Here Comes Everybody: Setting James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to music
Early 20th-century Modernist literature, at its worst, is uninviting and impenetrable. Take the work of Ezra Pound — at one extreme is his beautiful and accessible imagist poem “In A Station of the Metro”: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; petals on a wet,...
Between the Lines: When Thank You Is Not Enough
In a pocket of my work bag, I carry a talisman of sorts. It’s a patch from the First Marine Division, aka “The Old Breed.” A man named Harris Mills gave it to me years ago. He was a family friend, and an imposing, if grandfatherly figure — tall, well-coiffed, and...
The Uncanny Valley: Jumpin’ Black Flash, A Cape Cod boogeyman
Spring-Heeled Jack, in addition to being the best-named apparition since the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, was a frequent haunter of Victorian London and, eventually, other parts of Great Britain. He was known and feared for his habits of sudden attack via tearing with metal...
Between the Lines: Advocate Grand Band Slam Is Back, now with more slam!
Back in the final year of the 1900s, I stood, guitar in hand, on the steps of Northampton’s old courthouse at the main intersection. The occasion was the (then new) Valley Advocate Grand Band Slam. My bandmates and I had won top honors in the...E-Edition
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