1.
Nightclub
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A nightclub is an entertainment venue and bar which serves alcoholic beverages that usually operates late into the night. Another distinction is that whereas many pubs and sports bars aim at a market, nightclubs typically aim at a niche market of music and dancing enthusiasts. The upmarket nature of nightclubs can be seen in the inclusion of VIP areas in some nightclubs, for celebrities, nightclubs are much more likely than pubs or sports bars to use bouncers to screen prospective clubgoers for entry. Some nightclub bouncers do not admit people with ripped jeans or other clothing or gang apparel as part of a dress code. The busiest nights for a nightclub are Friday and Saturday night, most clubs or club nights cater to certain music genres, such as house music or gothic rock. A nightclub may also be called a discothèque, disco, or dance club, from about 1900 to 1920, working class Americans would gather at honky tonks or juke joints to dance to music played on a piano or a jukebox. Webster Hall is credited as the first modern nightclub, being built in 1886 and starting off as a hall, originally functioning as a home for dance. During Prohibition in the United States, nightclubs went underground as illegal speakeasy bars, with Webster Hall staying open, with rumors circulating of Al Capones involvement and police bribery. With the repeal of Prohibition in February 1933, nightclubs were revived, such as New Yorks 21 Club, Copacabana, El Morocco, in Germany, possibly the first discothèque was Scotch-Club. These discothèques were also patronized by anti-Vichy youth called zazous, there were also underground discothèques in Nazi Germany patronized by anti-Nazi youth called the swing kids. In Harlem, Connies Inn and the Cotton Club were popular venues for white audiences, before 1953 and even some years thereafter, most bars and nightclubs used a jukebox or mostly live bands. The Whisky à Gogo set into place the elements of the modern post World War II discothèque-style nightclub. At the end of the 1950s, several of the bars in Soho introduced afternoon dancing. In the early 1960s, Mark Birley opened a members-only discothèque nightclub, Annabels, in Berkeley Square, in 1962, the Peppermint Lounge in New York City became popular and is the place where go-go dancing originated. However, the first rock and roll generation preferred rough and tumble bars and taverns to nightclubs, disco has its roots in the underground club scene. It brought together people from all walks of life and backgrounds and these clubs acted as safe havens for homosexual partygoers to dance in peace and away from public scrutiny. Disco allowed patrons to explore sexuality and push the envelope on the dance floor, disco clubs acted as an escape from such depressing environments and acted as the fantasy marginalized peoples could escape to forget oppression and racism. Disco clubs originally functioned as liberated party spaces and were seen as places of political statement, a smooth mix of long single records to keep people dancing all night long
2.
London Astoria
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The London Astoria was a music venue, located at 157 Charing Cross Road, in London, England. It had been leased and run by Festival Republic since 2000 and it was closed on 15 January 2009 and has since been demolished. The venue is still today as an iconic music establishment, as it helped to launch the careers of many British rock bands. It was also a venue in Britains LGBT scene, for holding Londons biggest gay new year parties along with G-A-Y. Originally a warehouse during the 1920s, the became a cinema. It was converted for use as a theatre in the 1970s, after further conversion, the building re-opened in the mid-1980s, as a night club and live music venue for well-known musical acts. There were half a dozen smaller music and gay clubs in the adjacent buildings within the neighbourhood, in 2009 the venue closed, and was demolished as part of the development plans of the Crossrail project. The Astoria was built on the site of a former Crosse & Blackwell warehouse and it was designed by Edward A. Stone, who also designed subsequent Astoria venues at Brixton, Old Kent Road, Finsbury Park and Streatham. When first constructed, the building was four storeys tall with a decorative frieze cornice surrounding its exterior, from 1928, the basement was used as a ballroom dancing salon. The venues interior was re-designed with a plainer, modern style in 1968, in 1977 it was converted for theatrical use. The venue went through period of conversion when the theatre closed in 1984. It reopened in 1985 as a nightclub and live music venue with a capacity for 2,000 people, a booklet was published called The History of the Astoria by Nigel Crewe to commemorate its evolving uses. It was the venue for the last live performance by Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers, mean Fiddler acquired the lease for the London Astoria in May 2000, securing the future of live music at one of London’s most famous rock ‘n’ roll venues. It was also connected to Astoria 2 so that the two venues could function as a venue when needed. The Astoria continued to operate in this format until its closure in 2009. The Smashing Pumpkins recorded and filmed the live performances of their songs Soma and these videos and recordings appears on Vieuphoria DVD and the Earphoria CD. The Cranberries recorded a concert on 14 January 1994 and they released it on DVD in 2005. The Groundhogs recorded their Live At The Astoria album at the venue in 1999, feeder recorded a matinee show with a live audience in 1999 at the venue to be shown on Fuji TV, a Japanese television station
3.
NME
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New Musical Express is a British music journalism magazine published since 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. It started as a newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s and 1990s. An online version of NME, NME. com, was launched in 1996 and it became the worlds biggest standalone music site, with over seven million users per month. With newsstand sales falling across the UK magazine sector, the paid circulation in the first half of 2014 was 15,830. In 2013, the list of NMEs The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, NME magazine was relaunched in September 2015 as a nationally distributed free publication. NMEs headquarters are in Southwark, London, England, the brands editor-in-chief is Mike Williams, who replaced Krissi Murison in 2012. The paper was established in 1952, the Accordion Times and Musical Express was bought by London music promoter Maurice Kinn, for the sum of £1,000, just 15 minutes before it was due to be officially closed. It was relaunched as the New Musical Express, and was published in a non-glossy tabloid format on standard newsprint. On 14 November 1952, taking its cue from the US magazine Billboard, it created the first UK Singles Chart, the first of these was, in contrast to more recent charts, a top twelve sourced by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK. The first number one was Here in My Heart by Al Martino, during the 1960s the paper championed the new British groups emerging at the time. The NME circulation peaked under Andy Gray, Editor 1957–1972, with a figure of 306,881 for the period from January to June 1964, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were frequently featured on the front cover. These and other artists appeared at the NME Poll Winners Concert. The concert also featured a ceremony where the winners would collect their awards. The NME Poll Winners Concerts took place between 1959 and 1972, from 1964 onwards they were filmed, edited and transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken place. The latter part of the 1960s saw the chart the rise of psychedelia. During this period some sections of pop music began to be designated as rock, in early 1972 the paper found itself on the verge of closure by its owner IPC. Alan Smith was made editor and in 1972 was told by IPC to turn things around quickly or face closure, according to The Economist, the New Musical Express started to champion underground, up-and-coming music. NME became the gateway to a more rebellious world
4.
Billie Piper
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Billie Paul Piper is an English singer, dancer and actress. She made her debut in Scratchy & Co, the single was followed by Pipers album Honey to the B, which was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand and platinum by the British Phonographic Industry. In 2000, she released her album, Walk of Life. In 2003, she retired from the industry and launched an acting career. Pipers transition into acting began in 2004 and her most famous role is as Rose Tyler, companion to The Doctor from 2005 to 2006, in the BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who, a role she reprised in 2008,2010, and 2013. From 2007 until 2011, she starred as the high-flying escort Belle de Jour in the TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl and she also starred as Brona Croft/Lily in the Showtime series Penny Dreadful. More recently Piper has taken to the stage, Piper was born in Swindon, Wiltshire. Her first name, Leian, was changed to Billie on 25 April 1983, by her parents, Paul Victor Piper. She has one brother, Charley, and two younger sisters, Harley and Elle. She studied at the Sylvia Young Theatre School and Bradon Forest School, Pipers career began when she was selected to appear on the Saturday morning childrens television show Scratchy & Co. She later landed a role in a commercial promoting the pop magazine Smash Hits. Her follow-up single Girlfriend also debuted at number one, at the 1998 Smash Hits Poll Winners party, Piper was nominated for Best New Act and won Princess of Pop. She then released She Wants You as the single from the album. Honey to the Bee was released as the single from the album, like the previous single. At the same time, She Wants You was released in the US and she then started to tour and release in Asia. The singles and the album were released during mid-to-late 1999, in August of that year, the follow-up to Because We Want To was released in Japan, a single comprising Girlfriend and She Wants You combined. She recorded a song for Pokémon, The First Movie titled Makin My Way, during that time, Piper recorded her second album. She decided to further records under her full name of Billie Piper
5.
Soho
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Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and is part of the West End of London, England. Since the 1980s, the area has undergone considerable gentrification and it is now predominantly a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices, with only a small remnant of sex industry venues. Soho is a small, multicultural area of central London, a home to industry, commerce, culture and entertainment, record shops cluster in the area around Berwick Street, with shops such as Phonica, Sister Ray and Reckless Records. On many weekends, Soho is busy enough to warrant closing off some of the streets to vehicles, Westminster City Council pedestrianised parts of Soho in the mid-1990s, but later removed much of the pedestrianisation, apparently after complaints of loss of trade from local businesses. The name Soho first appears in the 17th century, Most authorities believe that the name derives from a former hunting cry. James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth, used soho as a call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor on 6 July 1685. The Soho name has been imitated by other entertainment and restaurant districts such as Soho, Hong Kong, Soho, Málaga, SOHO, Beijing, SoHo, London, Ontario, Canada, and Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires. SoHo, Manhattan, gets its name from its location SOuth of HOuston Street, however, apart from Oxford Street, all of these roads are 19th-century metropolitan improvements, so they are not Sohos original boundaries. Soho has never been a unit, with formally defined boundaries. The area to the west is known as Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east St Giles and Covent Garden, and to the south St Jamess. According to the Soho Society, Chinatown, the area between Leicester Square to the south and Shaftesbury Avenue to the north, is part of Soho, Soho is part of the West End electoral ward which elects three councillors to Westminster City Council. In 1536, the land was taken by Henry VIII as a park for the Palace of Whitehall. In the 1660s, ownership of Soho Fields passed to Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans and he was granted permission to develop property and quickly passed the lease and development to bricklayer Richard Frith. Soho was part of the ancient parish of St Martin in the Fields, as the population started to grow a new church was provided and in 1687 a new parish of St Anne was established for it. The parish stretched from Oxford Street in the north, to Leicester Square in the south and it therefore included all of contemporary eastern Soho, including the Chinatown area. The western portion of modern Soho, around Carnaby Street was part of the parish of St James, building progressed rapidly in the late 17th century, with large properties including Monmouth House, Leicester House, Fauconberg House, Carlisle House and Newport House. Soho Square was first laid out in the 1680s on the former Soho Fields, firth built the first houses around the square, and by 1691,41 had been completed. It was originally called King Square in honour of Charles II, several upper-class families moved into the area
