Imagine, if you can, an episode of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse directed by John Waters. The manic energy of the gray-suited man-child’s retro-kitsch house-slash-living-toybox would still rule – talking furniture and beehived visitors feel very on-brand for the Pope of Trash – but it would arrive with a more lacerating, NSFW edge. Miss Yvone might be closer to Waters Dreamlander Divine than heteronormative […]
Author: A Star-Revue Contributor
Where are all the protest songs? By Jack Grace
You are outraged, and have written a protest song. You’d like it to be a part of the catalyst for change; march out in the streets, sing it, have all the radio stations play it with a new anthem for a better world out there and change on its way. Well…it’s happened before. According to Wikipedia, a protest song is […]
The Highwomen Are Here To Stay by Rebecca Castellani
This July, a new collaboration debuted at the Newport Folk Festival. The name? The Highwomen, a riff off the original supergroup of country renegades, The Highwaymen. The players? Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires, with a host of supporting characters that counted Yola and Sheryl Crow in their ranks. The uniform? Pantsuits. Morris wore a pink one […]
No Pretense, No Pretending in Chrissie Hynde’s Song Stylings:the Valve Bone Woe Ensemble by Kurt Gottschalk
It’s easy to take Chrissie Hynde for granted. The songs she wrote and sang with her band the Pretenders shoot straight from the heart. You don’t think about her performance because you’re too busy thinking about her, about the story she’s telling and the character she’s portraying. The communication is so direct that it’s easy to miss the singer delivering […]
Louis Prima & The Witnesses by Mike Fiorito
Life has a funny way of coming full circle sometimes. Someone I don’t know writes me about a piece I had placed in the Red Hook Star Review on Louis Prima a few weeks prior. That someone, my new friend Charlie Diliberti, then tells me that Louie Prima’s son, Louis Prima Jr, tours around the country playing New Orleans style […]
Lizzie King’s Parlor by Jody Callahan
Take a little walk to edge of Park Slope down on 5th Ave between St. Marks and Warren to Lizzie King’s Parlor, a name with an origin story that seems ripe for a Nick Cave murder ballad. It comes from Elizabeth Lloyd King who lived around the corner in the late 1800s and is famous for having shot her estranged […]
Book review: ‘Cruel to Be Kind: The Life and Music of Nick Lowe’ by Kurt Gottschalk
It all could have been wrapped up for Nick Lowe by 1994. He’d had moderate success and had earned favorable reviews. He had a couple of songs – “Cruel to Be Kind” and “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?” – that seemed universally known, though they’d come out ages ago. He’d even married into American music royalty by […]
Red Hook Children to Climate Strike
Resilient Red Hook is organizing a children’s Climate Strike event at Coffey Park, from 12-2 pm on Friday, September 20th, to coincide with the march on the UN led by the Swedish child activist Greta Thunberg. Climate change is an issue that’s even more critical for the next generation, and building awareness and support among children is a fantastic catalyst for change to […]
The Healthy Geezer: Is a TIA dangerous? By Fred Cicetti
Is a TIA dangerous? TIA stands for “transient ischemic attack.” A TIA is an interruption in the flow of blood to a part of your brain. Its symptoms are the same as for a stroke. A TIA lasts anywhere from minutes to many hours. It goes away and leaves no apparent permanent effects. If you have a TIA, your chances […]
Letters to the Editor: Regents
Dear Red Hook Star-Revue, I recently graduated from college so I’m not too far removed from high school, which is usually associated with taking the Regents, but my high school (The Beacon School) used portfolio-based assessments (PBAs) instead, so my experience was a bit different. As mentioned in the article, the only regent I had to take was the ELA […]