super Soul review, which they finally released on on like a triple album, I think a couple years ago, and if you open it up, there were four shows, but they recorded them all and next month together. If you open up the gatefold sleeve, you can see my wife and I In that there's like a crab shot, and you can see where we were. Like that's us, that's cool, that's awesome. Yeah, I was pretty bowled over when I was able to spot us there, because it was a great night and it was pretty neat to have a physical document of us being there other than the poster that I bought.
0:26:47 - Tara
Yeah well, that's awesome, that's cool. Alright, well, that's my list.
0:26:51 - Natalie
That's a good list, Thank you. Thank you Some really important musical landmarks out there. Absolutely Especially persona. Well, I've never even heard of that one, so definitely want to look into it more for sure.
0:27:04 - Crispin Kott
Yeah, I have never been to Japan. I would love to go one day, just to be able to kind of experience it with things that you're seeing before you go. It just sounds really cool.
0:27:15 - Tara
Yeah, some really awesome jazz clubs in Tokyo. If you can squeeze that in, yeah.
0:27:21 - Natalie
I also like those little tiny bars. They're almost like kiosks in a way. It's just like a tiny room, usually like maybe enough room at the bar for like five or six people and they're playing records behind the bar. Very cool little spots like that, A lot of those in Kyoto especially. Yeah, Before we get into your list, Crispin, I'm curious of the New York book, what was something that you learned in your research that was just like whoa, what, Like what was something that you were just totally surprised by?
0:27:54 - Crispin Kott
I did insane levels of research to try and make this the kind of book that if anybody ever wanted to do it again they would hesitate. So we spent untold hours in the New York Public Library pouring over like old microfilm copies of the Village Voice and old phone books to kind of identify addresses and things. There were lots of things that I worked really hard to find that people sort of like spoke about in vague terms, like when I was a little kid I was a huge Kiss fan. They were like a big band at the time and so I wrote the Kiss chapter in that book. And there was a place where they auditioned, I think, the Henry Littang School of Dance. They auditioned for Casablanca Records and people had mentioned that and it had been. You know, it was kind of on the record that they had done that but nobody had ever mentioned where it was. So I dug up the address for that People's.
Things like that, even if it didn't have any personal significance to me, really meant a lot. And there were a lot of places both of the books that we would work hard to find and then decide that we couldn't use because people still live there or even members of the family still live there and we don't really, unless it's like common knowledge like the Dakota in New York where John and Yoko recently moved out of Dakota. I think she still owns whatever part of the building that they lived in, but from what I understand she moved upstate pretty recently. There was something in the New York Times about that. But you know, people know that she lives there and it's culturally and historically significant. So we couldn't not include that. But we would find the address of where people grew up or where they lived and only to discover that they or their family members still lived there. So we couldn't include that. So there are things in these books that are not in these books that are like my own personal secret.
And that was kind of fun too, like I know, but I'm not going to send like superfans to go there and root through people's garbage cans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but there was. There was so much like everywhere you look in New York, everywhere you look in the Bay Area, it seems like something was happening on the street and because, particularly in New York, the city has never put much interest in documenting or honoring any of those places, people walk by them every day without knowing, and so we kind of like the idea of at least in a book putting you know the locations in there. So maybe now people living holy shit, I live in this people you know, maybe walking through their own neighborhoods and think, wow, something actually happened here other than you know there's another Starbucks.
0:30:19 - Natalie
Yeah, I actually. Just I guess it was, maybe it was 2021. My best friend and I drove up the East Coast and back down and one place I knew I wanted to go by was Jay Mascus's house because had seen I don't know where, how I found it but that, oh no, I knew because he he lives in like Uma Thurman's dad's old house or something like that. It's this big old white house in Massachusetts. If I'm not calling, I forget.
0:30:52 - Crispin Kott
I already forget, but I was there.
0:30:54 - Natalie
Yeah, up northeast, yes, but yeah, you can find his address on the internet and he still lives there.
0:31:01 - Crispin Kott
Well, that's all. If somebody wants to find the places that we didn't put in the book, they can do the work and do it themselves. I defy anyone to try and do the amount of crazy, soul crushing, desperately lonely work that we put in on these books.
0:31:14 - Natalie
Yeah, yeah, well, that's cool, well, we're grateful, it's important work. Thank you. Yeah, well, I'm excited to see what your list is, or hear what your list is.
0:31:23 - Crispin Kott
I'm going to start with, a couple from the books Say the number five will be out here in the Bay Area at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. In the book we had to explain to our publisher why we didn't just want to call it the Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco, because the Bay Area, berkeley, oakland, the surrounding area was also vital, particularly, you know, beyond the mostly white 60s experience, there was a lot of music that was black artists and, you know, indigenous peoples of California that were not happening in San Francisco. So we wanted to include and the Bay Area. It meant a lot to us. I hope it means something to somebody else. So the book covers a lot of territory, geographically, musically and both before and after that period in the 60s that people think of. Probably when you say music this is a book about rock and roll In San Francisco they probably think of Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Santana and all the big brother in the whole company and all those groups. So the book is about a lot more.
However, I chose 710 Ashbury, which is kind of the heart of that whole scene, kind of unofficially dubbed the Grateful Dead House. It still exists. It still looks, at least architecturally, as it did at the time. The dead only lived there for around two years. Various members of the group had kind of formative and psychedelic experiences within the walls of people also called it the City Hall of Hate Ashbury. The dead were busted there, except for Jerry Garcia, on October 2, 1967. He was out. That sort of set the wheels in motion for their eventual decision, you know, within the next six months to leave the city for Marin. But the house was kind of in the heart of the whole Hate Ashbury scene when they played their final free show and they played many free shows in and around the Panhandle and Golden Gate Park, which was also very nearby. They played their final free show on Hate Street in March 1968 and they walked there from the house and set up on a flatbed truck in the middle of the street. There are very many famous photographs of the street just completely filled with people people on the roofs of buildings behind them.
The reason I kind of chose this as an important place first of all is that it is still a place. When I've gone up there there are still people. Every time you go there are people going there as sort of like a mecca. It has become much more expensive here than it was in the mid-60s in this area. And yet there are some incredible bands happening right now, like Sea Blight, chime School, the Umbrella's, shannon and the Clams Lunchbox, james Waite, like so many. That's been true since the 60s. They've always had these great bands, even as it gets more expensive.
But the reason I think that the Grateful Dead were able to be what they were and play hundreds upon hundreds of different places in the Bay Area just before 1970 was because it was very cheap.
They could take over this entire house and kind of have it be an incubator for the music and the atmosphere and the feeling of collective spirit that they were trying to, that they used to kind of create the kind of music that they did. It was really thriving, creative environment with few worries beyond getting busted and it really meant, I think, a lot to them and was sort of indicative of the kind of place that lots of those bands were able to live at that time, which you know again, it was very inexpensive. They didn't have to work probably to the same degree, work other jobs to the same degree as many bands would today. It's not stopping the bands today, but the dead were so about that band and about the music they're playing all the time. That, to be able to that house, I think is really kind of an important cultural and historical artifact in this place. That's my fifth choice.
0:35:10 - Natalie
That's cool. Wait, so did you say that people live there? Now it is. I don't know if it's, I think it's.
0:35:16 - Crispin Kott
I don't know if it's rented or if it's a some, if people live their own the house, but it is occupied and I do know that one time I went up there and people would pay. Hearing behind the curtain almost certainly irritated that the constant flow of people taking photographs in front of their house as as I think. I would be to if that it was happening in my house.
0:35:36 - Tara
That's crazy. This is probably one of those instances of well me wandering around and not knowing that something so significant was right there.
0:35:46 - Crispin Kott
You know, because I've walked through hey Ashbury quite a bit and I had no idea that's so cool there are a lot of places right on Hates Street, on many of the side streets that that whole area not just then but you know later with their venues like the I-beam and the Brian Jones down Massacre. You know they were all over the hey, lower Hate mostly, but you know it's, it's. It's a place where you know, everywhere you look, something happened there at one time or another. That's pretty cool.
0:36:15 - Tara
Oh yeah.
0:36:17 - Crispin Kott
So number four, I think it's sort of an obvious choice, maybe even more obvious, CVGB, but but like the dead house at the time that it was happening and all these bands who came on to become huge Ramones and Talking Heads and Blondie and even later Beastie Boys, when there was still a hardcore act, played there a lot. The fact that this place existed that would kind of cater to these sort of weird bands and let them kind of do their thing to develop in the heart of New York City, was was really critical. I think it lasted, even though people kind of think of it as as for this period in the mid to late 70s, it was, it lasted over three decades as kind of a crucial live music venue. It had a terrible, shaky stage, it had horrible bathrooms and it was, you know, really, you know really important. It's coming up now, like as with the birth of hip hop, it's coming up. It was founded in December 1973. So it's almost on its 50th anniversary.
It was intended by Hilly Kristall, the owner, as being CBGB stands for Country Bluegrass Blues and CBGB and Amphug Country Bluegrass Blues and other music for uplifting Gorman-Daisers, which was sort of like his very pretentious effort to get it to be the kind of music that would never have been played there.
It kind of benefited from the collapse earlier in 1973 of the Mercer Arts Center, which a lot of bands like the New York Dolls had. They played there as as sort of as a residency. Coming up, the building collapsed very spectacularly and horribly sort of left a void in that part of the city for bands to play and for people to hear new music. And a lot of the Mercer bands like Suicide and the Fast and Wayne County who became Jane County, they all wound up moving to CBGB to play. So in its earliest days it really was sort of an extension of what the Mercer Arts Center was and that was really important to music in New York City and again culturally, like a lot of those bands who came out of that scene, became massive. It's hard to imagine popular music without you know many of the bands that played CBGB in that era.
0:38:41 - Natalie
Can you, matt? Because it seemed like I just finished Debbie Harry's book and you know of course I read Please Kill Me and in the way that they all talk about it and Patty Smith's book, everyone just talks about just hanging out there. Oh yeah, you know Ramon's play usually played on this day. Talking heads were like they're playing all the time. Can you imagine just I'm going to go hang out at like in Atlanta we have maybe something like five to nine is a small or the Earl A small venue. Just the level of talent that was just hanging out in one place in that time period is just crazy. It just blows my mind. And the way they described it I think it sounded like the stage was kind of like levels, like there was a like the drummer would be on this separate back.
0:39:27 - Crispin Kott
There was, yeah, there was a riser that the drummer was on and the stage itself. The proper stage was not very high up off the ground.
0:39:35 - Natalie
It's just man. I wish I had gone.
0:39:37 - Crispin Kott
I went many times as a teenager, but you know by the time that it was no longer. It was a place where people played and I enjoyed seeing a lot of bands there. My wife actually her at the time her boyfriend was playing in a band that I was. I was there one New Year's Eve and saw opening for Luna. We didn't know each other back then but it's sort of funny. When we met we sort of traced a lot of the places that we had been at the same time and that was that was one of the CBGB on New Year's Eve at 2000, I think, when Luna, I bet that place was packed for that.
It was totally, totally packed and they gave out champagne, which I have serious misgivings about whether or not you could actually call what they gave a champagne, but it was nice.
0:40:20 - Natalie
That is a nice touch.
0:40:22 - Crispin Kott
That's the classic for CBGB.
0:40:24 - Tara
Hey, tara, quick question Do you remember what's the name of the club that it's been closed, possibly torn down completely? I don't know. That used to be across from PCM. That was kind of like rough.
0:40:37 - Natalie
Oh, Masquerade.
0:40:38 - Tara
Yeah, Masquerade, that's it it kind of reminds me of that.
0:40:42 - Crispin Kott
Oh yeah, the floor was shaky, I went to shows at Masquerade.
0:40:45 - Tara
Yeah, yeah, I missed that spot.
0:40:47 - Crispin Kott
I got exceedingly drunk at Masquerade and got thrown out Nice. I'm ashamed and also amused, to admit.
0:40:55 - Natalie
I will say Debbie Harry. I feel like she held back in her stories about CBGB and her time there. I wanted more of the tea, I needed more stories and she really held back. I think a lot.
0:41:11 - Crispin Kott
I've heard that I haven't read the book yet, but I've heard that people were hoping for a little bit more dirt yeah it was hardly anything, or detail in the very least.
0:41:18 - Natalie
Yeah, yeah, I needed more. She's saving for a part two, good day, good day.
0:41:24 - Crispin Kott
I think that my number which number I'm on number three is going to be. It was going to be 1520, sedgwick, but I'm glad that you picked it. It's an incredible place and it gives me a chance to mention something that I alluded to with the Boat Underground earlier, which was Pickwick Studios. It's where Lou Reed was an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records, which was sort of an opportunist label that would put out. If you look on discogs under Pickwick Records, you'll see like here's an album of surf music and here's an album of folk rock and here's this. So they you know he as a songwriter they would say, oh, we need 10 surf songs by the end of the week, and so they would all have to write and record these songs.
Reed played on many of those, those releases as well. He, when he met John Kale, he brought John Kale in and they recorded demos in the Pickwick Studios, which was at 816 43rd Avenue in Queens, long Island City, this neighborhood. That seems like I can't believe. This all happened in this place. They recorded two takes each of heroin and why don't you smile now and that was in 1965, which is, you know, a couple years before the Velvet Underground and Nico album came out. So that was kind of, you know, one of those places where you can't fathom something really important happening and and yet it did. And for many people the Velvet Underground are the quintessential New York group and so to have this kind of area, this place where they were able to sneak in and record these songs and start trying to figure out what they wanted to do, was really kind of crucial in their development. That's super cool.
0:43:05 - Natalie
Yeah, I didn't realize he was basically like a staff songwriter, yeah.
0:43:11 - Crispin Kott
I mean mostly songwriter. I think I don't know if they, I don't know if they would have paid him for both roles, so they probably just called him an in-house writer.
And part of his job was to was to play on some of these songs. I'm not sure I don't have any of these records and I don't remember. I'm sure I poured over the wider notes before but I don't remember like how many of them he actually played on or or what. But he definitely did. You can hear him on, you know, surf songs or folk rock songs or any of the other sort of things that the label heads would say this is a trend that we need to capitalize on and they quickly released these songs that sounded like this genre, that was popular with kids and the records would sell in like drug stores and record stores and things, and you know they. They were working within very limited margins and probably made a lot of money on those. That's cool. I'm going to go across the Atlantic for my next two as as I head into the homestretch.
First is the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, which was the site of kind of many rock and roll, important rock and roll things. It was built in the mid 19th century on the grounds of the Peterloo massacre, which had happened earlier in the 1800s, which was sort of a protest against parliamentary rule and not being able to have representation in Parliament. The building itself was bombed during the Blitz in World War II and it was later restored in the 1950s. It was sort of a cultural space where they had lots of different events theater, music. Bob Dylan played there twice, the second coming in 1966, which is the legendary show where one of the many enraged folk purists shouted Judas when Dylan plugged in his guitar during the second set he turned around to the band, soon to become the band of Big Pig Fang, and simply said play fucking loud. Before they kind of went into a really explosive version of like a rolling stone.
That show became very widely bootlegged and was erroneously claimed to have occurred at the Royal Albert Hall in London, but it actually happened at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. He did play Royal Albert Hall on that tour, but this was from a decade later. The Sex Pistols played the lesser free trade hall within the free trade hall before a pretty small crowd mostly comprised, seemingly, of people who would go on to form bands like Buzzcocks, joy Division, the Fall and the Smiths. That is an example of like a show that was attended by very few people, but everybody who was there went on to do something also really big, which is kind of nuts. That was probably one of the most important shows the Sex Pistols played, solely because of the influence it had on some great music that came out there.
0:45:55 - Natalie
That's cool. Yeah, I don't know about this place either.
0:45:58 - Crispin Kott
I'm learning a lot today, yeah seriously, it's a hotel now, but the exterior still looks as it did when it was built in the mid-1800s and then as it did when all these different musical things happened. So I have seen this one in person. Actually, I said earlier that I hadn't been to all of them, but I think I have been to all of them on my list. I didn't go inside, but just to see it from outside was pretty cool, because it's a beautiful old building anyway. In spite of having been, the inside was completely destroyed in the Blitz and number one for me is also in England, the St Peter's Church in the Wulton.
Which is a suburb of Liverpool, on July 6, 1957.
A skiffle group called the Quarry Men performed at the Wulton Village Fate. A young Paul McCartney was at the Fate with a friend and was impressed in particular by a member of the Quarry Men called John Lennon who was playing lots of throwing in some rock and roll skiffle with sort of like a folk-fokie music. They had washboards and bass guitars with just the one string on a bucket or whatever, and he was very impressed with Lennon who played the guitar and sang and said you know, I think I would like to join a band with him If he hadn't been there. Who knows? Mark Lewis is kind of a great Beatles scholar and also, for me, an incredible inspiration as a researcher. He put out a book a while back that's the first of a planned three volume set called Tune, in which covers the Beatles history before they came along, right up until 1962, before they got signed to Beatlemania hit in England, and in his book he talks a lot about different events having to happen exactly a specific way for the Beatles to have become the Beatles. They were all very talented they all. Without meeting they would not have drawn on each other's talent and energy.
But it wasn't just this. There were little things. Here and there people's you know, their predecessors coming to the Liverpool area at a certain time and all these, like lots of different things, had to happen. This is one of those critical places and it's just this really kind of old small church on this leafy grounds a bit on a hill in this Liverpool suburb. And, you know, without this village fate happening on this date, there might not have been music as we know it. In many ways that's my number one. That's one of the big ones.
0:48:26 - Tara
That's amazing yeah.
0:48:28 - Crispin Kott
But that's it. That's my five. I have actually seen the St Peter's Church where the Wollton Village Fate took place. I took a Beatles tour because I'm a Beatle nerd and I want to see all these places. It was a fantastic tour. We did not get out but we passed by and I was like, oh my God, it seems very not nondescript, but it seems very unlike where one might imagine rock and roll history happening, and certainly at the time none of them could have imagined that it would mean anything. But it really is a pretty great place and that's that's my top place because I'm such a Beatles fan.
0:49:02 - Natalie
That's really cool. I mean especially thinking about it in terms of, you know, a chain reaction. Almost the things had to happen this way, or else we wouldn't have the Beatles.
0:49:12 - Tara
Yeah, it's insane.
0:49:14 - Natalie
Yeah, I kind of think the Rolling Stones had a similar thing too, because you had Keith Richards and Mick. Jagger who? Yeah, I just had a brain.
0:49:25 - Crispin Kott
They met on a train platform. They knew each other as little kids right, and then they ran into each other later on a train platform and I think one of them had a pile of records as teenagers and they started talking. And that's how it like. That's exactly it. What if one of them had caught an earlier train?
0:49:39 - Natalie
That's so crazy. Yeah yeah. Keith Richards book life is really good if you can get through it all. It's very long. The audiobook he actually does read part of it and you have to adjust your ears because the first part of the book is Johnny Dead and then the next part is Keith Richards are like hold on what is? He saying but yeah, I highly recommend that book. That's a really good list. I feel like. I need to go back and like read more about these places that you mentioned.
0:50:04 - Crispin Kott
Thank you.
0:50:04 - Natalie
Are they? I guess, how many you said see you to? Did you have to in California?
0:50:10 - Crispin Kott
No, in California just the dead house, but there are a great many Places in California. Yeah, our book is full. Our book is full of the ones here. I started sort of perspective work on a Los Angeles version of the book and wrote a sample chapter about the monkeys which was published on legs McNeil's Legsville website. But I'm not sure that. I'm not sure that book is ever gonna happen Interesting?
0:50:33 - Natalie
Yeah, there's a lot in Los Angeles. Oh yeah, all right. All right, tara, you're up, it's my turn. Well, I Definitely stuck with only places that I've actually been to a first, made a list of all the places, all right, all the places I could remember going to it at the very least, and then try to somehow put them in some rank order, which is very hard to do because some of the places are, just like you know, really really monumental, huge, pivotal moments in music history. But these, the ones I decide to go with, all right, number five, little bit of local flavor st Mary's Episcopal steeple in Athens, georgia. It is near the intersection of a Coney and William Street in Athens, behind new cheese, which is also pretty famous for indie music in Athens. But REM played a birthday party there for their friends April 5th 1980 and this is their first show, basically. But no one knows the like monumentus Event that this actually is.
You know it's a birthday party in 1980 and they didn't even have a band name yet. But the band Michael Stipe, mike Mills, peter Buck, bill Berry Performed a set with originals covers from 60s and 70s and then they became a huge local success pretty much soon after that. They recorded their first single radio for Europe in 1981. So, like I said, yeah, very soon after that birthday party was in 1980, this was in 1981 and then their debut EP at chronic town came out in October of 1981. So the building was actually demolished, the the church, but the steeple still stands and it's behind new cheese, like I mentioned. But just before 1990 Athens unanimously passed a rezoning request which permitted the construction of 16 condos.
Yeah yeah, and it's so. Now it's called the steeple chase condominiums. And yeah, I just wanted to call some attention to new cheese as well. New cheese space became a popular practice space for a ton of Athens bands and they hosted benefit concerts and music workshops and a ton of other things to help local local bands and musicians and artists. But since the Mission of new cheese space was to help the emotional, physical and professional well-being of musicians and artists, they not only provide practice space, but they also have volunteer Physicians to go there a few times a month they have, so the uninsured musicians could get some care and then also a low-cost eye exams and even Therapy counseling sessions. So I think that's so cool.
0:53:36 - Crispin Kott
Yeah, it's actually.
0:53:38 - Natalie
Named. Yet it's named after a person who was very into the local music scene there and was struggling with some mental health issues. So yeah, they've carried, carried on and Helped, helped to make it such a good place for the local scene there. And we all know that R Ems from there love tractor, b 52s, gosh the pink stones if you want something newer. But yeah, athens is kind of a Mecca for indie rock.
0:54:05 - Crispin Kott
Olivia tremor, control is an Athens right.
0:54:07 - Natalie
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's a good one.
0:54:09 - Crispin Kott
I love them.
0:54:10 - Natalie
Yeah, I didn't want to just list, you know 40 watt but I've also been to the the trestle, which is not far from there. That's on the back cover of murmur, but I wanted to put in some Atlanta, georgia, athens, something. But yeah, all right. So number four is Woodstock, where the actual festival was or where it took place. Oh.
Yeah, just outside of Woodstock, New York, the grounds where the monumental historical music festival took place was actually in Bethel, new York, and but it's of course we know. Woodstock music, art and fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was held August 15th through the 18th 1969 on Max Yaskers dairy farm. It's like 40 miles, I guess, from the actual town of Woodstock in actual distance.
0:55:11 - Crispin Kott
Yes, but it's a long way on the road. It's much further than you think it's. It's not 40 miles of highway, it's 40 miles of winding right, it's actually really nice drive. It is yeah, yeah, but it's it's not pretty when people go to Woodstock, the town of Woodstock, the village of Woodstock, which, understandably, is sort of spent a lot of time capitalizing on the Woodstock vibe and they it really isn't that close in terms of, you know, being able to go from one to the other.
Yeah but the site where it happened is is an amphitheater now and it's pretty wonderful to be there and think about all that stuff.
0:55:44 - Natalie
It really is, and when I was there there was. You know, the grounds are kept so nice. They had a peace sign mode in the grass in the center we're. It's hard to imagine, because this was like one of the largest music festivals to ever take place. There was four hundred thousand attendees. But when you go there you're like how did they squeeze 400,000 people here? Plus it was raining for a few of those days. Yeah, I, it's. It's hard to imagine all of this stuff happening, but it was a pivotal moment in popular music history and is now the home to Bethelwood's Center for the Arts, which hosts a lot of events and live performances still, and it's officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places and it's only two hours from New York. So if you were visiting New York, rent car, go on a little country drive.
0:56:36 - Crispin Kott
They have a pretty fun museum there too of that of that era and the music and the festival, but also just kind of like that whole. My guess what you can describe is that sort of counter cultural scene. And I think there's also a Monument where they built the amphitheater is not directly where the stage was before, but there's sort of like a monument to where the stage was At the original festival on the grounds. Just kind of great about to.
0:57:00 - Natalie
Very cool, yeah, and if you are going to rent a car and go there, you might as well go to the Big Pink House, which you had already mentioned, but also kind of related to what you had talked about earlier. Someone lives there now. It's a private residence, so it is.
0:57:15 - Crispin Kott
I have seen it on VRBO, so you can actually rent it. Oh, I don't know if that's the case now, but within the last few years at least it was available for People to go and spend a weekend or whatever.
0:57:26 - Natalie
So it's maybe I went or maybe I was up there too close to the pandemic, but I think it was not available at that time but might have been related to pandemic purposes that house is less than 10 miles from where my mother moved us when I was a little kid.
0:57:41 - Crispin Kott
when I was 10, we lived in Sargerese, that's in West Sargerese.
0:57:44 - Natalie
Oh nice. Yeah, it's very beautiful out there and, yeah, a lot of hills and curves and dairy farms Very beautiful.
0:57:53 - Tara
The woodstock they did in 99.
0:57:54 - Crispin Kott
That was elsewhere, though right nearby 99 was in Rome, new York, in Rome, okay, which was further upstate, and it was on the grounds of a disused Airfield, of military airfield, and it was on concrete. It was a terrible, terrible place for a festival, yeah, and you can see that manifested in everything that happened there. It's just the wrong. It was not a, it was not a, not a great, not a great place.
0:58:19 - Tara
I remember that not going well I.
0:58:23 - Crispin Kott
Was living in San Francisco at the time and I would not have gone anyway because the much of the lineup was not for me, but but it just it seemed to be everything about. It seemed to be the antithesis of woodstock and in that I think there were two different documentaries recently you can really get a sense of that. What a disaster it was.
0:58:41 - Natalie
Yeah, I was gonna say definitely no. Peace-loving happiness there, more like bonfires.
0:58:47 - Crispin Kott
And sexual assaults. Men chaos, yeah, in cell hostility.
0:58:53 - Natalie
Yes, yes, all right. Number three we go a little bit west to Minnesota, minneapolis, minnesota, to first Avenue, which is a venue. I think a lot of us probably remember that venue as being the like Prince venue From Purple Rain. But in the late 1960s Allen finger hut, which is a great last name Danny Stevens leased the old Greyhound bus depot in downtown Minneapolis and planned to open a rock club. I like it.
The club opened in 1970 as the depot and over the next two years hosted national acts like the kinks, bb King, frank Zappa, ike and Tina Turner. And then, 1971, they were having money issues so they had to close it down. American Events Company Renamed it, bought it, renamed it Uncle Sam's, which is a really terrible name for any kind of club or venue, I'm sorry, as part of a franchising agreement and Live music kind of took a backseat to DJs playing disco music. It was the time for disco, but then in the late 70s manager Steve McClillin started booking live bands again, and so Ramones, pat Benatar, people like that, sold it out after a two-year stint as Sam's. They changed the name one last time to first Avenue, and that name change kind of pushed its way into the evolution of the club with its music styles in the Twin Cities so punk and R&B and first Avenue became a focal point for both of those music movements in the in the area.
The coat room interestingly became its own little club within a club and Indie bands started playing there in the 70s. The replacements had like a really notable show there which I think is super cool and, yeah, unpredictable. Shows like that drew more and more people to the club. And then McClillin started booking regularly black R&B acts like the time, fly time and Prince and that kind of became their home. And then of course 1983 rented the spot out for scenes in purple rain and it boosted their revenue which they so very much needed. But the club is still open today and I peep the calendar Dinosaur Junior, the national dandy Warhol's Cindy Lee all have shows booked there this month. So Right.
1:01:31 - Tara
So you, you say you've been there because you've been to all these places. Who did you see then?
1:01:35 - Natalie
I didn't see anyone. I was there for a wedding and could only just go to the outside. It was during the daytime, so they weren't open. Gotcha, gotcha. But though it's those spaces really cool on the outside too, because they have all these, it's like painted black With stars and it has, like, everybody's names painted in it, so in the stars. So very cool photo op anyways, without going inside nice.
Yeah, all, right. Number two strawberry fields slash Imagine memorial for John Lennon in New York City. Imagine all the people. Strawberry fields is a 2.5 acre landscape section in Central Park and it was designed by the landscape architect Bruce Kelly and it's dedicated to Beatles former member John Lennon. It's named after Beatles song strawberry fields forever, which was written by John Lennon and Also named for the former strawberry field Children's home in Liverpool, england, which is near his childhood home. But the entrance to the memorial is located on Central Park West West 72nd Street, the Dakota which we mentioned earlier, which was formerly John and Yoko's place of residence. It was here where he was walking to his his home on December 8th 1980 where he was shot and murdered Sadly.
But the memorial is a triangular piece of land and the focal point is a circular pathway with mosaics inlaid and the single word Imagine. And it's really, it's so moving just to see just this like concrete mosaic. I don't think it's concrete, it's like marble or something fancy, but it's just. It's not like that big of a deal, but it's just so moving because of who John Lennon was and the impact the song and the Beatles had, and Seeing it in person is just, it's a big deal. I feel like I don't know.
1:03:42 - Crispin Kott
It's pretty, it's a pretty inspiring place and nice yeah, he was honored in a place that is Central Park is sort of this grand military and wonder that's there for everyone and though, you know, it's a spot that could be seen from the Dakota, which is extraordinarily wealthy people, the where they chose to honor Lennon and kind of his Universal message that it's there and when you go you see it, there's people who have traveled from all around the world just to be in this spot and they'll sing Beatles songs together and it's a.
It's a pretty it's a pretty moving place. The imagine Not plaque, but the tiling.
1:04:23 - Tara
Yeah, and that's a good field.
1:04:25 - Crispin Kott
It's a, it's a. It's kind of a nice, and if you can go there when it's quiet, it's also really great.
1:04:31 - Tara
Yeah, it looks really pretty to how there's often flowers arranged in a peace sign around it.
1:04:39 - Natalie
Yeah, I think that was an artist. Well, for a while, there was an artist. I think his last name was Santos. I read about him. He would go there often and make sure there were flowers and decorated the mosaic like every day, but I think he passed away in 2013 maybe from cancer, I think, which is sad, but yeah, that's sweet though.
I do a good job, I think, of keeping up with the memorial. Okay, we are at number one and it's another New York spot. Sweet, great Drum roll. It's the Chelsea Hotel. Here they come now Chelsea girl.
I have never been inside the Chelsea Hotel but I have been outside of it and I also have seen the movie of the play Chelsea Walls and I have heard so many stories from all of these books that I've read from artists that have lived there or have stories of people that they knew that lived there. But yeah, hotel in Manhattan, new York City, so there's about 200, well, at least I don't know if this is today or before 250 units in the hotel located at 223rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, in the neighborhood of Chelsea, and it's been the home of writers, artists, musicians, actors, and although the Chelsea no longer accepts long-term residence, the building still has many who lived there before, before the change in policy there. Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001, a Space Odyssey While he Was Staying at the Chelsea, and it's also where Nancy Spungen, girlfriend of Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, was found stabbed to death in 1978. And just like, a ton of people have lived there that are just wildly prominent and just that's just crazy Chet Baker, nico Tomweids, patty Smith, jim Morrison, iggy Pop, dee Dee Rohn, alice Cooper, edith Peoff, even Cher, rufus Wainwright I mean Madonna even lived in the Chelsea at 1.80s and Leonard Cohen lived there.
Janice Joplin had a room there, bob Dylan wrote A Sided Lady of the Lowlands there Nico has Chelsea girls. It's just a kind of a. It's a ghostly place. I would say there was a lot of bad stuff there, but a lot of good stuff too.
1:07:20 - Crispin Kott
Yeah.
1:07:20 - Tara
So I'm curious, though, why this place? It's always interesting when you have these it spots that emerge. What is it about this location that attracted so many people? Like, how did it start? I think it was cheap at the time.
1:07:34 - Crispin Kott
Exactly, it was very welcoming to artists and writers, musicians, for a long time. I know that a decade ago, I think, it changed hands and a lot of those people started getting forced out by the new owners, who some of them are still, or at least as if when we put our New York book together, were still there and sort of protected by city housing laws, but I don't know how many of them are there now, but I think that it really was. Janice Joplin, of course, was another person who spent a lot of time there, I think maybe you mentioned her. Yeah, it was that it was very welcoming to artists. Yeah, I think that was probably the reason. There are other hotels like that in New York, like the Hotel Albert, where bands like Love and Spoonful play and everything like that, but the Chelsea was by far the most famous and probably the most infamous as well, in that it was very, very open to artists and with that probably brought with it some less desirable personality traits that included murder and drugs and heavy drug use and everything.
1:08:38 - Natalie
Yeah, there was also a bar, I think in the lower level, don Quixote or something like that, and I think Patti Smith talks about that spot a lot and how people would go there and just camp out at a table all day drinking, writing, music, writing, poetry, and it would just be this like hangout spot and I think she has even mentioned, like Robert Maple Thorpe, using his art to pay for a room a time or two, something like that. I could be mixing it up with other spots that she mentioned. But yeah, and again, just thing outside of this place in New York. It just kind of was overwhelming. I would love to go inside.
1:09:22 - Tara
That's a cool number one pick because you've got like a concentration of all kinds of artistry, kind of brewing in the same spot.
1:09:29 - Natalie
Yeah, jimi.
1:09:30 - Tara
Hendrix yeah. Yeah awesome, cool. I'm really impressed that there wasn't more a crossover High five everybody, yeah.
1:09:38 - Natalie
Surprised only one. That's great.
1:09:39 - Tara
Yeah, there really is.
1:09:41 - Crispin Kott
There are really important historical places that mean a lot in a lot of different ways.
1:09:45 - Tara
Yeah, do we want to do some honorable mentions.
1:09:48 - Natalie
Yes, we should. Yeah, Shall, I just keep going with some of mine and then we'll switch. Well, places that I've been to that I have on the short list which I won't list them all, because it's a lot the Beverly Hills Hotel where Whitney Houston died, and also it's the Hotel California on the cover of the Eagles album, graceland, bourbon Street, the Viper Room, okay, but places that I haven't been to, that I would like to go to, muscle Shoals, paisley Park, abbey Road. Yeah, I'm shocked you didn't do Dollywood. I have it on here too. Yeah, I just feel like I talk about Dolly Parton so much. I'm from Tennessee Crispinso, she's my holler hillbilly sister friend.
1:10:33 - Crispin Kott
I think her work in and out of music. I think everybody claims Dolly is their own because she's so wonderful.
1:10:40 - Natalie
Yeah, she is St Dolly. How about you, Crispin? She can do no wrong.
1:10:45 - Crispin Kott
I would say that the Hacienda was a club that was a real big deal in Manchester. A lot of house music and a lot of bands like the Smiths and the Stone Roses all played there. As a kid, I mean in my 19 years when I kind of discovered a lot of these bands and heard about this club that was New Order Joy Division associated, I really wanted to go. That place was gone long before I ever got a chance to go over as an adult tourist. That's a place that no longer exists that I wish I could have seen. There are lots of different. The Fillmore in San Francisco is a huge place.
There's still a lot of shows are happening. It was in the 60s. It was Fillmore Auditorium before the Fillmore West, which opened in a different part of town, on Van Ness. It was open for a couple of years. Later the Fillmore as a name returned to where it is today, and where it was originally is the Fillmore Auditorium. That is a gorgeous venue where so many great shows have happened over the years. I get over there a few times a year for shows today, so that, I think, is a huge one as well.
1:11:56 - Tara
Nice. What about you, natalie? Let's see, I had the Crossroads where Robert Johnson sold a sold of the double Whiskey, a Go-Go. I also had Paisley Park, studio B in Nashville, studio 54 and Royal Albert Hall. That's my shortlist. Cool yeah, still no overlap. That's incredible.
1:12:18 - Natalie
Yeah Well, Paisley Park.
1:12:20 - Tara
Nice. This was very educational. I feel like I've learned so much in this chat Same.
1:12:27 - Natalie
I need to plan some travels with Crispin's books and go visit some more spots. And yes, everyone in the store, if you're here shopping listening, pick up Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to New York City, Rock and Roll Explorer Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area and the little book of Rock and Roll Wisdom, If you need some reading material, life quotes.
1:12:53 - Crispin Kott
That book is mostly just terrible advice from rock stars.
1:12:57 - Natalie
I love it. I love it already Sounds good.
1:12:59 - Crispin Kott
Yes, yes, and I do have a new book, hopefully coming out soonish Me and a very well-known writer and figure I've just signed with a literary agent. I can't say anymore, but I'm feeling very optimistic and excited about this book project that I'm working on now.
1:13:17 - Tara
Fantastic. Good luck with that.
1:13:19 - Natalie
Yeah, I can't wait to hear more.
1:13:21 - Tara
Yes, this conversation is any indication, I'm sure it's going to be full of insight and information that any music lover would appreciate, so we'll be looking out for that.
1:13:31 - Natalie
Thank you, totally All right. Well, let's lock up the store and go home.
1:13:37 - Tara
Yeah, before this cookie storm comes back, we had to go hunker down. Thank you so much, Crispin, for stopping by the store. It was so cool to see you again. It's always great to have a friend in the store. Please come back.
1:13:48 - Crispin Kott
I will Thank you for having me. I'm sure I'll be happy to see you, both of you and I'll definitely shop here again.
1:13:55 - Natalie
Yes, awesome, thank you Thanks, Bye everybody Happy trails, bye.
1:14:10 - Speaker 3
Record Store Society is hosted by Natalie White and Tara Davies.
1:14:14 - Natalie
If you'd like to contact the show, visit our website at recordsdoressocietycom or you can find us on all your favorite social media sites with the handle at recordsdoressociety.
Transcribed by https://podium.page