by Gary Carra | Mar 3, 2015 | Arts, Columns, Music
There’s an old line about the issue label types often dub the “sophomore jinx.” And that is, “You have your whole lifetime to write your first album, a matter of months for the follow up.” One need only pick up Dead Ringer, the successor to Meatloaf’s epic Bat Out Of...
by Gary Carra | Feb 25, 2015 | Arts, Columns, Music, Nightcrawler
Nancy Sinatra’s boots may have been made for walkin’, but the way Ludlow Firefighter Dan McKenney sees it, his Rock The Boot Winter Jam — slated for Feb. 28 in the town’s Gremio Lusitano Club — will serve two decidedly different purposes. For starters, music fans...
by Gary Carra | Feb 18, 2015 | Arts, Columns, Music, Nightcrawler
On the back of such seminal works as Goodfellas and Casino, Martin Scorsese is roundly regarded as an authority on all things mafioso. Less famously — at least, when considering his body of work in its entirety — Scorsese also filmed and released the final concert by...
by Gary Carra | Feb 11, 2015 | Arts, Columns, Music, Nightcrawler
“And this one time at band camp, I got to play with Joe Perry, Mark Clarke, and Steve Morse!” Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy Camp, that is. After an impassioned written plea from his daughter Kristin, Bernardston’s Bill Cheney got to swap solos with some of his childhood...
by Gary Carra | Feb 4, 2015 | Arts, Columns, Music, Nightcrawler
The song may be more than three decades old, but even now, when musicians play a local watering hole, they know there’s a good chance someone will yell out “Freebird” at some point. Plucking even the opening arpeggio of 1971’s “Stairway to Heaven” at any given guitar...