Articles
by Hunter Styles | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Stage
One-man band plays blues, rock, and folk on improvised instruments Some of us spend our days sitting at computers in nondescript rooms. In the new, handmade music video for his love song “Beta Star,” Matt Lorenz gives that a shot. He wakes up in the morning, washes...
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
Amherst-based psychedelic dream-pop and surf-blues infused band Calico Blue released its second album early this month, 15 Sunrise, which presents songs that could be best described as meditations on life. They confront the ghosts that live in the corridors of the...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured
From Italy With Ash Featuring works seen for the first time outside Italy, this exhibit contains pieces from the ancient town of Oplontis. When Mount Vesuvius blew in 79 CE it buried more than just Pompeii. Pieces excavated from Oplontis reveal a life of luxury and...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Stage
Nasty Jazz The Ladies of Jazz music series is dedicating its Saturday, March 25, concert to all the “nasty” (aka “strong”) women fighting for female and reproductive rights. And all proceeds are going to benefit Planned Parenthood of Northern New England in...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 21, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage, Stagestruck
The story goes that Samuel Beckett was walking through a London park with a friend on a glorious spring morning when his companion exclaimed, “Isn’t this just the kind of day that makes you glad to be alive?” To which Beckett replied, “Oh, I don’t think I’d go that...
by Jennifer Levesque | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Valley Show Girl
A couple weeks ago I picked up Echoes of the Dying Light by local metal titans, Disguise the Curse. “Holy shit, this is amazing,” I said to myself while drumming on my steering wheel with the music blasting through my car speakers. Produced by Chris Daniele at Yucky...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
President of the NAACP in AmherstPresident of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Cornell William Brooks will be giving a talk at Amherst College Friday night. The event is free and open to the public. What exactly Brooks will...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Pamela Murphy, an Agawam firefighter, was vacationing on the Cape when she jumped into the water to save a six-year-old boy from being smashed against some rocks by the ocean waves.James Chartier, a former Army staff sergeant, completed a 90-mile walk from Western...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
Perhaps there are parents who, according to the Cinepolis movie chain, long to watch movies in theaters while their children, aged 3 and up, frolic in front in a jungle-gym playground inside the same auditorium. If so, the company’s two “junior” movie houses — opening...
by Lena Wilson | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter, Stream Queen
Whether or not Western Mass has gotten the meteorological memo, we’ve officially sprung forward. That means it’s time to emerge from hibernation, put on our rubber gloves, and get ready for some spring cleaning. In my case, I’ve decided to dust off some groundbreaking...
by Chance Viles | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Nerding Out, Newsletter
Andrew Quient is celebrated for his geometrical-style pottery. Quient, 66, of Florence, even has some of his pieces in the national White House archives. But if you run into him working in Northampton, it’s unlikely he’ll be at a potter’s wheel. You’re probably going...
by Craigslist.org | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connection forum, you really should. The site is filled with longing, lust, and miscellaneous statements of the heart. The following is a sample from the Western Mass forum. Post dates have been added. Miss P. — m4w a...
by Amanda Drane | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Leisure, Newsletter, Third Eye Roaming, Wellness
Mary Kennedy of Northfield says she could barely move her neck before she began taking yoga with Pam Roberts at the YMCA in Greenfield about six years ago.Kennedy, a breast cancer survivor living with torticollis, a painfully twisted neck, says yoga has at times saved...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music
DIO know DIO is coming to town? Jump on your tiger, Holy Diver, because DIO is coming to town. Last in Line, a DIO cover band that includes members of the original DIO, is playing the Waterfront Tavern in Holyoke on Wednesday, March 29. The group will play some...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Film
Antarctica’s isolation and cold have always been attractive to me. A land of rolling ice mountains, silence, and snow where Mother Nature is commander in chief. In Antarctica — Ice and Sky, Oscar-winning director Luc Jacquet creates a portrait of French glaciologist...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Leisure, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
I recently saw a guy friend masturbating with lotion instead of lube and was wondering if lube would be a better alternative for him. If so, could you explain why? — A Little Help for My Masturbating Friends One of my favorite conversations to strike up with my...
by From Our Readers | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Our Hero! Thanks for the Facebook comments left in response to “Don’t Be Afraid to Get Arrested: Longtime Activist Paki Wieland Says Today’s Protesters Aren’t Disturbing Enough People” Jim Sorter: Now we have a new hero who will inspire our lives. Thank you for...
by Jack Brown | Mar 20, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film
The annual Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival returns Now in its twelfth year, the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival (PVJFF) has long been a wonderful part of the Valley’s plentiful film offerings. Carefully curated, the festival screens films big and small,...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Team Raja “With spidery limbs and a sprawling imagination,” writes Dance Magazine, “Brooklyn-based Raja Feather Kelly brings a vivid boundlessness to all he does. Whether dancing for the likes of Reggie Wilson or cooking up his own darkly entertaining...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 12, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
On the first page of Fiona Kyle’s dramaturgical notes for Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, at Hartford Stage through March 19, is a photo of Margaret Thatcher. The next page features the less- recognizable face of Cecil Rhodes. He was the epitome of 19th-century British...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
Talk about prejudice… Without knowing anything about the play, I walked into a rehearsal of Sweet, Sweet Spirit last week and made some snap judgments that turned out to be quite wrong. The play, which receives its regional premiere next weekend at the Academy of...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
In a Glass of Their Own Last fall, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center invited kids in kindergarten through sixth grade to create drawings and descriptions of imaginary creatures, with the promise that some of those creatures would be featured in the upcoming...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
Street Smarts Hampshire College, Holyoke Community College, and Smith College host visits this week from community activist Iris Morales, who rose to prominence in the Vietnam era. As a teenage activist in New York City, Morales joined the paramilitary Young Lords...
by Lena Wilson | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter, Stream Queen
There are a lot of zippy phrases floating around right now that blur the concept of journalistic integrity — “fake news,” “alternative facts,” “White House press secretary Sean Spicer” — but in the film world, objectivity and performance coalesce into a kind of...
by Sam Riedel | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, News
“Right now you must be thinking ‘Jesus, is she on drugs?’” says the sly, weathered-yet-energetic voice on the other end of the phone. “I’m not. I have a caffeinated beverage.”That voice belongs to Patricia “Paki” Wieland, the (in)famous...
by From Our Readers | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
‘West Mass’ Responses on Facebook… We had some questions about the ‘West Mass’ video, an effort by the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts to re-brand the area and attract tourists —...
by Will Meyer | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Pavement certainly planted some type of “slacker” flag in the 90s. Whether or not they were the original “slackers” — they weren’t — is irrelevant, but that label has often evoked that band. Today the same label, certainly a compelling angle for write-ups, is attached...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
I recently started dating somebody who ticks nearly all of the “right” boxes for me. This is the first time since breaking up with my sweetheart of over two years that I’ve felt this way, and it’s really exciting. There’s only one hiccup: He prefers...
by Chris Goudreau | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, News
So, you’ve decided you want to get arrested at a protest. You want your arrest to make a political statement, but would also like to face as little physical harm as possible during the course of your arrest. Bill Newman, director of the Western Regional Office of the...
by Jack Brown | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
Talk about the American Dream, and one of the first things that will likely come up is the idea of owning your own home. To be sure, having a house of one’s own brings with it a host of benefits — if you have kids, for instance, cleaning all those rooms every day...
by Warren Johnston | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Newsletter, The Pour Man
Lunetta Prosecco is one of the hottest sparkling wine brands on the American market, and there’s a good reasonta why — it’s well-made, inexpensive and widely available, an excellent wine to celebrate. It also is lower than many wines in alcohol, about 11.5 percent, so...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird
In February, two teams of South Korean researchers announced cancer-fighting breakthroughs by taking lessons from how two of medicine’s most vexing, destructive organisms — diarrhea-causing salmonella bacteria and the rabies virus — can access often-unconquerable...
by Amanda Drane | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, News, Newsletter
Vanessa Carlton may be best known for playing piano on the back of a truck while singing her hit song “A Thousand Miles,” but that doesn’t mean she’ll play just anywhere. The artist has standards — and they’re apparently higher than at least what one Northampton venue...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 13, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Food + Booze, Music, Newsletter, Stage
With the SYRUP Festival, Piti Theatre Company in Shelburne Falls has hit on a tradition that most of us would never have realized we were missing: all-ages live performance, featuring world-class artists, mixed with handcrafted food and sweets from local artisans. Now...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Music, Newsletter
A Porch to be Reckoned With Most Valley radio listeners have spent at least a little time on Jim Olsen’s back porch. For years the president of Northampton-based record label Signature Sounds has hosted a Sunday morning radio program on 93.9 The River that focuses on...
by Jennifer Levesque | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Valley Show Girl
I consider myself a musical schizophrenic. I can get into just about any genre you put in front of me — especially if it’s live. I may not be a musician, but music has been a passionate subject for me for as long as I can remember. One of the first local shows I went...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
Local homebrewer Josh Britton scales up with a low-key launch On quiet winter days between reports of Valley craft beer happenings, your friendly neighborhood Beerhunter has been wandering a bit further afield. Over the past few months, I’ve written articles about my...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
Early last month, the Greater Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts announced a new brand identity: West Mass. The groups spent $80,000 on the campaign, hiring Oklahoma-based agency Cubic Creative...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Film, Newsletter
Miss Major Known to many simply as “mama,” Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a trans elder and activist who blazed the trail for other high-profile transgender women of color. Griffin-Gracy has been involved, up close and personal, in decades of fights for rights, including...
by Chris Rohmann | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
Some of those leaving the American Repertory Theater’s current production must be surprised and baffled, not to mention disappointed. On my way out of the Cambridge theater on opening night, I overheard a man asking, “Why did James Earl Jones have such a small part?”...
by Hunter Styles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Newsletter
El on Wheels Before President 45 ruined our fantasies about living the carefree life atop a skyscraper, America had Eloise, the children’s book series from the 1950s written by Kay Thompson and illustrated by Hilary Knight. For someone living the cushy life —...
by Jack Brown | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Film, Newsletter
Over the last few months, it has become impossible to ignore the rising tides of xenophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry and hatred that have suddenly made America a much scarier place for so many of those who call it home. Of course, these prejudices aren’t...
by Chuck Shepherd | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
Despite California’s 2015 law aimed at improving the fairness of its red-light cameras, the city of Fremont — population 214,000 — reported earning an additional $190,000 more each month last year by shortening the yellow light by two-thirds of a second at just two...
by Chance Viles; Photos of Dufree Conservatory also by Chance Viles | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
Container gardening, for the uninitiated, is exactly what it sounds like: planting vegetables, flowers, herbs, and fruits in containers as opposed to soil in the ground. It’s also exactly as easy as it sounds.It’s also something anyone can do anywhere. No land? No...
by From Our Readers | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Letters from our Readers, News
Diversity in Metal?Comments on WMass Metal: The Valley’s Diverse Scene Rises Again at valleyadvocate.com.Jenna Weingarten: How are you going to write a headline that says “diverse” in it and feature a bunch of white people and men? As someone in a Western Mass punk...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
One of the first hurdles to planting a garden is the land: often hard, rocky, compact, dusty, weedy, and dry.Tilling the soil — churning up the ground to mix the dirt and soil layers and soften up the plot for easier digging and root growth — is hard work even if you...
by Kristin Palpini | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
This time, when I went to Mary Jane Makes Your Heart Sing last Friday, I didn’t have to wait in a line to get in. I also didn’t get any weed when I left.For nearly two months, Mary Jane Makes Your Heart Sing operated like a weed club. Located in a strip mall on Page...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Mar 6, 2017 | Articles, Columns, The V-Spot, Wellness
I’m in a happy, long-distance monogam-ish relationship with the human of my dreams. Really; things are so good. This is my first time having an open relationship, and I think we talk through things really well and effectively. He has several partners — all of which...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Signs of Light Seattle indie folk band The Head and the Heart formed in 2009, and their third album Signs of Light, released this past fall, captures a radio-friendly pop rhythm that Rolling Stone described as “cozy and stylish at the same time.”That album was...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage
The Body Follows: Inside the mind of professional contortionist Ariana Ferber-Carter Many people would bend over backwards to avoid performing stunts in front of an audience. But Ariana Ferber-Carter — a professional contortionist and circus coach — is far more...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
In advance of the 1984 Summer Olympics, the city of Los Angeles commissioned 200 public murals. Pasqualina Azzarello remembers that transformation vividly. On hot afternoons, at the end of a long day at elementary school, she would climb into the backseat of her...
by Jack Brown | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter
We Americans are a nostalgic bunch. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just that we are still such a young nation — there are Italian cafes that are older than our whole country — that we like to fool ourselves into thinking we have more history than we do. Or maybe, when...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Is it an acceptable level of risk for a child to live in an 80-year-old apartment building that hasn’t been renovated in as many years with a heating system from the ’60s, electrical wiring for the ’70s, and battery-powered smoke detectors that have been in place...
by Connolly Ryan | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Featured
And Still She Persisted (for Elizabeth Warren) They offered her a muzzle and still she persisted. This sister, this gatekeeper, this whistleblower and thistle-bearer. They told her to shut her justice-loving mouth but still she persisted: could not remain still when...
by Chuck Shepherd | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, News, News of the Weird
Although discouraging the marriage of children in developing nations has been U.S. foreign policy for years, a data-collecting watchdog group in America disclosed in February that 27 U.S. states have no minimum marriage ages and estimates that an average of almost...
by Kristin Palpini | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, News, Newsletter, Wellness
Emotional Freedom Technique and what it’s all about If anxiety made a baby with a hive of buzzing bees, you’d get me.Hi, I’m an extremely nervous person. My tendency to worry works out great when reporting and I just can’t let a question go, but it’s a burden...
by Warren Johnston | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Columns, The Pour Man
Part of the fun of writing this column is that I often need to look for largely undiscovered, good affordable wines.It’s a quest that I enjoy and that can be rewarding when I do find something that’s new and exciting in the sea of wines on the market.I recently tried...
by Will Meyer | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Music, Newsletter
Pioneer Valley Underground brings new voices to DIY coverage Back in 1999, thousands descended into downtown Seattle for protests against the World Trade Organization, dubbed “The Battle of Seattle.” Not only did protesters successfully get a frank discussion about...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts, Stage
Home is Where the Art Is The sweet and heartfelt family story Painting Churches, winner of the John Gassner Award and Best Off-Broadway Play, is set in a Beacon Hill townhouse owned by Fanny and Gardner Church. As the play opens, the couple is packing, planning to...
by Hunter Styles | Feb 27, 2017 | Articles, Arts
Five and Ten Again This month, Sohn Fine Art Gallery in Lenox teams up with the Lichtenstein Center for the Arts in Pittsfield for another year of Berkshire County’s 10 x 10 Upstreet Arts Festival. The two galleries are each showing half of a 100-photograph show,...
