Music
by Stephanie Kraft | Jun 30, 2011 | Music
You can bet that when the first Handel opera to be produced in the United States was staged in Northampton in 1928, there wasn’t a shopping cart on stage. Nor is it likely that one singer was costumed in gleaming festoons of cans. So what do shopping carts, cans...
by Advocate Staff | Jun 30, 2011 | Music
Garland JeffreysThe King of In Between(Luna Park) Garland Jeffreys’ visual image shouts more “Whitey on the Moon” than “Puerto Rican girls just dyin’ to meetcha,” so the direction of his new album took me by surprise. While it does...
by Mark Roessler | Jun 30, 2011 | Music
For decades after Woody Guthrie’s death in 1967, his children didn’t believe that any recordings of the legendary folk singer’s solo concerts had survived. In 2001, though, 80-year-old Paul Braverman found two recording reels deep in his closet. They...
by Advocate Staff | Jun 30, 2011 | Music
The Mountain GoatsAll Eternals Deck(Merge) Recent Mountain Goats releases are themed, but there’s no concept to All Eternals Deck beyond the song titles being three words long. This freed up John Darnielle to unleash one of his strongest batches of songs. His...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 7, 2011 | Music
The Blind Boys of AlabamaTake the High Road(Saguaro Road) It may be possible for the Blind Boys of Alabama to make a bad album, but after seven decades (singer Jimmy Carter is an original member) of their making good ones, it seems unlikely. For the latest record in...
by Gary Carra | Jul 7, 2011 | Music
Looking to reinvigorate their wildly successful summer concert series as it entered its 10th season last year, the organizers decided to take a good look around. They had been calling it Cityblock, but, as evidenced by the throngs of Harley Davidsons neatly nestled...
by Matthew Dube | Jul 7, 2011 | Music
“I like the idea of things that are lost but still follow you around, or things that are there but might vanish at any moment,” says guitarist and vocalist Grant Wicks, when asked about the inspiration for his band name, Walking Ghosts. “I’m...
by Matthew Dube | Jul 14, 2011 | Music
Northampton musician Carolyn Conspiracy—nee Carolyn Zaikowski—learned piano and the application of music theory in part by listening to and trying to play music from Broadway musicals. “I am a serious sucker for heart-wrenching drama in music,”...
by Gary Carra | Jul 14, 2011 | Music
They have something old… The Old 97s, to be exact. Something new… in the form of a Friday night kickoff party at Greenfield’s Arts Block. While becoming one of the region’s premiere art, music and foodstuffs events, the Green River Festival...
by Gary Carra | Jul 14, 2011 | Music
Don’t fold up those little flags or put those red, white and blue suspenders in mothballs just yet. The town of Enfield has yet to begin its ode to the birth of the nation. And as entertainment director Mike Pestana explains, the decision to roll out the annual...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 21, 2011 | Music
Junior BoysIt’s All True(Domino) The first two Junior Boys albums were so groundbreaking in their mix of chopped-up beats and hushed, soulful vocals that it’s a disappointment that their innovations have settled into something of a recipe. What saves the...
by Gary Carra | Jul 21, 2011 | Music
What do you ask a local notable who 1) has spent decades in the industry, 2) has an exciting new project to promote, and 3) is also widely recognized as an adept angler? Well, if you’re the Crawler, you ask about the secret to such longevity, about juicy...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 21, 2011 | Music
Helado NegroCanta Lechuza(Asthmatic Kitty) Helado Negro’s music can be difficult to understand, and not just because it’s recorded in Spanish. The second album released by Helado Negro is an entrancing and sometimes confounding hybrid of Spanish pop and...
by Matthew Dube | Jul 28, 2011 | Music
Although his band features some of the area’s best rockers, The Sometimes bassist and vocalist Neal Robinson won’t go so far as to call his Northampton quintet a supergroup. “I think it is illegal to call yourself a supergroup without any ex-members...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 28, 2011 | Music
Stephane GrappelliStephane Grappelli with Orchestra Plays Jerome Kern(Just A Memory) Jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli is largely known as Django Reinhardt’s colleague in the Hot Club of France, where he played the equally talented foil to Reinhardt, but...
by James Heflin | Jul 28, 2011 | Music
“I’d never left the country before,” Mark Schwaber tells me. All the more remarkable, then, that we were chatting in the brief span of days between episodes of globe-trotting which brought him as far afield as New Zealand. At the end of the yellow...
by Matthew Dube | Jul 28, 2011 | Music
A blog post kicked things back into gear. One solitary scribe’s vitriolic lament lambasting “old punk rockers” set Westfield singer Dennis Most in action. “This blogger was on a tear about how older punkers shouldn’t play. It was young...
by Matthew Dube | Aug 4, 2011 | Music
“It’s a very messy process by which we write our music,” says The Living City drummer Tyler Gorman. “Something akin to a high-functioning mental illness, which has everything to do with who we are as individuals. Since most of us are longtime...
by Gary Carra | Aug 4, 2011 | Music
Many is the journalist—yours truly included—who has been the target of name-calling for committing the sin of getting someone else’s proper one wrong. In the curious case of the Texas-based Americana outfit Band of Heathens, however, an apparent...
by Gary Carra | Aug 4, 2011 | Music
Hard to imagine that a man who’s played with national recording artists since 1969, been praised by the likes of Robin Trower and Johnny Winter and toured with Muddy Waters, could still be heading up in the world. But according to former FAT guitarist Jim...
by James Heflin | Aug 11, 2011 | Music
Like him or not, Elvis Presley is integral to American culture. The course of his career is a remarkable reflection of much that is good and much that is bad about said culture—early on, he was the embodiment of cool, blasting the sensual young world of rock and...
by Matthew Dube | Aug 11, 2011 | Music
Longtime Western Mass. musician Rob Skelton fancies himself more John than Paul, and it’s the former’s influence that inspires his writing and activism to this day. “Lennon had it so right when he wrote and played ‘The War is Over’ before...
by Gary Carra | Aug 11, 2011 | Music
“My name is Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid…” Sorry—Kid Rock is actually one rock act that won’t be at KidsRock, a family-friendly music festival occurring at—and raising proceeds for—Beacon Field in Greenfield Aug. 13. But what it lacks...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 11, 2011 | Music
James Lee Stanley and Cliff EberhardtAll Wood and Doors(Beachwood) A dozen Doors classics from folk music guitar pickers? Huh? How can this be so good? It starts with the wisdom to radically retool. Neither Stanley nor Eberhardt channels Jim Morrison, which was...
by Tom Sturm | Aug 18, 2011 | Music
It’s a beautiful day in Goshen as teenaged girls start filing into a big old barn along with some parents, siblings and other relations, carrying musical instruments and bags of clothes. It’s not quite like a typical summer camp drop-off, and it’s...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 18, 2011 | Music
Damon and NaomiFalse Beats and True Hearts(20/20/20) Currently celebrating 25 years of performing together, former Galaxie 500 rhythm section members Damon Krukowski and Naomi Young offer their seventh studio album. Though one foot remains rooted in the past, the two...
by Gary Carra | Aug 18, 2011 | Music
Just like the man who spearheaded the It Takes A Community concerts at the Pines Theater in Look Park Aug 19-20, the weekend is shaping up to be a lil’ bit country, a lil’ bit rock ‘n’ roll. Launched last year by Staind frontman Aaron Lewis in...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 18, 2011 | Music
Wild BeastsSmother(Domino) Not since Morrissey has a singer been able to deliver bon mots like “I would lie anywhere with you/ any old bed of nails would do” as convincingly as the Beasts’ Hayden Thorpe. However, using his operatic croon to sing such...
by Gary Carra | Aug 25, 2011 | Music
They’ve played it by the numbers. Even given odes to everything from animals and insects to human anatomy. But for this, the 21st installment of the Northampton Arts Council’s annual end-of-summer fundraiser Transperformance, things seem to have taken a...
by Matthew Dube | Aug 25, 2011 | Music
Dan McLeod may claim a loose grip on music theory, but that hasn’t prevented him from producing some of the most haunting and affecting sounds to come whistling out of the Valley in years. “Time signatures, scales, keys, chords and finger-style...
by James Heflin | Aug 25, 2011 | Music
Walk into Carmelina’s in Hadley any Friday night, and you’re likely to find the restaurant’s usual trappings: scurrying servers, a bartender standing in front of gleaming bottles, and loads of diners queueing up for alfredo in the low-lit cool. But...
by Matthew Dube | Aug 25, 2011 | Music
Local band Rebirth coalesced after the death of a loved one. “We initially came together after a close friend ascended,” explains Cinamon Blair, who provides vocals, Rhodes and bass for the quintet. “Ian [Hamel (ukulele, Rhodes, bass)] wrote the tune...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 1, 2011 | Music
Kris Delmhorst Cars (Signature Sounds) Were The Cars an influential band, or symbolic of the vacuity of the post-punk, pre-grunge early 1980s? Should tribute albums be sweet-voiced faithful renditions, or raw, radical revamps? I’m a big Kris Delmhorst fan, but...
by Advocate staff | Sep 1, 2011 | Music
Nucular AminalsNucular Aminals(K) With a sound described as “what would happen if you woke up in the morning and squeezed your tube of toothpaste, but a thick glob of sunshine came shooting out instead of minty freshness,” the self-titled debut by this...
by Gary Carra | Sep 1, 2011 | Music
Many is the tune inspired by little more than an image, emotion or moment in time that was forever etched into its creator’s noggin. When it comes to the curious case of journeyman musician Brandon Patton (brandonpatton.com) and the title track for his seventh...
by James Heflin | Sep 8, 2011 | Music
Jim Matus is a relative newcomer to the Valley—he moved here from Hartford in 2006. Matus is a stringed instrument player, but one who migrated from guitar to several of its cousins from around the globe. That move seems like a natural—Matus has long been...
by Gary Carra | Sep 8, 2011 | Music
Local fans of the lo-fi guitar hero band Ivy won’t have to wait until September 20—the official release date of the band’s first studio effort in seven years—to scratch their sonic itch for slow-building, spaced-out synths and ethereal,...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 8, 2011 | Music
ZombyDedication(4AD) With only one track that’s over four minutes and most sticking to the two-minute mark (another three go under a minute), the latest by one of the U.K.’s most renowned dubstep producers is an exercise in experimentation. Though most...
by Matthew Dube | Sep 8, 2011 | Music
Katelyn Richards encourages active audience participation at her numerous gigs. The Holyoke singer and guitarist sets out claves, cowbells, egg shakers, tambourines—even a double-sided agog?—and invites anyone in the crowd to sing, dance and jam along....
by Gary Carra | Sep 15, 2011 | Music
Mick Jagger famously crooned, “You can’t always get what you want.” Big E talent buyer John Juliano respectfully disagrees. “As always, we looked at many rock and pop acts when considering the entertainment lineup for the Eastern States...
by James Heflin | Sep 15, 2011 | Music
In last week’s Art in Paradise, Valley musician Jim Matus discussed his work with Mawwal, his innovative acoustic world fusion band. The band just released Sight Up, a disc Matus celebrated at an Iron Horse show with his other project, Impulse Ensemble. In both...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 15, 2011 | Music
Inc.3(4AD) The debut EP by brothers Daniel and Andrew Aged (formerly of Teen Inc.) is a teaser for a possible forthcoming album. Despite coming in at three tracks, the record does little to stir anticipation for a full-length release. Opening number...
by Matthew Dube | Sep 15, 2011 | Music
Music helped Eva Cappelli overcome the tough stuff life threw her way. She’s hoping her own songs can do the same for others. “I have survived a lot of abuse over the years and I’m still standing,” she says. “I wouldn’t trade a day...
by Matthew Dube | Sep 20, 2011 | Music
Western Mass country rocker Lindsey LaBelle knew early on what she wanted to do. Real early on. When she was three her father, Kenny LaBelle, had her singing in his home studio. At 13, she became a backup singer in his band The Silent Partner Project. Two years later...
by Tom Sturm | Sep 22, 2011 | Music
Springfield and its environs have long been a heavy metal haven, thanks to clubs like the Fat Cat and the now-defunct Infinity, and bands like All That Remains, The Acacia Strain, Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and the multi-platinum-selling Staind. Promoters like...
by Tom Vannah | Sep 22, 2011 | Music
Winners in this year’s GBS cover band category, Ruby’s Complaint first formed in the 1980s, using the name Street Justice, which the members took in haste from a Twisted Sister album. For a few years, the group of talented Turner’s Falls High School...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 22, 2011 | Music
The HorrorsSkying(XL) After a pair of goth-inspired psychedelic albums, the third release by these U.K. indie rockers finds the group in an optimistic mood. Instead of rehashing their love of ’60s garage rock and ’80s post-punk, the band has become fixated...
by James Heflin | Sep 22, 2011 | Music
First, the nominations flooded in. Then we put the top nominees on the ballot, and you let us know who you liked. An impressive list of bands came from that process. The top vote-getter for the “new band” category was The 413, a band so new it seems...
by Gary Carra | Sep 22, 2011 | Music
Your friendly neighborhood Crawler was fortunate enough to catch up with what are arguably two of the most iconic voices in recent modern rock history—Staind’s Aaron Lewis and Ed Kowalczyk, best known for his work with Live. Both now flirting with...
by Mark Roessler | Sep 22, 2011 | Music
Let’s face it: typically when a young, new band tops its list of influences with the Beatles, there’s serious cause for concern. The results almost always pale in comparison. If asked to elaborate on the connection between the tunes the moptops produced...
by James Heflin | Sep 29, 2011 | Music
In this year’s Grand Band Slam, a curious thing happened. A large number of the bands, when asked what other Valley musician they looked up to, named the same musician. It’s happened before, when lots of well-deserved props went to Ray Mason, who’s...
by Gary Carra | Sep 29, 2011 | Music
Gaming systems like DS and Nintendo Gameboy were created so their owners could slay dragons, quell alien invasions and race cars, all with their sweaty little hands. But to fill concert halls with gaming systems? “You no longer need a room full of gear or a hard...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 29, 2011 | Music
Joy Kills SorrowThis Unknown Science(Signature Sounds) The artwork on This Unknown Science features illustrations of complex antique technology in somber, sepia-tinted colors. The drawings are loose and playful, but the overall presentation is slick and masterful....
by Matthew Dube | Sep 29, 2011 | Music
If you spent a little time at area demolition derbies this summer—which you should schedule for next year if you didn’t—you might have seen a careening car sporting a logo and web address promoting the Facebook page of Easthampton’s Heal The...
by Matthew Dube | Sep 30, 2011 | Music
For Eric Hnatow and Haley Morgan, a musical partnership grew out of a romantic one. “When we first met six years ago we didn’t start making music together right away—it’s been a natural progression,” explains Hnatow. “In many ways...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 6, 2011 | Music
Pine Hill HaintsWelcome to the Midnight Opry(K) Classifying their sound as punktry, these Alabama natives offer an engaging interpretation of “ghost music.” Though not meant explicitly as a soundtrack for Casper and company, the album still retains a...
by Gary Carra | Oct 6, 2011 | Music
The man whose pounding rhythms helped propel Staind albums like Break The Cycle to multi-platinum status has finally broken his silence about his recent departure from the band he helped form nearly two decades ago. Jon Wysocki told his tale and expounded on his...
by Pete Redington | Oct 6, 2011 | Music
In 1956, the city of Memphis, Tenn. held its annual Mardi Gras-esque Cotton Carnival. That year the festival was themed “The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll Meets the King of the Blues,” to show that local Memphis musicians could outrival those of any...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 6, 2011 | Music
This year’s annual Grand Band Slam concert will be held on Wednesday, October 5 at Maximum Capacity in Chicopee. Starting at 7pm, a selection of this year’s winners will perform on two stages, the complete schedule is below. To see the full list of...
by Gary Carra | Oct 13, 2011 | Music
Like most of us, Henning Ohlenbusch (henningo.com) remembers the movies he has seen throughout his life vividly and fondly. Unlike most of us, Ohlenbusch is also an award-winning multi-instrumentalist with a fully functional studio in his basement. And when Mother...
