A perfect storm

Books –

The Salem Witch Trials engulfed Salem, Mass., and surrounding areas for a little more than a year. Twenty people, most of them women, were executed....

In with the new

Art –

This year, the New Hampshire Art Association turned 75, and remains one of the oldest statewide art associations in the nation. But there’s more to...

Bringing back Afrobeat

Music –

Throughout the 1970s and ’80s, Fela Kuti pioneered the Afrobeat movement, a fusion of jazz, funk, hi-life, rock, and traditional West African music. Thanks to...

RPM 2015 draws nigh

Music –

The 10th annual RPM Challenge is nearly upon us. The event, conceived in Portsmouth by The Wire newspaper, challenges musicians around the globe to write...

Eight-Bit Junkyard

Film –

“CRYSTAL CASTLES” (Atari, 1983) The neighborhood arcade, once as ubiquitous in Anytown, U.S.A. as Burger Chef and Montgomery Ward, has all but vanished from the...

Balancing act

News –

City councilors in Rochester are once again debating what the city should do about panhandling. In February 2014, city officials repealed an ordinance that banned...

State House Showdown

News –

When New Hampshire legislators return to Concord this month, they might experience a feeling of déjà vu. Many of the issues up for debate this...

Party like it’s 1979

Stage –

If you’re feeling nostalgic for the bell-bottom pants, platform shoes, and disco clubs of the 1970s (or if you missed the ’70s entirely because you...

Irons in the fire

Music –

For a certain demographic of local listeners, the heyday of the Seacoast music scene came in the late 1980s. The Queers were building an international...

Caffeine and choreography

Stage –

The Neoteric Dance Collaborative is offering a glimpse into its choreographic process with a new series held at Sole City Dance in Somersworth. And it...

Big Eyes

Film –

2014, rated PG-13, 106 minutes The string of brilliantly imaginative and visually mesmerizing films Tim Burton put out in the late 1980s and early 1990s...

Round up

Art –

On the first Friday of every month, several art galleries in downtown Portsmouth host receptions as part of Art ’Round Town, a self-guided tour of...

Musicals for all ages

Stage –

Patrick Dorow Productions (PDP), a performing arts organization based in Portsmouth and Kittery, has two unique musicals starting later this month at The Players’ Ring....

Video Vault

Film –

by Kenneth Butler The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Central Cinema Company Film, 1970 Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, and Enrico Maria Salerno Director: Dario...

Battle for the Basket

Lifestyle –

When Market Basket’s board of directors fired Arthur T. Demoulas last summer, employees and customers of the New England grocery chain rallied behind the deposed...

A tangled history

Books –

Rev. Robert Thompson remembers when the Ku Klux Klan came to Exeter in the 1990s. Thompson, an African-American minister at Phillips Church at Phillips Exeter...

Now hear this

Music –

“Through the Static and Distance: The Songs of Jason Molina” by various artists Burst and Bloom Records/Haint Records File under: Folk, Blues, Americana, Alt-Country Sounds...

Now Read This

Books –

“Almost Famous Women” by Megan Mayhew Bergman Mayhew Bergman’s second fantastic collection of stories revolves around lesser-known historical women, including Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister,...

Looking back

News –

It was a year of spirited debate here in the Seacoast. Issues large and small, from repealing the death penalty to noise in Prescott Park,...

Murder-suicide in Dover

News –

Dover police and the state Attorney General’s office are investigating an apparent murder-suicide at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital. Officers responded to a 911 call from the hospital...