Columns
by Jack Brown | Sep 5, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
It is sometimes difficult to believe that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency — ICE — is only 16 years old. Created in 2003 under George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, the new agency merged the two previously separate...
by Jennifer Levesque | Sep 3, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
I walked down the forest path of the Millers Falls Rod & Gun Club for the opening night of the 5th annual RPM Fest. Once I got to the clearing, the field was open with people playing yard games, groups of others gathered in small huddles chatting and enjoying...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 2, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Thinking back over the summer theater season just ended, images from memorable shows are passing before my mind’s eye, and ear — from striking moments in performances to sets and soundscapes. Here are some Valley snapshots. Chester Theatre Company celebrated its 30th...
by Will Meyer | Aug 27, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured
Brattleboro singer-songwriter Ruth Garbus strikes a deep place in the human psyche. Her strange earworm melodies and narrative lyrics have a way of lodging deep. This is especially true for Garbus’s new album, Kleinmeister — German for “small master,” which is set to...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Aug 27, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. This article was...
by Jack Brown | Aug 26, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
When the writer Toni Morrison passed away in early August, she left behind worlds. Her own, certainly, brought so vividly to life in works like The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved — carefully crafted and filled with a vitality that carried a sometimes brutal truth about...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Aug 23, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. This column was...
by Jennifer Levesque | Aug 20, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Valley Show Girl
RPM Fest, the largest camp-out metal music festival in New England and something that many people in the Valley look forward to each year, is back and coming up quick. Friday, August 30, through Sunday, September 1, are jam-packed with over 50 bands spreading out...
by Dusty Christensen | Aug 20, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
I hate every activity I have to do pre-coffee. I’m admittedly a bit of a grump before I’ve had my morning caffeine bump, so when an egg flew through the air and smashed on the kitchen floor on a recent morning, I wasn’t amused. My 21-month-old daughter — my beloved...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 20, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It wasn’t intentional, but thinking back on the programs I’ve seen at Jacob’s Pillow this summer, and forward to one that’s on this week, I realized that every concert on my dance card this year is by African-American-led companies. Unintentional, perhaps, but not...
by Jack Brown | Aug 19, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
I could hardly have imagined, back when I was a gangly middle schooler, how far into my adulthood one of my favorite stories would reach. But here it is some three-plus decades later, and it seems that every year there is some new tale that bears the influence of...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Aug 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. This column was...
by Will Meyer | Aug 15, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured
Jesus Vio’s new album Dutch Science kicks off with the mother of all questions: “Do You Believe?”: The vamping, minimalist, proto-acoustic track wryly asks “Do you believe in Halloween?” before declaring that “P.U.M.K.S. is not dead,” introducing the irreverently...
by Monte Belmonte | Aug 13, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
It was a dark and stormy night. Meaning a night where I could use a rum and ginger beer over ice with a slice of lime. But also, there was a thunderstorm looming. My children had taken over the inside and outside of my house in order to transform it into an immersive...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 13, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Shakespeare & Company’s name has threefold associations. It’s a theater that works in the company, as it were, of its eponym. It shares the name of the legendary bookshop on Paris’s Left Bank, lending an air of bohemian audacity and camaraderie to the enterprise...
by Jack Brown | Aug 12, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
As I was getting ready to write this column, the news came over the radio that filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker had died. Never really a household name, Pennebaker nevertheless contributed to our shared cultural vocabulary in ways that nearly anyone will recognize: if you...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Aug 9, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. Hi Yana, I started...
by Blaise Majkowski | Aug 8, 2019 | Articles, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Featured
What do you do when you have a dead-end job, a nagging wife, and no respect from the people in your neighborhood? Most of us would go to Las Vegas and hope for the best. But not Mr. Sycamore — his keen idea to escape the rigors of life is to undergo metamorphoses into...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 6, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
The news is the water we swim in. But what does our modern media do for you each day? What kind of imprint does it leave on you, as you fall asleep at night? The 24-hour outrage cycle prompts some of us to disengage, numbed by each horrific headline. Others stay...
by Jennifer Levesque | Aug 6, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
The end of Summer is near, but there are still more opportunities to rock out at a music fest this month. From jazz to reggae, Woodstock to metal, I guarantee you there’s at least one you’ll wanna attend. Or all of them! They are evenly spread out over the course of...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 6, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Summertime is winding down, and so is the Valley’s theater season – but not quite yet. Chester Theatre Company opens its final show this week (see below), Double Edge Theatre continues the month-long run of its perambulating epic I Am the Baron (reviewed here), and...
by Jack Brown | Aug 5, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Like so many others, I spent a short but richly rewarding stretch of my July binge-watching the third season of the Netflix series Stranger Things. If you don’t know it — and to my surprise, I found at least a couple of people this month who still hadn’t heard of Matt...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Aug 2, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Originally published February 20, 2017 Hi Yana, I recently began “dating” my best guy friend over this winter break. He’s told me that he was raised by a super religious mom and that when he was younger he “rebelled,” and experimented with other men, which he blamed...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Both of the longstanding children’s theaters that enliven the Valley’s summer schedule tickle the funnybone while feeding the imagination, but they go about it in quite different ways. Tom McCabe’s PaintBox Theatre specializes in twisted takes on treasured tales, with...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 30, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In the final week of this year’s Ko Festival of Performance, Sabrina Hamilton is looking forward to this weekend’s performance by the Ugandan musician-humanitarian Samite (see below) while musing on the season-so-far. Attendance is high and season subscriptions are...
by Monte Belmonte | Jul 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
My day job, or rather my MORNING job, is to wake up frightfully early and spend time inside a little box in certain Valley people’s kitchens or cars. I am the morning host at 93.9 The River/WRSI. Back in 1986, WRSI celebrated its fifth birthday party with music from...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 30, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Three plays now on area stages were inspired by real-life events: a superpower scrimmage, a mass shooting, and a nuclear disaster. These timely dramas humanize the headlines and highlight the power of theater to hold a mirror up to our best and worst natures. ...
by Jack Brown | Jul 29, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
All of us have those sounds that touch some deep part of our souls, triggering memories and emotions that might otherwise lay dormant. Like scents tied to childhood — the smell of a censer for lapsed Catholics, or the perfume of a grandmother gone too soon — sounds...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jul 26, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. This column was...
by Will Meyer | Jul 25, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
When The New York Times profiled Kurt Vile in the fall, they titled their piece “Kurt Vile, Indie Rock’s Charming Riddle.” The implication, of course, was that the long-haired indie rocker had a Rubik’s Cube to decode, something to latch onto underneath the...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 25, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two shows now playing on the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Stockbridge stages look at who we are as humans. One goes up close to delve into folks’ working lives, the other takes a long view – very long, from the dawn of time to the day after tomorrow. Working, subtitled...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 23, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two timely dramas are playing in the Valley this week and next, while a timeless tragedy is prequelled in the Berkshires, all of them grappling with essential questions of life and death. New Century Theatre’s comeback season, which opened with a riveting performance...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Jul 23, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
It’s not easy getting out of the house and out to events with a toddler, but my wife and I have been doing our best to nurture a budding interest in music for our 2½-year-old. One of our greatest successes to date was a free youth orchestra concert we found listed in...
by Jack Brown | Jul 23, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
It can be interesting to track how new editions of popular books change with the times. Even the titles, sometimes, can reflect the state of the era. When Lewis Hyde’s now-classic book The Gift was first published in 1983, it carried the wonderfully evocative subtitle...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 23, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare’s trickiest play to perform these days – a thoroughly misogynistic tale in which daughters are auctioned to the highest bidder and the “shrew” of the title is “tamed” by a cunning fortune hunter. He (of course, he) is Petruchio,...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jul 19, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. This column was...
by Monte Belmonte | Jul 18, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Champagne has long been a celebratory beverage hoisted during the world’s most famous bicycling event — The Tour de France. It makes sense. France is where Champagne comes from. But closer to home, our Western Mass wine world is also strangely connected to the world...
by Jack Brown | Jul 16, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Everyone has their own idea of what really makes it summer in New England. For some, it’s getting that first soft serve, melting in the after-dinner sun. Another might mark it with the first visit to a favorite swimming hole, when the water is still just a little too...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jul 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
From concerts to theatrical plays, from art galleries to a bistro and even co-working spaces and drag queen bingo. Holyoke’s Gateway City Arts has something for everyone. Located on Race Street in a beautiful old industrial building, it has been reinvented into an...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 16, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It’s summer, folks, time to get off our butts and take some exercise. A little stroll, perhaps, to enjoy the scenery – and a play. That’s the current invitation from two hilltown theaters. Double Edge Theatre presents a brand-new Summer Spectacle on its Ashfield farm,...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jul 12, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Originally published June 14, 2016 Note: Sexual trauma is addressed in this week’s column. Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jul 11, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Ever have a project you are so excited about doing — then mid-way, you get road-blocked and you can’t finish it at that time? Then boom, for real! Another artistic idea pops in your head and you get all excited, and that project takes flight. The never-ending shelf of...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 9, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
This year’s through-theme at the Ko Festival of Performance, is Habitat (human) – a topic that also runs through two more current Valley offerings: How I Learned to Drive, from Ghost Light Theater in Holyoke, and Moving Water, a work in progress at Serious Play...
by Hunter Styles | Jul 9, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
Every now and then, a four-word notification pops up on the homescreen of my phone. It says: “batch from the patch.” That’s my calendar, reminding me to hop over to Turners Falls — specifically, the 11th Street bridge to the Patch neighborhood — and purchase a batch...
by Jack Brown | Jul 9, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
We often consider our visual artists in terms of their medium — a watercolorist, a sculptor, a portrait painter. But whatever their chosen tools, almost all artists share one thing that is so fundamental that we often overlook it: the gift of vision. And here I’m not...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 8, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
“Who knew?” is the question in the air these days at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. For example: Who knew that many of the great Duke Ellington’s compositions were written by someone else? And who knew that the pious religious community known as Shakers had...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 4, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
More than any other summer theater festival in these parts, Williamstown thrives on stars. For the theater it’s a sure-fire audience and income generator, but for the stars it’s an opportunity. Here they can dig into roles they might not otherwise be offered, and...
by Will Meyer | Jul 2, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Deerhoof has been making topsy-turvy, explosive rock music for over 25 years. Founded in the ‘90s, the group is still at it. They have released 15 albums, collaborated with countless musicians, and have inspired many more (myself included). The band will play Hawks...
by Monte Belmonte | Jul 2, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Her shirt read “Thunder Cunt” as she sallied up to her bar at The Ashfield Lake House. She had the shirt printed because she says it is her “lifestyle brand.” Dre Rawlings is a nasty woman, in the best most badass way. In the way that would piss off the Commander-in...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 2, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Last weekend, Strident Theatre strode confidently onto the Valley stage. The brand-new company debuted at Smith College with The Final Say, a dramedy by local playwright Meryl Cohn. According to founder Susanna Apgar, who co-directs the show with Shakespeare &...
by Jack Brown | Jul 1, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Since its inception in 2007, the Ashfield Film Festival has become an annual gathering point for film lovers of the Valley. With an emphasis on local filmmaking, the fall festival — co-founded by Ashfield Cultural Council chair Tamsen Merrill and film editor Harry...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 29, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When I was in England recently, I saw two shows at the country’s flagship playhouse, the National Theatre. One is a new play, the other a timely revival, both of them responding to current hot topics. Small Island, the premiere, reflects the crisis of...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jun 28, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Editor’s note: Sex and relationship advice columnist Yana Tallon-Hicks is currently on maternity leave. While she’s gone, we’re reprinting some of her best columns of the past several years, and are looking forward to her return in September. In the mean time,...
by Katie Gartner | Jun 28, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
When I was expecting my son, I started to watch YouTube channels about traveling with kids. I felt a little smug sometimes watching a young child run happily through a World Heritage Site during a polished montage set to an indie track. “Oh, please,” I scoffed. “This...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jun 25, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
“Hey Levesque,” I was greeted while walking up to the entrance. “Hey Levesque,” I replied. Not too many people share my last name, but it just so happens one of the bartenders at the Tank in my hometown of Agawam, does. The Cheers in Hampden County, where everyone...
by Blaise Majkowski | Jun 25, 2019 | Articles, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Featured, Film
Looks like Godzilla, king of the monsters is falling on hard times. Our reptilian friend’s new movie is having a hard time wooing audiences away from a flick about another prehistoric beast, sir Elton John. Even appearances by fellow cohorts Mothra, Rodan, and King...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 25, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The best thing about summer theater in this region is its variety. Last weekend, for instance, I saw an Irish drama, an American musical and a world premiere. The premiere, at Barrington Stage Company, is a metaphor within a satire that becomes an indictment. America...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 24, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When I was in London this month, I saw two Shakespeare plays. No, make that two and a half: the Bard’s most popular comedy, one of his least performed, and a new play in which he’s a character – and a plagiarist. Just a stroll along Thameside from the National...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jun 24, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Content note: This column talks about nonconsensual relationship dynamics. Hi Yana! I’m a pansexual woman currently in college. I had a really bad relationship for about three months, and I ended it about nine months ago. I struggle with depression, anxiety, and PTSD,...
by Jack Brown | Jun 24, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
The trope of the working-class-hero has long had a place in American music, but particularly so since Bruce Springsteen’s career began to take off in the mid-1970s. Things only got more blue around the collar when his megahit album, “Born in the U.S.A.,” was released...
