2018-02-17 14:26:42
THE SHORT LIST I FRONT ROW I THE VERMONTER TALES FROM THE GREAT WAR I BACKSTAGE
BY MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY
ST. PATRICK’S PARADES
It’s that time of year again. You might take a look at our favorite bars (page 47), but if bars aren’t your thing or you’ve got minors in tow, there’s a broad selection of St. Patrick’s parades and gatherings to attend, all over the state. Stamford (March 3) and Norwich (March 4) kick off the parade season, followed by Hartford and Essex (both March 10), New London and New Haven (both March 11), and, finally, Mystic (March 25). St. Patrick’s Day itself comes March 17.
the short list
SPOOKY TWAIN
One of Hartford’s most famous sons, Mark Twain had a fascination with the supernatural and the para-spiritual. Head to the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center in Wethersfield on March 20 at 7 p.m. to hear historian Jason Scappaticci’s lecture on Twain and the Supernatural, or, as event promoters describe it, Twain’s “dabbling in the supernatural craze of spiritualism.” Admission is $5. cedarhillfoundation.org
QUIZ SHOW
The long-running comedy/news/quiz show from WBEZ Chicago and National Public Radio, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, finally comes to Hartford on March 15, in what is a great month for the Bushnell. Listen to all your favorite panelists try to digest what feels like an unmanageable amount of news each week. Check online for tickets. bushnell.org
REAL NEWS
People are following journalism on a daily basis more than perhaps any time since the Watergate scandal of the early ’70s. Journalism is driving the conversation in unfamiliar ways. Does the media do a good job? On March 16, heavy hitters from the news media — (from left ) Joy Reid of MSNBC, David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post, and radio host Hugh Hewitt — convene under the auspices of the Connecticut Forum at the Bushnell in Hartford to discuss the State of Journalism and the News, moderated by Connecticut Public Radio’s John Dankosky. Tickets start at $15. ctforum.org
HOW DID I GET HERE?
The legendary art-rocker David Byrne is coming to the Palace Theater in Waterbury on March 9, touring in support of American Utopia, his first solo studio album in 14 years. The former frontman of new wavers The Talking Heads, Byrne is one of those rare performers whose music appeals to people across several generations, whether you’re 70 or 17. palacetheaterct.org
DARE TO BE STUPID
The perspective of the absurd is as important now as it ever was. One of the premier absurdist performers of the last 30 years is, without a doubt, “Weird Al” Yankovic. He brings his odd brilliance to Foxwoods on March 2 for his Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. foxwoods.com
See March 2018 calendar listings at connecticutmag.com/calendar
front row
The English Beat is one of the better bands to come out of the 1980s ska revival in England, with hits like “Mirror in the Bathroom” and “Stand Down Margaret.” Ahead of the release of the first English Beat album in 30 years (expected this spring) and a March 21 date at the Ridgefield Playhouse, lead singer Dave Wakeling talked politics and music.
You’re getting ready to release Here We Go, Love, your first album in 30 years. Is that right?
It’s the first one under The Beat name. There have been some General Public records and other little bits and bobs in the interim, but the first under the English Beat flag name, yes. So quite a serious matter. [laughs] Serious fun. Everybody’s sitting there listening to reference masters and deciding is there enough bass or is there enough this, that and the other. It sounds wonderful. The songs sound just like they do in my head. Once you get involved in the songs, you can’t see the wood for the trees, all you’re doing is pruning trees, and, “Oh, look at that one; that branch is not nice.” But then when you sit back a bit, you can see the wood again. We’ve managed to get a decent spread of styles, from a fairly frantic couple of punk ones to a very weedy ballad to a slow reggae. The full gamut.
Have you played Ridgefield before?
I had to do a thing for a guitar magazine in England where you get to pick your own band, your dream band. So it was me, [Rolling Stones co-founder] Brian Jones, John Lennon, [jazz and big band drummer] Gene Krupa, and Mozart on keyboards. I think that lineup could play Ridgefield. It looks and sounds like that kind of erudite elegance. I’ll see if I can get them as the opening act.
When The English Beat broke through in the early 1980s in Birmingham, you had fascists marching in England and Margaret Thatcher in power, and your band was this interracial band playing Caribbean-influenced music. We’ve got white supremacists marching openly for the first time in a generation in this country. Do you see parallels between the early 1980s in England and today?
I think things are cyclical. I remember being surprised that there was a space for white supremacy in the ’80s when it reared its ugly, neanderthal head. (What always strikes me as the saddest is the white supremacists always seem to pick the ugliest and the stupidest ones as their leaders. You’d want to hang your head in shame. Really? Supreme what? Supreme prat.) It is awful. You can see where it comes from. People are a bit scared, people are scared of multiculturalism. Although it looks really dangerous at the moment, there’s a lot less people being killed every day than there used to be around the world. Though you see a lot more of it on the television.
So does the new album have a “Stand Down Donald” type track on it?
Yes, but it’s not quite as overt, so there’s no “Stand Down Donald.” He’d need to learn to stand up first. [laughs] I don’t worry about him too much, I worry about the Donald Trump in all of us. The people who voted him in are desperate enough, thinking that would get them work. There’s a song called “If Killing Worked, It Would Have Worked By Now.” It’s sad for our children, who hope to fit within the cycles of war that none of them are going to get called up to have their legs blown off and have a parade, and then get left to die from depression as soon as the cameras are turned off. And [governments] always make up that they’re going to look after veterans but they don’t and they don’t want to. They want veterans, and particularly injured ones, they want them to die soon and not later because they don’t want them around as an example to the population about what it’s really like. So they’ve never looked after veterans and it’s on purpose. | MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY |
THE ENGLISH BEAT
MARCH 21 | 8 P.M.
THE RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE
Tickets: $39.50
203-438-5795, ridgefieldplayhouse.org
experience
Training Days
LOOKING FOR A WEEKEND ESCAPE TO THE GREEN MOUNTAIN STATE? RIDE THE VERMONTER TO THE CHARMING CAPITAL OF MONTPELIER.
BY MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY
I like driving more than most, I think. I usually have no problem with a good four- or five-hour drive. Sometimes, though, it’s lovely to leave the car in place for a while, and not have to think about gas and dashboard lights. So I thought I’d try an experiment: Where could I go for a weekend away without the use of the car? In picking a destination, I wanted a place to get to by train that I’d never really explored before, and I was hoping for a bit of outdoor beauty, a bit of spirit, a bit of quirk, but also a bit of quiet. Vermont, naturally. I needed a town that would be dense enough to experience it on foot, and with enough stuff to stay occupied. I’ve spent a good amount of time in various places in the Green Mountain State over the years, but never in its capital city, so I bought a ticket for Montpelier.
The Amtrak Vermonter train runs once a day in each direction between Washington, D.C., and St. Albans, Vermont, just south of the Canadian border. The train stops in Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Wallingford, Meriden, Berlin, Hartford and Windsor Locks on its way through Connecticut. I caught the train on a Friday afternoon in Meriden, and made plans to come back Monday morning, making for a decent long weekend. The weekend of my trip, the pay-to-park technology at the Meriden station was not up and running, so parking was free. The train, as frequent Amtrak riders could have predicted, was about a half-hour late from its posted arrival of 1:50 in the afternoon. (This is not bad, the train having come all the way from D.C. Amtrak is about getting from A to B, but not necessarily getting there at an appointed time.)
By the time you get settled in your seat, the departure and arrival times begin to matter less and less. Unlike driving, there is no stress of managing your own speed, stops and avoiding traffic. You simply go.
It’s been said and written many times, but trains inspire a different relationship to landscape, to physical space. Perhaps obviously but perhaps not, you can look to the side and not to the front. You don’t have to read signs and tail lights, but can read buildings, factories, fields, rivers and mountains. Through Connecticut from the window of the train, there is a different view than the ones we are used to. A railway is a thread that strings together communities like the highway does, but it is an altogether different thread, cutting through the landscape along unfamiliar trajectories. You might see the old manufacturing areas, mostly shielded from the view of the highways or even the major arteries. You might see the homeless encampments under the highway between Springfield and Holyoke. There is the tremendous, overwhelming schadenfreude of rocketing past a traffic jam on 91 near Springfield.
The free Wi-Fi is pretty stable, so as the train begins to speed up north of Northampton through the Pioneer Valley toward the Vermont border and night begins to fall, you can turn to your screens, if you want.
There are plenty of excellent towns along this route in which to spend a weekend. Springfield is soon to have a casino. Northampton has music and lots of college bars. Brattleboro has a great mix of local businesses, and a homey feeling which it shares with Montpelier. As plenty of bumper stickers across the state are fond of announcing, Vermont did “local” before “local” was cool. The whole state is free of billboards, which have been prohibited since 1968 to preserve the state’s natural beauty. Montpelier has no Starbucks or McDonald’s in its downtown. (We can forgive its Dunkin’ Donuts.) The packed spot on a Sunday morning, rather, is Capitol Grounds Cafe on State Street, which serves the best bacon, egg and cheese sandwich perhaps anywhere, possibly owing to the local ingredients.
Capitol Grounds is steps away from the intersection of State and Main streets, which forms the central junction of Montpelier. Within a block or two of the crossing there are two movie theaters, two bookstores, a record store, a half-dozen bars, and more than a dozen places to eat. This proliferation of moments of contact with others gives Montpelier the feeling of a town much bigger than it actually is. (Montpelier’s population is 7,500.)
Charlie O’s is a classic dive bar, with some pool tables and a good jukebox, usually the last bar open in town on a given weekend night. Beer nerds should check out the Three Penny Taproom as, again, Vermont did local and craft beer before the rest of the nation caught on. The Langdon Street Tavern offers more pool, and more beer. Sweet Melissa’s is that great kind of bar that is just weird enough without being too weird, with local live music to boot.
During the day, there are plenty of local hikes and walks to go on. I recommend the walk up to historic Hubbard Tower behind the State House, which alone is worth a visit. There are a number of bed and breakfasts and country-style inns in Montpelier, along with more traditional hotels. I opted to stay in an Airbnb within walking distance of the corner of State and Main. A quick search on Airbnb will turn up any number of options for travelers.
Even though it’s a short train ride away, Vermont can feel like a world away, where the march of industrial international capitalism has been somehow stopped at the state’s borders. In Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance, environmentalist Bill McKibben’s debut novel out this past December, he dramatizes that very notion. In one of the opening scenes, a band of balaclava-ed but friendly Vermont separatists temporarily detain a Coors Light truck, pour out the Coors and replace it with local Vermont beer before sending the driver on his way.
Montpelier is a great place to get a blast of that attitude, and there’s no better way to get there than by train. The Amtrak station is about 2 miles outside of Montpelier, but the Green Cab taxi service was prompt and cheap. The train between central Connecticut and Montpelier was just under six hours. Brattleboro is about three hours. Tickets on the weekend I went were about $100 round trip, more expensive than the gas would have cost. What you lose in cost you gain in relaxation and true escape.
art
Battle Lines Drawn
100 YEARS AFTER THE END OF WORLD WAR I, THE NEW HAVEN MUSEUM’S BOLD, COMIC BOOK-STYLE EXHIBIT ILLUSTRATES A LOCAL MAN’S EXPERIENCES IN ‘THE GREAT WAR’ | BY MICHAEL LEE-MURPHY
The historian Eric Hobsbawm referred to the years between the start of World War I in 1914 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the “short 20th century.” The point of the construction is that many of the political, social, economic and cultural trends that shaped life in the 20th century have their roots in the First World War and its immediate aftermath. From the technology used in the war, to the political geographies created by the settlements that ended the conflict, the Great War is in many ways the birth of modernity. To understand the horror of the war is to understand the century that followed.
This year is the centennial of the 1918 armistice that ended World War I. In light of the anniversary, the New Haven Museum has put together an excellent exhibit, The Courier: Tales from the Great War, reflecting a local man’s story that reaches out across time into the present.
In 1917 Philip English, the son of a prominent New Haven family, enlisted in New Haven’s 102nd Regiment, attached to the 26th Infantry “Yankee Division,” composed of soldiers from across New England. English worked as a courier, ferrying messages across the front throughout the war, and kept a meticulous diary and scrapbook of his experiences. In 1976, English donated the diary to the New Haven Museum’s archive. In order to bring the diary to life, the museum has commissioned local comic book artist and graphic novelist Nadir Balan to illustrate it.
Through his background — both personal and artistic — Balan is the perfect person to illustrate the diary, this bridge between the local and the global. An artist living in New Haven with a fresh but classic comic book style, Balan was born in Turkey and describes himself as a World War I buff. (The end of the war is usually cited as the birth of the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.) Balan also points out that the “isms” — communism, capitalism and fascism — that have defined our lives were born during or in the rubble of World War I.
The exhibit consists of five 4-by-6-foot panels, each illustrating passages of English’s diary, as chosen by Balan. By Balan’s pen and artistic vision, the lines are clean and forceful, erupting toward the viewer in classic comic book style. The first panel starts the story in New Haven, as English and his brothers-in-arms march off toward war, heads held high, with scenes of New Haven mobilizing for the war stretching out across the background. Students of New Haven history will spot iconic scenes from the city’s past, including the tents of soldiers at Yale Bowl waiting to head to Europe, and the Winchester Arms factory cranking out munitions. Behind the young soldiers marching off to battle, brimming with excitement and waving flags, there is a mother, choking back tears. One gets the sense that she alone knows the horrors to come.
In subsequent panels those horrors begin to make themselves clear, as frightening images start to appear. Gas masks, bayonets and trench knives, the iconic and brutal paraphernalia of Europe’s killing fields, start to appear. New Haven is gone and in its place we have Europe in the midst of its great self-mutilation.
While Balan’s figures and scenes are all in black and white, the panels are bathed in a glaring red, shouting and setting the viewer slightly at unease. As the viewer moves through the panels, and the scenes become more frightening, the red begins to become more glaring, more unmanageable, intruding on the scenes. Balan says that the world was “shocked into modernity” by the bloodshed of the war, and the red of his compositions shocks us similarly.
The exhibit is accompanied by a stunning collection of historical photographs of New Haven, to append the fantastical illustrations of Balan. The exhibit is on display through Nov. 11, the 100th anniversary of the armistice that brought the war to a close.
THE COURIER:
TALES FROM THE GREAT WAR
NEW HAVEN MUSEUM
On display through Nov. 11
203-562-4183, newhavenmuseum.org
Published by New Haven Register formerly 21st Century Media Newspapers . View All Articles.
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