Basemental
Basemental: New small urban festivals ditch the corporate music vibe
A few years ago, Valley musician Mike Parham came back from South by Southwest (SXSW), a music festival in Austin, Texas, and described it to me like the Wild West —somewhere between an underground music festival and a business convention.Some see SXSW as their ticket...
Basemental: Inside the mind of PussyVision
20-Something Vision It’s an amazing feeling to bear witness to art you feel moved by — especially when that art is ephemeral. And it’s no less amazing to see a side of someone that you didn’t even realize existed. This is what happened when I first heard Pussy, a self...
Basemental: Our Club Runneth Over
This Friday night, Sept. 23, there are at least six shows I want to attend. It wouldn’t be surprising if some touring band squeezes in a last-minute basement show. There are other bars and venues, too — Ben Folds is playing the Calvin, for one — and maybe a festival...
Basemental: Streaming music service Spotify is a bust for local artists
Spotty Results I learned some shocking things about Spotify recently. The average employee rakes in $166,000 a year, and the highest executive compensation has increased over 300 percent since 2014, reaching as much as $18.9 million. Despite that, Spotify has never...
Basemental: Talking Rock and Net Neutrality with Candace Clement
We Buffer, We Suffer Candace Clement has been a been a member of the Northampton band Bunny’s A Swine for eight years. On songs like “Greetings from the Bottom,” her Strat intertwines with Emerson Stevens’ 3-string guitar contraption like a ball of twine, which gets...
Basemental: New Music from MalYMarco, Dirt Devil, ShowHorses, and Carinae
One of the pitfalls of writing a bi-monthly column is the fact that I can barely scratch the surface of all of the cool stuff that’s happening around the Pioneer Valley. There is so much! This week’s column will serve as an informal catch-up on some new(ish) releases....
Basemental Music Review: The Lentils
Mental for Lentils The first time I heard The Lentils was live in my basement in Hadley two years ago. I was completely blown away not only by the wacky and wiry guitar solos, but by the pop melodies buried beneath layers of sand. It was as if strange debris – or...
Basemental: Straight to Video, bassist Sam Hadge’s wild concert footage
The magic of live music stems from the intimacy of being in the same room as the performer, but Sam Hadge’s talent is capturing that intimacy for the online world who couldn’t make it to the show.Since I started going to DIY shows with regularity about a year and a...
Basemental: What’s a Jaume I? New Performing Art Space in Greenfield
Downtown Jam Matt Robidoux is nervous. He is sitting on a patch of grass in downtown Greenfield, adjacent to a municipal parking lot and the Mexican restaurant Mesa Verde. Across the street, a small handful of musicians are shooting the shit and smoking cigarettes,...
Basemental: Playing the Game
Northampton self-proclaimed pop-punks Potty Mouth formed at Smith College in 2011. Their self-titled EP came out in August. The EP, produced by John Goodmanson in Seattle (Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill) delivers five tightly-packed, driving songs that are severely...
Nightcrawler: ‘Hole’-d Up
Sutherland swaps silver screen for six-string; Gartska jams with guitar gods… briefly He was a “Lost Boy.” A “Young Gun.” One of “A Few Good Men” to enjoy a three decade career on both the silver and small screens alike. But...
Basemental: DIY Music, welcome to Basemental, a new column about the Valley’s underground music scene
As a 24-year-old musician in the Valley, my world centers around Hadley basements and Easthampton community centers — the places where you can catch the best of the area’s DIY music scene. The what scene?Exhausted by the exploitative pay-to-play model often used by...
Nightcrawler: Decade-dence, 90s pop, 80s rock and Guns N bobbleheads
Better call Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Looks like someone’s gotten a hold of the Wayback Machine.First stop: Foxwoods Resort Casino’s Grand Theater this Friday, April 29. Not only will female hip-hop heavyweights Salt-n-Pepa be there, but so will literal heavyweight Biz...E-Edition
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