Several weeks ago, on a short
visit to Pittsburgh, a relative convinced me that it was worthwhile visiting Johnny Angel’s Ginchy Stuff,
a music-centered shop owned by local doo-wop institution Johnny Angel, the
leader of Johnny Angel and the Halos.
I took the attached photo at that time, and spent the subsequent half hour
inside poring over the many slices of American musical history inside.
Johnny has been a musician for 50 years, and the
back part of his space is really a museum: pennants, programs, photographs,
themed jackets, and those now-quaint (45s and 78s) music formats that a
generation raised on downloads might regard as akin to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many involve artists encountered by Johnny as a
musician starting out (e.g., The
Temptations, the 4 Tops, Martha Reeves, James Brown, The Crystal Blue Band—i.e,
the original Shondells, Lou Christie, Mary Wilson and Chuck Berry).
The other half of the space is a store selling musical
instruments, decorations, books, cassettes, CDs, and records, to name a few.
The space is in Steel City’s
Northside, next door to Bicycle Heaven (itself worthy of a blog post from me,
at some point in the not-so-distant future). It is well worth a stop.
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