Uncategorized
Greenfield Gallery Exhibiting Artist: Paul Hoffman
Paul Hoffman may be Greenfield Gallery’s most exhibited artist.The longtime illustrator, turned painter, has shown his work there three times, most recently his one-man show running through June 30. “What’s wonderful about the Greenfield Gallery is they’re dedicated...
Art Show: Big Brothers Big Sisters
Sibling RevelryThe Springfield-based Center for Human Development has been matching kids with mentors through its program Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County since 1975. Over the past four decades, more than 2,000 “littles” between the ages of 6 and 16 have...
Micah Scott plays the Bookmill on Friday
Visit from a Dark Horse As a teenager, Micah Scott was lost in a musical fugue, shuffling his tastes from Creedence Clearwater Revival to The Beatles to Pantera and Alice in Chains and back again. It wasn’t until his guitar teacher turned him on to Blind Lemon...
Frendly Gathering Festival in Southern Vermont
The Friend Zone Dip your hippie head into a cool sonic pool this weekend by day-tripping up (or, hey, camping out) for the sixth annual Frendly Gathering, a three-day grassroots music festival in the Green Mountains of Southern Vermont. Vibe-wise, this fest is heavy...
Punk Local
It is worth noting the congruity between the Western Mass underground 30 years ago and the scene now. Take the power duo Wydyde. In the Bandcamp tags for their recently released debut EP Hadley Fire, Wydyde claim Dinosaur Jr. as a reference point. And there are...
Nightcrawler: ‘Kids’ Stuff
And The Kids share the ‘Love’ & some seed-y characters in West Whately Paul Newlin is going to party like it’s 1999 this week. No, it’s not another homage to his royal purpleness and his recent passing. Rather, it was this fateful year...
How’s the Air (and water, soil, animals, and plants) Down There? The state of the Valley’s environment
With winter gone and Earth Day a recent memory, it seems like a good time to check in on the local environment before we all head outside to play in the sun again. Area environmental specialists say the Valley is full of environmentally conscious folks, which is...
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...
Your Friendly Guide to Pride
It was Northampton that held the first Pride march in the area, and those who participated walked down the Main Street of a very different America. The year was 1981. Non-heterosexual citizens held virtually no legal protections as employees, as tenants, as...
Calendar Spotlight: Sandaraa at The Parlor Room
Trance Dance EvolutionIt takes an uncommon blend of bravado and skill to play “imagined hybrids from lost empires,” but that’s what Pakistani pop star Zeb Bangash and Brooklyn-based klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd have set out to do. The dynamic musical duo has...va18-letters-2016
Letter from the Editor: New columnsThis week’s Advocate marks the second column in a new series we’re calling Basemental. The column will focus on the local DIY music scene, artists who play and record in alternative spaces, like basements and barns, old churches and...
Fiction’s Fertile Ground: Novelist Christopher Boucher makes hay of his Pioneer Valley childhood
By Hunter Styles Welcome, reader, to Appleseed, Massachusetts. Never heard of it? On page one of his newly-released second novel Golden Delicious, Longmeadow native Christopher Boucher provides an off-kilter lay of this fictional land:“That afternoon I took the...
This Week’s Club Picks
Turbine at Bishop’s LoungeNYC-based quintet band Turbine is one funky, rough, finely-tuned act. Full of big, brash rock lines and upbeat, soulful vocals, Turbine’s music is also surprisingly inventive, marked by shaken-up time signatures and unusual song structures....
Springfield rock band Opel’s new album Towers of Secrecy, reviewed
For ten years now, Opel has demonstrated the importance of being earnest. In the face of a modern music industry too often pockmarked by pretension, the seven-piece Springfield band’s hearty, fun-loving approach to making songs remains reassuringly down-to-earth.The...
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...
Crepes Tea House
Traveling down Union Street, through the heart of the sprawling industrial section of West Springfield, an oasis appears on the horizon. Amid the landscape of parking lots and deteriorating buildings, Crepes Tea House is a spot of color: a small, unassuming building...
Scene Here: #DivestTheRest
Divest UMass supporters hold hands before leaving the Whitmore Administration Building after staging a sit-in for the fifth consecutive day Friday, April 15, demanding that UMass officials divest from fossil fuel companies. Though UMass has divested from coal and less...BO16-GetOut-2016
Place to see local bands Iron Horse Music Hall 20 Center St., Northampton (413) 586-8686 www.iheg.com Since 1979 the Iron Horse has hosted a wide variety of music and entertainment acts both local and far-flung, under the slogan, “Music alone shall live.” During the...
Show Us Your Tattoos – Zelda
I’m a wicked Zelda geek. I grew up playing the Nintendo series on every console it came out on. When my friend Doug Poole started apprenticing at Shark Tank Tattoo in Easthampton, I asked him to do Link’s life hearts and the Hylian Shield. He’s done...
Artist to re-create Amherst History Mural
Three-hour trip ‘round the world For the second year in a row, the Five Colleges are throwing an international festival on the Amherst Common. Organized by the UMass International Students Club, the free event features cultural displays — such as dancing, singing, and...
Ten Thousand Villages, Doing Fair Trade Before it Was Cool
A walk through Ten Thousand Villages on Main Street in Northampton is a stroll through a rich international bazaar. The store’s warm, earthy interior is a respite from the stark dreariness on the sidewalk. Gentle jazz and the smell of spices and herbal tea waft...
Staff Changes at the Advocate
Good news, everyone! The Advocate has made some staff changes that we think will create a more balanced and exciting paper. First up, staff writer Hunter Styles has been promoted to arts editor. Styles will be drawing on his background in theater and his deep love of...
Scene Here: Dirty Soul Revival
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Groan, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Some things endure because of their worn familiarity.Take the iconic Waterfront Tavern in Holyoke for instance, which is undergoing a revitalization. Don’t worry. It’s...
Get Out with Staff Picks
Shokazoba featuring DJ Megha • Friday Friday nights were made for chill reggae and funky beats, especially Fridays that cap the first full post-holiday week. Breathe deep, relax, and shake that thang with Northampton-based Afrofunk band Shokazaba. DJ Megha Amira will...
Staff Picks: An evening with Johnny Cash, Internet Cat Festival and more
Mass Appeal 2 • Saturday At this 413 Battle League event, it’s every Massachusetts man for himself — the event’s headline rap battles, Massachusetts vs. Everyone, pit Mass MCs against out-of-state rivals. As if watching these lyrical engineers fight to outwit and...
War Stories
Military veterans aren’t always open to sharing their war stories with a public that can’t possibly comprehend what it’s like to be in a foreign land, with a gun, an enemy, and a mission. So when people who have given a portion of their lives to protecting the nation...MGM Mixtape: Communication Breakdown, Closing Time, and No Guarantees
Hooh, boy. It’s been a roller coaster ride for MGM Springfield over the past few weeks, replete with rejiggered construction timelines, changed plans, and urgent backroom meetings with the mayor’s office. Here are our greatest hits on the casino playlist this week:...
Ramen: It’s Not Just for College Anymore
The Valley is full of good Asian noodle soups, so we tried three. I’m a child of chilly New England, where steaming cups of soup are most often consumed under blankets while the snow flurries outside. But last year, in Thailand, I tried a piping hot bowl of rice soup...
Recent Releases
Oxen The Vanishing, LP Oxen is a heavy rock band that forgoes a front man and introduce multi-member vocals that run the gamut from soaring melodies to gruff intensity, over heavy riff driven music. Tom Newton No Bones About It, LP Newton is a multi-instrumentalist...
Astonishing Inspirations
Through November 28th, the Forest Park Gallery is showing an exhibit by Dr. Gloria Caballer-Arce, a local artist and retired educator. The exhibit, Astonishing Inspirations, features work defined by geometric shapes, lines, and intense colors. The opening reception,...Halloween Haunts
This Halloween, get your costumes ready and head over to the Iron Horse for the Annual Halloween Bones Shakedown with DJs LeFox (Sugar Biscuit) & Hip Sockit (Pollinate). It’s a dance party with prizes, so to win, you gotta DANCE! A night of costumed attendees and...
Guerrilla Feminism
On Thursday, the anonymous feminist activist group Guerrilla Girls will be holding a public talk at Smith College, including a live performance conveying the story of the group’s activism and creative work, in order to discuss sexism and racism in the arts. The talk...
Life is Beautiful
On Friday, UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center welcomes five-time Grammy winner Dianne Reeves. The jazz singer, accompanied by an award-winning quintet, is on tour performing work from her first new album in five years, “Life is Beautiful,” including covers of Bob Marley,...
Everyday Vamps
Friday, the Bing Arts Center will host a costume party to accompany a screening of the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (rated R). The film, which stars Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, and Jonathan Brugh, follows the adventures of four vampires who live...
Flying Colors: Northampton trio Colorway paints a winning pop-rock portrait
Where on the spectrum does Colorway play? I might say these musicians are best at capturing the light, bright tones of late morning or mid-afternoon, given their talent for writing sunny and engaging pop songs. But band leader F. Alex Johnson, one of the founders of...
Spirits Stirring
On Halloween, Carl and Martin Bridge — the brothers behind Janus Arts — will transform Gateway City Arts into a kaleidoscopic wonderland for the third year running. Swirling specters and luminous skeletons will abound as a host of musicians and DJs drop bone-rattling...
Scene Here: Laughs and Lingerie
AMANDA DRANE PHOTO The Mary Jane Jones kicks off the night of comedy and lingerie at One Bar and Grill in Northampton with several soulful love songs. Eyes closed, lead singer Mandy Pachios growls a velvet reverie. A shot girl in a form-fitting, black nightgown with a...
Better Education for Some, II: How to fix charters
For as long as they’ve been around, charter schools have been a controversial topic in education. But the federal government has the power to settle this beef once and for all: Stop pitting schools against each other for funding and provide all schools with adequate...
Mind the Bollocks
In Western Mass, we like our Irish music year-round and the Big Bad Bollocks brings it. Screenwriter William Monahan describes the group succinctly as the “Pogues fused with the Sex Pistols.” Big Bad Bollocks: Friday, 7 p.m. to midnight, VFW Florence, 18 Meadow St.,...
The Uncanny Valley: Do Ghosts Haunt Spoleto?
by Hunter Styles Staff writer Amanda Drane has worked in the local food industry for 10 years, and she’s shared with us some truly great stories of her time in the kitchen, including a couple about the haunted room at Spoleto, an Italian restaurant in Northampton. One...
Play it Again, Sam: MGM pitches a major redesign
If there is a silver lining to MGM Springfield’s construction delays, it may be that casino execs have had some extra time to check the books on this $800+ million project. And it’s a good thing they did. Due to budgetary concerns, the company has just announced that...
Rallying Resilience: disaster-wrought Springfield springs into climate action
About a quarter of Springfield’s population has asthma — 21 percent of children and 18 percent of adults — and that’s nearly double the statewide average. As if that weren’t bad enough, those with asthma stand to suffer the most as climate change worsens, according to...
CD Short: Mikey Sweet, The North King
Mikey Sweet The North King (Independent) Mikey Sweet may have grown up in the Valley, but his debut album, The North King, tells us he’s been places. Songs like “Driftwood” illicit images of a boy and his guitar and the road, and song titles like “Oklahoma Wind” show...Summer Wish List Number Six
It is, I realize, July and it is already summer. I tend to post my Annual Summer Wish List a good bit earlier, sometime in June. Better late than never, people! In general, I end up with a dizzying list that includes many things I may or may not ever do (that...
Falcons, Folk Art, and Postcards
Northampton’s Hosmer Gallery (inside the Forbes Library) offers an intriguing abundance of art this month. For the series “Curatorial 365,” Easthampton’s Leslie Tane (whose work is pictured) created a 4×6-inch postcard every day during 2014. Each was crafted...
CD Shorts: My Morning Jacket — The Waterfall
My Morning Jacket The Waterfall (ATO Records) The sunny and spirited seventh record from My Morning Jacket is the closest thing the band has ever recorded to a summer road album. The Waterfall is a bright distillation of some of the group’s signature trappings, and it...Wonder Kids
One thing that I found especially shocking when I became a first-time mama to a boy was the assumption that boys are genetically programmed to like trucks and balls and big creatures like dinosaurs. Some boys adore all of the above. Some don’t. The fact that my...
Scene Here: Gimme Shelter
Kevin Gutting Photo Some shiver; some don’t. Some stamp their feet to keep warm, while others sit on benches and hug themselves. When the wind dies down, the March sun almost feels warm. Spring is coming, supposedly, but on this Tuesday the temperature at this...
A Tip of the Trilby
Some people blame John F. Kennedy’s wind-blown locks. Others blame the narrow space between the tops of post-World War II cars and their occupants’ heads. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that the old-school men’s hat has gone the way of sock suspenders and spats, a...Citizens on Defense
Shooting “upskirt” photos of a 13-year-old girl is not illegal in Oregon, declared Judge Eric Butterfield in February, thus acquitting Patrick Buono, 61, of the crimes of invasion of privacy and “encouraging child sexual abuse.” Buono’s behavior was “appalling,” Judge...
How to Blarney Without the Blowout: It’s all about the base.
If there was a mascot for Blarney Blowout, it’d be a green can of beer wearing a baseball cap. They’d call him Blarney, of course, and his nemesis would be Blowout because blowing out the contents of your stomach seems to be a big part of the day for a lot of people....The Snowball Effect: Why Climatology Matters
In early 2014, former Gov. Deval Patrick proposed the creation of an office of the state climatologist, to be housed at the Northeast Climate Science Center at UMass Amherst. By July, when Patrick signed the fiscal 2015 budget, the funding for that office stood at...
Trashy Art: Garbage gets a creative makeover to promote CT River health
In the thousands of years before European settlers arrived in the Valley, David Brule says, the Connecticut River basin was a place Native American tribes gathered peacefully to fish and farm. Since then, humanity’s relationship with the river has grown much more...
News of the Weird: Sue Thyself
The Utah Court of Appeals ruled in February that Barbara Bagley has a legal right to sue herself for her own negligent driving that caused the death of her husband. Typically, in U.S. courts, a party cannot profit from its own negligence, but Bagley is the official...Le penis
Hot steamy night…good night to give a heads up to Le Penis. One might think that hot and steamy etc. go well with the penis..but if it is not paired with the right wine there is nothing there from a gourmet perspective except a hot dog maybe a brat. On its own...the Oh My purveyors of pleasure
pleasure a: sensual gratification b: frivoulous amusement and a source of delight or joy.Oh My a Sensuality Shop has been hidden away in this happy little valley for about 6 years. It has been our pleasure to offer our friends neighbors acquaintances and total...The new Mobius Band CD, Heaven
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this album, so please have a listen (go here for samples at Amazon, or go to the band’s site) and add your comments below.Back when The Mobius Band was in the Valley (the trio has since moved to Brooklyn), they were one...A Night of Tedious Sex
I went with a friend to see Martin Sexton at the Calvin a couple weeks back for his tour-ending show, and it was tough going.Though his most recent album didn’t make me "happy," I’d enjoyed some of his other releases, and so many friends had told...The new Thurston Moore CD, Trees Outside the Academy
You can check out samples of this album here or here.I’ve been a major Sonic Youth fan since somewhere around 1985, so I suppose I’m predisposed to like this one. It’s clear very quickly that a lot of Sonic Youth’s talky delivery has, not...E-Edition
Best Of 2024
Readers Choice 2024
