Columns
The Pour Man: Champagne Chuck; inexpensive bubbly
Dibon Brut Reserve Cava, of Penedes, Spain; $12.99 I’ve been thinking about sparkling wine lately because it’s well suited for steamy summer nights; just one glass will go a long way to ease the heat. Sparkling wine also came to mind because someone gave me a bottle...
Nightcrawler: Give ‘Em The Slip
Slip-not seeks new skin beater; Splitshift, FNB celebrate sonic milestone Local tribute band Slip-not will be marching to the beat of a different drummer — er, clown? — if they can find the right basher to fill the oversized shoes of departing Joshua Keller....
The Beerhunter: Bright Ideas Brewing in North Adams
Back to the Mill New breweries tend to pop up in unlikely industrial spaces, and Bright Ideas Brewing in North Adams is no different. The small but ambitious operation is a new tenant of MASS MoCA, which means that finding the front door to the brewery involves some...
StageStruck: Power and Value
Two brief plays currently running in the area look at the power and value of art through quite different lenses, but ask similar questions: How does a work of art “speak to us” as individuals? How does its character affect our perception of it? How does its very...
Stagestruck: English Stages, Part One — The National
Three of the four shows I saw at the National Theatre in London last month were star vehicles, and the fourth one’s ensemble cast featured a very well-known face. The first three also, coincidentally, ended in sudden reprieves from ignominious deaths. Another...
O, Cannabis: A Heady Vacation, Traveling With Weed
It’s summer! The season in which most Americans seek to do some deep unwinding by hopping in the car, on a plane, or a ship and getting away from it all. There is one thing millions of people aren’t seeking to leave behind, though, and it’s also headily conducive to a...
Cinemadope: Defiant Requiem showing in Amherst
Notes on WarWhen it comes to war and film, there will never be a shortage of stories. Whether tales of daring or death, on the front or at home, war can bring out the best and worst in us, and create lifelong strength — or leave one with lasting wounds. And while we...
Nightcrawler: The Name Game
SWMRS boasts unique punk pedigree What’s in a name? The members of SWMRS are barely in their 20s and can already claim quite a lot. Reportedly inspired by watching Jack Black and his homage to headbanging — the film School of Rock — together in...
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...
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: That time The Three Stooges went too far … nyuk, nyuk, nyuk
That time The Three Stooges went too far … nyuk, nyuk, nyuk As Kenny Rogers wisely sang, “You gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” There have been many performers who have ignored this advice, plodding right along with their careers when they...
Cinemadope: Here and Gone
Small films shown quickly, so see them today Showing movies is a tough racket, and the hard truth of the matter is that an opening weekend can make or break a film’s chances at breaking even at the box office. Do decently out of the gate, and you might get a chance at...
The V-Spot: Jealous Over My Flirty Girlfriend
Dear Yana,My girlfriend and I have been polyamorous for three years. We have established boundaries and as far as poly relationships go, it’s been pretty smooth sailing. Usually I’m a very low-jealousy partner.But lately she’s been flirting with this one woman that I...
Stagestruck: Intimate Moments — Berkshires Summer Theatre Preview
Summer theater used to be known as “the straw-hat trail” and “summer stock,” both terms evoking familiar, innocuous entertainments presented for languid hot-weather audiences by (usually) amateur companies in tents, barns, and town halls. From the outset, though,...
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,...
Nightcrawler: (Sex) Change-Up
Pocketful of Sexchange reunites scene staples The Pixies’ Frank Black famously referenced them as a “dangerously untethered band specializing in abandon and dementia.” They’ve also shared stages with area upstarts The Unband and Fountains of...
The V-Spot: Why Can’t I Have Sex Without Drinking?
Editor’s Note: Sexual trauma is addressed in this week’s column.Hi Yana,I can’t seem to want to have sex unless I’m drunk.This has always kind of been the case, except for when I was a teenager, and horny all the time (and not drinking). Then when I got to...
Brew Kids on the Block: A new Senate bill would allow beer sales at farmers markets
Have you ever wondered why Massachusetts farmers markets don’t allow the sale of beer, even though vendors are typically welcome to sell hard cider and wine? So have state lawmakers. Early last month, the Senate passed a sweeping agricultural bill...
Cinemadope: Swede Hearts, a celebration of the best Bergmans in film: Ingmar and Ingrid
Hear that a local theater is hosting a Bergman festival, and the first thought that will pop into the heads of most art-house denizens will be that of the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. An icon for the ages, the director’s films — The Seventh Seal, Fanny and...
Down to Earth: Saving Honey Bees, One Person at a Time
I’ve always had a thing for creepy crawlies. I was the kid who caught the wasp stuck in the classroom to let it out the window. And I still crouch to move a worm from the sidewalk into the grass. So, when a colleague of mine, Sara Eddy, started her first beehive, I...
The V-Spot: I’m stuck in a cum-nundrum!
Hi Yana, My partner (cis-male) and I (queer bisexual lady) enjoy getting super hot and bothered with each other, but we’re both frustrated with my seeming inability to orgasm. When we’re fooling around, just warming up, sometimes clitoral stimulation gets...
The Beerhunter: Five O’Clock Everywhere: Western Mass Beer Week June 11-18
The Beerhunter’s ears are always pricked to news of local craft beer happenings, and this month, they’re positively tingling. All that excitement in the air is thanks to the first-ever Western Mass Beer Week, a series of events at breweries, bars and restaurants all...
Nightcrawler: (Holly) Miranda Writes
Carrots enhance the eyesight. Spinach helps you grow big and strong. And cranberries … make you rock?”It’s how I learned to play guitar back when I was 14,” explains the 33-year-old singer-songwriter Holly Miranda. “I was on a...
Stage Struck: True Illusions
Two world-premiere musicals have just opened in the region. One is an unassuming little pocket piece with a nifty hook, the other a glamorous spectacular that assumes it’s going to Broadway. The Musical Theatre Lab at Barrington Stage has developed dozens of new works...
The V-Spot: How Can I Be Poly, With A Heart?
Hi Yana,I’m in my early 30s and have been polyamorous for a couple of years. Not long ago my wife of 13 years and I split. Now I’m kind of going through a dating/poly crisis. I strongly identify as poly despite not really having a primary relationship....
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: The First Wet, Hot American Summer was so bad, how did it get a sequel?
The first Wet, Hot American Summer was so bad, how did it get a sequel?I’ll let you in on a little secret: the newsroom once had a library of old VCR tapes we all could share. After VCR tapes went the way of the Walkman there was a purge and I snagged Wet, Hot...
Nightcrawler: Who’s rocking the stage at this weekend’s International Food Fest
By Gary Carra In 2014, Thomas Kielbania Jr. revived Chicopee’s storied Kielbasa Festival after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Now, he’s reinventing it – and renaming it, and relocating it – to West Springfield, for what’s shaping up to be a...
Cinemadope: ‘April and the Extraordinary World’ plays this weekend; Longevity serum, missing scientists, and a talking cat named Darwin
Ask people what they like in art, and you might think that all they want is “the real world” mirrored back at them. We hail the Old Masters — their mastery of light and shadow, their ability to make hard marble seem like supple skin. But where would we story lovers be...
The V-Spot: My ‘Orgasm’
Hello Yana,I’ve been dating my boyfriend for almost a year. We’re in our 20s, and he’s a few years older than me. There have been times when we’re intimate when he doesn’t provide me with oral sex. He’s never close to ejaculating while inside me. He only does so...
O’Cannabis: Snacks ‘n’ Snags – Stoner eats; the march toward marijuana legalization hits a bump
The hungry stoner is a crude cliche. Ravenous, bug-eyed, slovenly, and insatiable is how the type is usually portrayed in pop culture. The truly initiated, however, know that while weed can bring on a powerful case of the munchies, it’s nothing to go all reefer...
The V-Spot: How Do I Tell My Partners I’ve Got Herpes?
Hi Yana,I’m 21 years young, genderqueer, very sexual, and polyamorous! I have a penis; I also have genital herpes. Is there a best time to tell a partner?If I have symptoms or have had them recently it’s not much of a conundrum because there’s no...
Nightcrawler: Noho’s Betsy-Dawn Williams releases international rockabilly record; free, family concerts kick off in West Springfield
By Gary Carra Forget about the unemployment rates and bleak economic forecasts from the usual cast of politicos and pundits. Northampton’s Betsy-Dawn Williams says she has proof positive it’s a bull market out there. “I’ve just been signed for...
Winter Season Wrap-up
I see a lot of plays, and I cover as many as I can. But the feast of performances always overwhelms the column inches, so now, with a new summer theater season on the horizon, I’m taking a final look back at the shows I’ve enjoyed since last summer. Promising...
Down to Earth: Fair pay for natural treasures – Coke calls Northampton’s water fee a ‘burden’ all the way to the bank
It’s one of the things we need most for survival, yet take most for granted. We need it to drink, to cook, to bathe, to brush our teeth.Water.We’re blessed to live in a zone of abundant rainfall, and the Mill and Connecticut Rivers pour through the Valley. But even...
The Beerhunter Abroad: Japan – Land of the Rising Suds
After dark, standing in a 24-hour convenience store in downtown Kyoto, I scanned the rows of canned and bottled beers in a bright refrigerated case. Virtually everything on offer was a product of one of the “big four” Japanese breweries: Sapporo, Suntory, Asahi, and...
Nightcrawler: Vampire Diaries
An interview with Joe Perry, Aerosmith vet and member of the Johnny Depp-led band Hollywood Vampires Gary Carra: Joe – big fan. I’ve been kicking around Western Mass for a quarter-century now, either playing music or writing music, so of course I’ve come across...
Cinemadope: Toot Your Own Horn
It must have been in 1989 or so that I first saw Colors, director Dennis Hopper’s story about police and gang violence in Los Angeles. Set mostly in South Central and East L.A., it starred Sean Penn and Robert Duvall as partnered cops — a rookie and his mentor —...
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...
StageStruck: Seven Devils, Three Witches and a Nun
Halloween is half a year away, but there are devilish doings in the Valley, foreshadowed by witchery in Lenox. A one-woman show at Amherst College this weekend puts a clown face on a 17th-century tale of demonic possession, and last month Shakespeare & Company...
The V-Spot: Seeking Seduction Instruction
Hi Yana,My boyfriend and I have been together for a year. Up until a couple of months ago, I was extremely satisfied with our sex life. He wanted me all the time and would initiate sex at least one to three times daily. Recently, we moved in together and it seems the...
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...
StageStruck: Revolting Children
When Matilda the Musical opened in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2010 – quickly moving to the West End, where it still resides – the British press greeted it as an “anarchically joyous, gleefully nasty” antidote to the sugary concoctions of other kid-centered musicals. (That...
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...
The V-Spot: We Never Talk, But I’d Like To
I know you do sex advice, but I need some relationship advice. My boyfriend and I have been dating for about half a year and he shows zero emotion. I want to bring it up to him, but not in a way that will make him clam up more, ya know? Any advice would be awesome....
O, Cannabis! Pro-pot and Proud, Extravaganja in Northampton
Governor Charlie Baker, Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston, and House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, you’re wasting your time with your anti-marijuana legalization effort, the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy Massachusetts. So far, the campaign, which launched in late April,...
We Can Do It! V-Spot sex advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks has made it her mission to get us all to O-Town
Climbing the stairs to V-Spot sex columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks’ apartment, I wasn’t sure what to expect.Would there be a lot of framed Georgia O’Keefes on the wall? A swing hanging in the bedroom? Penis-shaped drinking glasses? I was sort of right.There are no...
Stagestruck: Loud Ladies
The subtitle of the best-selling book and its 1995 Broadway adaptation — The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years — is no exaggeration. Both the memoir and the play cover more than a century of African-American history, seen from the centenary vantage point of two...
Nightcrawler: Mercury Rising Queen For A Night in Springfield; Foxwoods’ Battle Of The Bands Seeks Combatants
By Gary Carra There’s been a growing trend in tribute circles over the past decade. While the songs remain the same for bands like Zep-licators Get The Led Out (coming to Holyoke’s Mountain Park Aug. 5) and Billy Joel recreators Big Shot, the need to physically look...
The V-Spot: Oh! Oh! Oh? Where’s My Orgasm?
Hi Yana!I started having sex with males this past summer. It’s fun and exciting, but I’ve yet to reach an earth-shattering orgasm. That may be too high of an expectation for myself, but it feels like I’ve never had an orgasm at all. I feel the build up, but...
StageStruck: Collision Course — Race relations, as seen from outer space
In some ways, the vigilante shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012 can feel like the first in a series, soon followed by more headline-grabbing murders of young African Americans — as if Trayvon’s death, and George Zimmerman’s acquittal, launched and licensed the police...
Cinemadope: Everybody Wants Some!!
Any director worth their salt knows their strengths. Scorsese has New York and the mob; Allen has New York and neurosis; Tarantino has pop culture and cursing; Bergman had Sweden, bleakness, and death. To me, one of the marks of an interesting director — an...
Down to Earth: Right whales feast on the Cape, but for how long?
About 500. That’s smaller than Smith College’s first-year class by 100 and it’s a tenth of the entering class at UMass. It’s also the number of right whales known to be alive in the entire world. These huge creatures — second in size only to the blue whale...
The V-Spot: Help Me Teach My Kid About Consent
Hi Yana, I have a seven-year-old son and I want to start teaching him about consent. Do you have any resources and tools for me as a parent to help him learn about consent as a kid? — Proactive Parent Dear PP, The brilliant Dutch sex education curriculum starts what...
Nightcrawler: Kobra Kai Ready for a Body Bag? 80s cover kings strike Whiskerz, but then what? Outer Stylie Puzzle
A little more than a month ago, the Valley’s own Jon Donais arrived in Chile, Santiago. He had flown in with his present band, hardcore heroes Anthrax, along with headliners Iron Maiden on “Ed Force One” — an aircraft infamous in aviational circles for both its “Book...
The Beerhunter: What is ‘Randalling’?
Flavor Savers For my birthday this year, can someone pick me up an organoleptic hop transducer module? I know that sounds like a piece of equipment that Doc Brown would install under the hood of his DeLorean. But really, I’m a simple man. This module, also known as a...
Nightcrawler: A Not-So-Bright Idea, Matthew Larsen, Mitchells go back to the Dark ages; Green River Festival
Everyone wants to be a Renaissance man, in a Renaissance band … or at very least, ensconced in a scene or city that has been awarded the “Renaissance” brand.But Matthew Larsen is kicking it old school — back to the “dark” ages, one could say.Back in 2006 while still...
The V-Spot: Are Tasty Lubes Giving Me Tonsillitis?
Hi Yana,I have been using flavored lube for mostly oral, but recently this has been causing tonsillitis for me. I forgot to read the fine print, “Use within 3 months,” so now I must chuck out a full bottle (I hate wastage!).What brands of flavored lube...
Cinemadope: Let’s Fight – The conflicts of good stories
I’m sure that any first-year film major could tell you more than I can about what makes films tick, but for me, the best of them have always come down to the story of relationships — much like our own lives. Whether it’s He Said/She Said, Axis against Allies, or Harry...
Stage Struck: Othello’s Island — Shakespearean echoes on Cyprus
At the end of Act One in Shakespeare’s play, Othello is dispatched from Venice to command the garrison on the island of Cyprus, a strategic outpost on the eastern rim of the Mediterranean that is under attack from the Turkish fleet. So although he’s “the Moor of...E-Edition
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