M.J. Rose

Seeing old photographs of these long lost theme nightclubs make us so very happy. Those were the days…

The awesomely insane Heaven and Hell nightclubs of 1890s Paris

(http://io9.com)

“In modern times, you can find a stray cabaret or goth club in most modern metropolitan areas. But back in the late 19th century, your options were limited, albeit merrily deranged.

Paris of the 1890s had several supernatural nightlife options, each of them with marvelously outlandish gimmicks. In the 1899 book Bohemian Paris of To-Day by William Chambers Morrow and Édouard Cucuel, the authors visit several of the City of Lights darker drinking destinations, such as the Cabaret du Néant (“The Cabaret of Nothingness”) in the neighborhood of Montmartre.

At this gothic nightspot, visitors pondered their own mortality as they drank on coffins and were served libations (named after diseases) by monks and funeral attendees. Recalls Morrow:

Large, heavy, wooden coffins, resting on biers, were ranged about the room in an order suggesting the recent happening of a frightful catastrophe. The walls were decorated with skulls and bones, skeletons in grotesque attitudes, battle-pictures, and guillotines in action. Death, carnage, assassination were the dominant note, set in black hangings and illuminated with mottoes on death […] Bishop said that he would be pleased with a lowly bock. Mr. Thompkins chose cherries a l’eau-de-vie, and I, une menthe…”

For the rest, and many wonderful photographs, click here.

When Da Vinci’s sketches are brought to life, magic happens…The music is like a time machine, or a ghost…

Leonardo Da Vinci’s wacky piano is heard for the first time, after 500 years

 Take a bow: The viola organista’s strings are played in the same way as a cello. Photo: Tomasz Wiech/AFP

“A bizarre instrument combining a piano and cello has finally been played to an audience more than 500 years after it was dreamt up Leonardo da Vinci.

Da Vinci, the Italian Renaissance genius who painted the Mona Lisa, invented the ‘‘viola organista’’ – which looks like a baby grand piano – but never built it, experts say.

The viola organista has now come to life, thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making and the patience and passion to interpret da Vinci’s plans.

Full of steel strings and spinning wheels, Slawomir Zubrzycki’s creation is a musical and mechanical work of art.

‘‘This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba,’’ Zubrzycki said as he debuted the instrument at the Academy of Music in the southern Polish city of Krakow…”

Read full article here. Listen to the beautiful sounds, below…

True romance…

Pyramid Age love story comes to life in Egyptian tomb’s vivid color

by Owen Jarus LiveScience

Photo by Ms. Effy Alexakis, (c) Macquarie University Ancient Cultures Research Center

“Inside a tomb dating back to the age of the Pyramids in Egypt was this image, an embrace between a priestess and her husband, a singer in the pharaoh’s palace. The image has been recorded by researchers in full color.

She was a priestess named Meretites, and he was a singer named Kahai, who performed at the pharaoh’s palace. They lived about 4,400 years ago in an age when pyramids were being built in Egypt, and their love is reflected in a highly unusual scene in their tomb — an image that has now been published in all its surviving color.

The tomb at Saqqara — which held this couple, their children and possibly their grandchildren — has now been studied and described by researchers at Macquarie University’s Australian Center for Egyptology. Among the scenes depicted is a relief painting showing the couple gazing into each other’s eyes, with Meretites placing her right hand over Kahai’s right shoulder…”

Read the rest, here. See Photos of the Pyramid Age Tomb & Artwork here.