Articles
by Hunter Styles | Mar 12, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
The motto for the town of Dalton is “heaven in the heart of the Berkshires.” And much like heaven, a lot of people never make it there. With fewer than 7,000 residents, Dalton is a sort of transitional space in rural Massachusetts, cushioning quiet little towns like...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 11, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Scott Braidman is giving me a tour of his workplace, the Hadley headquarters of Happier Valley Comedy, of which he’s the artistic director. It’s a bright, welcoming space in the Mill Valley Commons, a mixed-purpose building fronted by Route 9 and backed by cornfields....
by Blaise Majkowski | Mar 12, 2019 | Articles, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Featured
Gather around kids, it’s Don Knotts time! Hands up if you remember everyone’s favorite nerd, starring in such classics as The Incredible Mr. Limpet and The Shakiest Gun in the West. I knew someone who counted The Ghost and Mr. Chicken among her favorite movies. But...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 11, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Content note: This column talks about non-consensual sex and traumatic reactions. Hi Yana, I’m a 24-year-old woman and I’ve had no sexual desire since my teens. When I was 18, I went out with a boy from my high school and when we went to his house, he pushed sex at a...
by Jack Brown | Mar 11, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
For many modern filmmakers, the shadow of Ingmar Bergman looms large. The great Swede, whose name has become a kind of shorthand here for foreign art-house film, was a revelatory experience for young filmmakers coming of age in a pre-digital era; seeing what he could...
by Rob Brezsny | Mar 11, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The coming weeks might be a good time to acquire a flamethrower. It would come in handy if you felt the urge to go to a beach and incinerate mementoes from an ex-ally. It would also be useful if you wanted to burn stuff that reminds you of...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 8, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Uncategorized, Valley Advocate Sessions
OroborO combines experimenatal rock with punk, metal, and mathy riffs. Check out the band’s Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with OroborO:
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 8, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Review
Turners Falls artist ixchelailee has produced a series of digital collages that stand toe to toe with any other non-digital artwork that you might find in art galleries across the Pioneer Valley. Her exhibit, “Art as veil: hiding behind and walking through,” on...
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 7, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
One undocumented woman’s husband was pulled over by a police officer and was asked to present his license. Even though he was obeying the rules of the road, he was arrested for not having a driver’s license. This was one common story from a group of local undocumented...
by Jennifer Levesque | Mar 7, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
I’ve been hibernating the past couple of months. I just bought a house and have been focused mainly on that. The closest I’ve been to live music is listening to my vinyl — live — in my living room. I broke out of my hibernation recently, however, and attended my first...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 7, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
Imo Nse Imeh: 17 Years Boy: Epilogue // Through March 15 Visual artist Dr. Imo Nse Imeh’s latest project “17 Years Boy: Epilogue” is now on display at Readywipe Gallery in Holyoke. His work is remarkable and powerful and absolutely beautiful. The exhibition stems from...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
The Daily Hampshire Gazette, one of the oldest newspapers in America, printed its first pages in the summer of 1786. From the start, things were tense in the Western Mass communities it covered. The front page of the earliest surviving issue of the Gazette reports...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Mar 6, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
This past week, the state Legislature’s Harm Reduction Commission — the advisory group looking at solutions to the drug epidemic — released its report. As expected, the commission, which is made up of current and former drug users as well as doctors, government...
by Dave Eisenstadter and Chris Goudreau | Mar 6, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Polly wants a hit of opium The farmers who grow fields of poppies in India to produce opium, which is sold on the medical market, often have to contend with seasons of uneven rainfall — but there’s another unpredictable factor that has been wreaking havoc on the crop...
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 5, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured
Comic books and other forms of graphic novels haven’t always been met with respect from literary circles. During the 1950s, anti-comic book censorship called Comics Code Authority limited the kinds of stories and content that graphic novels could depict. Today that...
by From Our Readers | Mar 5, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our letters to the editor page. Here you’ll find reader comments on Advocate articles and other news. We collect readers’ opinions from emails, letters, Facebook comments, and comments to valleyadvocate.com. Want to get in on this?...
by Fran Ryan | Mar 5, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Wellness
Remember playing shoeless in the grass as a kid, or feeling the earth under your feet as you ambled down your favorite path or sat barefoot by a lake or around a campfire? For some of us, those carefree days of foot freedom are but a fond memory. However, there are...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 4, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, I’m a transgender male, no bottom surgery yet (there’s a good chance it’s not even in the cards for me, anyway) and I’ll be starting HRT (hormone replacement therapy) soon. I’ve always been very frank with partners that I’m not comfortable with being touched,...
by Rob Brezsny | Mar 4, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Genius inventor Thomas Edison rebelled against sleep, which he regarded as wasteful. He tried to limit his time in bed to four hours per night so he would have more time to work during his waking hours. Genius scientist Albert Einstein had a...
by Jack Brown | Mar 4, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
If you’ve been around the interwebs for a bit, you’ve almost certainly run across Henri. Henri — or, to use his full title, Henri, le Chat Noir — is an ennui-soaked cat whose subtitled French musings call to mind old arthouse imports. “If my tail wags, it is a reflex...
by Will Meyer | Mar 1, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
Free Pizza was a punk band founded in 2009 and based in Boston. If the name isn’t too much of a giveaway, the ethos of the band was playful and goofy. The heavy-hitting upbeat rowdiness was accessible, earnest, and always a good time. In 2016, Free Pizza threw in the...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 1, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
Orlen, Gabriel, and Avery perform folk music with rich vocal harmonies, lap steel slide licks, and ragtime inspired guitar. Check out the group’s Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Orlen, Gabriel, and Avery:
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stagestruck
There’s a party going on in the basement of Chelle and Lank’s house – an unlicensed after-hours drink-and-dance dive in inner-city Detroit. That is, until a police raid on a similar establishment explodes into violence and the neighborhood goes up in flames. Detroit...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 28, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Get Out With Staff Picks, Staff Picks
Talking Heads Film @ Amherst Cinema // Friday, MARCH 1 This Friday, March 1, Amherst Cinema brings Talking Heads’ fantastic and groundbreaking concert film “Stop Making Sense,” to the screen as part of its Late Nights series. The film was shot during the course of...
by Monte Belmonte | Feb 28, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines
MNARK: I’m so proud of him. I actually have his bumper sticker on my car in San Francisco, which was interesting because we just had an election for mayor. DNARK: Did I get any votes? Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz may have made headlines when he was the first...
by Sarah Heinonen | Feb 27, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
On a cold night in the middle of February, lights are glowing in the windows of Spring of Hope Church of God in Christ, a small brick church on Alden Street in Springfield. Inside, the pews are about three-quarters full, and the attendees are listening to a different...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 27, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
It was, to put it mildly, an act of moral turpitude and callous disregard for the suffering of separated families and victims of violence when President Donald Trump announced he would be circumventing Congress to declare a national emergency that, by his own...
by Chris Goudreau | Feb 26, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
No bananas stolen Police in Sulphur, Louisiana, arrested a man wearing a gorilla suit, who allegedly broke into a home and hid underneath a mattress before his arrest. According to local news outlets in Louisiana, officers saw the costumed man walking through yards...
by From our Readers | Feb 26, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our letters to the editor page. Here you’ll find reader comments on Advocate articles and other news. We collect readers’ opinions from emails, letters, Facebook comments, and comments to valleyadvocate.com. Want to get in on this? Email...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 26, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Review
“The coming months will be a more favorable time than usual to boost feminine authority and enhance women’s ability to shape our shared reality.” So says Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology column this week under the entry for Taurus. Whether or not she believes in...
by Jack Brown | Feb 25, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Art lovers in the Valley are never far from a good gallery. Between the extensive collections of local colleges, dedicated museums, and the smaller neighborhood salons that pepper our local downtowns, we are lucky to live in an area with such a vibrant artistic...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 24, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two elder ensembles are this week’s headliners. The Berkshire-based WAM Theatre has just announced its plans for a troupe of women over 65, and the latest offering from the British stage in the popular National Theatre Live series features a cast of old folks....
by Advocate Staff | Feb 22, 2019 | Advocate Sessions, Articles, Featured, Music
Olivia Frances is a folk/pop singer-songwriter with environmentalist themes. Check out her Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Olivia Frances:
by Chris Goudreau | Feb 21, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music
It’s not often that you find a music festival during late winter, let alone a diverse collection of shows across four nights ranging from zydeco to bluegrass, country music, and folk. But Signature Sounds’ annual Back Porch Festival, now in its fifth year, is right at...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 20, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Hello from Vienna, Austria, Yana! Over the years I’ve realized that I like being dominated in sex. I want strong men who play with my brain, mainly verbally. A year ago I met a guy on a kinky hookup app. We went out on a date and hit it off immediately. In the...
by Rob Brezsny | Feb 20, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): South Koreans work too hard. Many are on the job for fourteen hours a day, six days a week. That’s why a new concept in vacations has emerged there. People take sabbaticals by checking into Prison Inside Me, a facility designed like a jail....
by Hunter Styles | Feb 19, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, The Beerhunter
It is right about now, during the shortest month of the year, that I have sat through some of the longest evenings of my life. Cabin fever is no joke, even if your cabin comes equipped with a fire, good books, and a stockpile of craft beer (plus some loved ones, I...
by Steve Pfarrer | Feb 19, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Review
ENCHANTÉE By Gita Trelease Flatiron Books gitatrelease.com In Paris in 1789, as poverty grips most of the populace, and the aristocrats’ indifference to people’s suffering breeds growing anger, 17-year-old Camille Durbonne is struggling to provide for herself and her...
by Jack Brown | Feb 19, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
The photography of Rosamond Purcell is work that often feels plucked from another period. Her artistic impulse — what filmmaker Errol Morris described as “the contemplation of things that other people would normally just ignore” — harkens back to a time when many...
by Andy Castillo | Feb 18, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News, Wellness
It’s a month and a half into 2019, and what may have seemed like an easily obtainable fitness resolution on New Year’s Day might not seem that way anymore. To encourage those who may need a boost, we asked readers and fitness experts to share their best fitness...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 18, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Dear Yana, I’m in my early 30s and have been faking orgasms for about a decade of a colorful, explorative — if not straight up hyphy — sex life. I had my first orgasm about 13 years ago with a partner, who helped me discover simultaneous clitoral stimulation during...
by From our Readers | Feb 18, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our letters to the editor page. Here you’ll find reader comments on Advocate articles and other news. We collect readers’ opinions from emails, letters, Facebook comments, and comments to valleyadvocate.com. Want to get in on this? Email...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 16, 2019 | Advocate Sessions, Articles, Music
Stoner Will & The Narks play slacker rock with a biting satirical bent. Check out the band’s Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Stoner Will & The Narks
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Nazi art not a winner Adolf Hitler can’t seem to catch a break. First, his quest for world domination hit a snag in the 1940s when the Allies defeated him in World War II, and now, no one wants watercolor paintings attributed to him. None of the five paintings...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
Ch’CHUNK! at Luthier’s Co-op // FRIDAY, Feb. 15 Ch’Chunk is self-described as “a modern take on classic swing.” The band plays great original songs as well as Tin Pan Alley classics that instantly transports your mind to a dimly lit speakeasy. So, with that in...
by Rob Brezsny | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When directors of movies say, “It’s a wrap,” they mean that the shooting of a scene has been finished. They may use the same expression when the shooting of the entire film is completed. That’s not the end of the creative process, of course....
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
At first glance, you’d think the two plays I saw in New York City last week have little in common. One is an international import from London to Broadway, the other an Off-Broadway transfer from a small regional theater in Vermont. One is twice as long as the other...
by Fran Ryan | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News
Eight billion metric tons. According to Industrial Ecologist Roland Geyer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, that is the amount of plastic that has been produced since the 1950s, and almost half of that, was created after the year 2000, causing plastic...
by Jennifer Levesque | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Signature Sounds recording artists And The Kids from Northampton have made a name for themselves throughout their active musician years in the Valley. They’ve been locally and nationally covered and very recently had a live set at Paste Magazine that was streamed...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
Excitement. Elation. Eagerness. Those were the emotions that bubbled up when I got the news that the Advocate would be returning to a weekly schedule, and that after six months performing other roles in the company I was being asked to return as its editor. What you...
by Jack Brown | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
Listen, I love my kids. I do. But it’s been a long winter around here. The holiday season was a terrible round-robin of stomach bugs, the heat went on the fritz in their bedroom, and a cold snap kept us cooped up in the house on days when their energy level could have...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 11, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
How’s this for genre mashups: Brontë gothic in which two of the characters are animals. Wildean romcom in which all the actors are women. Golden Age Spain in which a woman lives as a man. Multidisciplinary invention in which diversity seeks community. Renaissance...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 9, 2019 | Articles, Music
Electrio combines blues rock with progressive rock, funky grooves, and experimental stylings. Check out the band’s Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Electrio:
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 4, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When Nora Helmer famously slammed the door on her empty marriage at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, she changed the course of theatrical history, and social history as well. But shutting the door on one story implicitly opened another, and thus left a...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 1, 2019 | Articles, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
Raspberry Jam plays catchy progressive indie rock that’ll get you on the dance floor. Check out the band’s Valley Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Raspberry Jam:
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 27, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Theater, Sheryl Stoodley firmly believes, “can be the starting point for conversations – much-needed at this point in our United States and in the world.” To that end, Serious Play, the theater Stoodley leads, “works toward reshaping society’s conversation on...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 25, 2019 | Articles, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
No Lens combines reggae rock with acoustic folk and funk grooves. Check out the band’s performance on Valley Advocate Sessions in the video below. Interview with No Lens:
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 22, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In a program note for The Engagement Party, Samuel Baum says his play is “an exploration of secrets and lies.” Which puts it right in his wheelhouse, as his credits include the TV psycho-crime drama Lie to Me and the movie Wizard of Lies. He says he’s also interested...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jan 21, 2019 | Articles, Columns, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, I’m a junior in college and I’ve been dating my boyfriend since our freshman year. Initially the relationship was steamy and passionate. I was his first sexual partner so we did a lot of experimenting and discovering together. As is perhaps inevitable, that...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 18, 2019 | Articles, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
Dicey Riley with Zoe Darrow is a Celtic-folk influenced rock band with virtuoso fiddle and electric bagpipes. Check out the band’s full Valley Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Dicey Riley and Zoe Darrow:
