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The recent death of Academy Award winning and Lowell-born actor Olympia Dukakis at age 89 got me thinking about Lowell’s contributions to American movies and television. There are many. Dukakis, the cousin of former Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis, was born in Lowell in 1931. Her parents, Constantine and Alexandra (Christos)…
Read More »Ann Lord, a native of Manchester, NH, but a longtime resident of Alaska, recently reviewed Tom Sexton’s Cummiskey Alley: New and Selected Lowell Poems in the Anchorage Daily News. She recently shared the review with us. Here it is: Tom Sexton, a longtime University of Alaska Anchorage professor who retired in…
Read More »The Band that Never Got out of My Basement By David Daniel Like everyone, I was in a band once. Before guitars, drums, and keyboards replaced the accordion, bongos, and the ocarina as the staple instruments of rock-‘n’-roll. I was fourteen. The band was me (Manny LaPlante), my big brother…
Read More »Massachusetts By Tim Trask Most people know the Bee Gees as a phenomenon of the late 1970s: Disco, Saturday Night Fever, and all that, but I was introduced to them in January 1968 in Vung Tau, the Republic of Viet Nam. I’d been in-country for three days, the first…
Read More »Hearing Things Differently By Sheila Eppolito My parents met at a party near St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, in Brighton. My mother was a nurse there, and my father was invited by his brother, who was a resident. The story goes that amidst all the singing, boozing, smoking and dancing going on,…
Read More »This post by Paul Marion first ran on August 14, 2010, and is repeated here for this year’s Music Week on the blog: All Hail Lyle Lovett By Paul Marion (Aug 14, 2010) At one point in his performance at Boarding House Park as part of The Lowell Summer Music…
Read More »A kid’s soundtrack Louise Peloquin Many a Franco-American baby-boomer grew up hearing French in Lowell. “Le souper est prêt!” filled streets from Little Canada to the Highlands summoning “les enfants” to warm kitchens where a “pâté chinois” (cottage pie) or another hearty dish was waiting to be devoured. For a…
Read More »“On Air: My 50-Year Love Affair with Radio” by Jordan Rich Review by Richard Howe Between podcasts on my phone, music on my Amazon Echo, and a lingering satellite radio subscription that came with my car, I hardly ever listen to “the radio” anymore. By that, I mean through-the-air AM…
Read More »A Musical Surprise at the Beach: August 19, 1967 By Mike McCormack The year I turned fourteen, the first album by the Los Angeles based group The Doors captivated my friends Jack, Alex and me. We sat for hours in my cellar listening to the record from start to finish…
Read More »Welcome to Music Week on richardhowe.com. We occasionally bundle blog posts of a common theme together and today starts such an effort. For the next two weeks our contributors will share stories of music, in the broadest sense of that word. Pandemic Music By David Perry Pandemic, insurrection, loss, isolation.…
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