Category: Music

“It’s a Trip, It’s Extraordinary, It’s One of a Kind”:Jim Steinman’s House for Sale at $4.5M

Jim Steinman, the composer of anthemic, operatic hits including Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Bat out of Hell, and Total Eclipse of the Heart, died in 2021 at the age of 73. In 2022, his Connecticut estate was put up for sale for $5.5 million; it’s now asking $4.5 million.

Steinman lived alone in his Mansion of Solitude.

That price includes the house, which the New York Times called “a majestic museum of the self,” and everything in it.

From the time Jim acquired the quaint country cottage originally located on the property, it became his personal sanctuary where he envisioned and built his masterful home and studio that served to inspire artistic creation and joyful entertaining. It was from this home that Jim collaborated with world acclaimed musicians and artists, composing on the very piano that is included in this once in a lifetime sale of Jim’s home and curated collections … To honor Jim’s legacy, it is the estate’s intention to find the next custodian who will be enthralled by the transformative power of Jim’s home and art.

Zillow/William Pitt Sotheby’s International
The unassuming exterior.

Zillow Listing

Read the NYT’s tour of the house last year: A Gothic Rock Cottage Fit for a Bat Out of Hell

Floor plans, video tour, and at: See the Property

And we must have a music video. Not Meat Loaf or Air Supply, but a woman in a white dress, men in belly shirts, and Jim Steinman himself throwing a guitar through a stained glass window. It’s 1981, and it’s Bad for Good:

Published
Categorized as Music

Coltrane 1961

What was going on in the world in 1961? A lot of eeriness, a lot of confused, threatened, concealed or failed aggression

Ben Ratliff

Taking inspiration from Coltrane’s two weeks at the Village Vanguard almost exactly 60 years ago, Ben Ratliff in the Washington Post riffs on John Coltrane and the Essence of 1961.

So here was a tendency: self-immersions, burials, entrapments, irritating provocations, projects with a built-in self-destruct button, all in the name of asking a better question. But whenever one proclaims a tendency in culture, one had better be prepared to find the opposite tendency at the same time. Sure enough, one could: plenty of joyous, communal, repetitive music, but similarly intense, and similarly resisting the concept of a leader, or a hero.

Ben Ratliff

Also mentioned: The previously unreleased recording of a live performance of A Love Supreme in 1965.

Beastie Boy/Bikini Kill Lake House For Sale

…Pontoon party boat included. A 1955 house in Upper Greenwood Lake, New Jersey, owned by Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, is for sale. The house is listed for just under $1 Million and property taxes are a very-reasonable-for-New Jersey $15,000 or so. The furniture, which goes all-in on the MCM vibe, has a staged feel, but the house appears to mostly retain the original kitchen and bathrooms.

#vintagebathroomlove
Relax with a view of the lake and Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era. Source: NJMLS
Source: NJMLS

The Official Song of Christmas from Home 2020: Sugar and Booze

"It's the most nauseating idea in the world: a comedian in a gown leaning against a baby grand without making a joke," Ana Gasteyer says. There are plenty of jokes (and a lot of great singing) on her new holiday album.

OK, I’m calling it: Sugar and Booze (which presciently came out last Christmas) is the most appropriate song for CFH (Christmas from Home) 2020.

Ana Gasteyer singing it live last year:

  • Namechecks: Hendricks, Manischewitz
  • Preferred Cider Mixer: Rum

Sticking with the theme, the official runner up: Cider and Hennessy by Jordin Sparks:

  • Namechecks: Hennessy (obviously), Martinelli’s
  • Preferred Cider Mixer: Hennessy (obviously)

Bonus: The studio version of Sugar and Booze: