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  1. The Sound of the Bronx.Larry Chance and the Earls were literally discovered singing on a streetcorner in front of a subway station in the Bronx in 1958.  They recorded several smash hits before baritone Larry Palumbo, who had been drafted, died in a skydiving accident in 1961, just weeks after appearing with one of Murray the K’s traveling rock and roll shows.
     

  2. Technically Anglo-Irish, but the NYC connection is clear: 
    The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl, “Fairytale Of New York 


    Ahh, the glorious Aughts: 
    Interpol, “NYC” 

     

  3. IreneCara is from the Bronx. The “Fame” High School actually exists. It’s the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts. It’spractically on the Lincoln Center campus.

    • My former flatmate grew up in the West 70s and attended LaGuardia High (no, they aren’t Timothée Chalamet). We used to get a kick out of looking through the yearbook. [Also, Woody Allen is reportedly just as much of a curmudgeonly crank as you might expect. ]

      • I’ve never heard of that song! Here’s a little background I can pass along after reading the lyrics, so as not to wrest Better Half from his slumber by listening to it. 

        Third Avenue in the 50s (in Manhattan; there’s another one in Brooklyn, in Sunset Park) used to be a notorious gay cruising ground/gay prostitution center, but I thought that would have died out by the 70s. Guess not. It looks like that’s what this song is about. 53rd and 3rd is now home to the Lipstick Building, designed by John Burgee and Philip Johnson. Johnson had his offices there and at lunchtime I used to run into him. He was about 4′ 6″ tall and would have been in his nineties when we were sharing a sidewalk together. He worked up until the very end. Another tenant in the building was Bernie Madoff who had his offices there. God knows what else is in that building; it’s quite large. 

  4. The Raveonettes – “Gone Forever”


     
    (Yeah, they’re Danish, but I believe one-half of the duo was living there at the time.)
     
    This album came out shortly before my first (and thus far only) trip to NYC. I remember listening to it while waiting in the breezeway of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square for the shuttle to pick me up and take me to LaGuardia – although, of course, the sounds weren’t enough to compete with the background noise of the city.

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