News & Notes 23/11/23

Hospital shooting

On Friday, Nov. 17, a state Department of Safety security officer was fatally shot at New Hampshire Hospital, a state-run psychiatric facility in Concord, the AP reported. Bradley Haas, who was previously the chief of police in Franklin, was working at the front lobby entrance when a man identified by law enforcement as John Madore entered the hospital and fired a handgun; Madore was then shot and killed by a state trooper assigned to the hospital, the Union Leader reported. Investigators found a U-Haul truck in the hospital’s parking lot containing an AR-style rifle, a tactical vest and several ammunition magazines, which they are investigating for possible connections to Madore, the AP reported. The shooting was confined to the hospital’s front lobby, and no other injuries were reported, according to the article. The hospital continued operations but was closed to visitors immediately after the incident, according to the report. There were 152 patient beds occupied on Nov. 17, according to a press release from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.

Early childhood ed

The Community College System of New Hampshire (CCSNH) is now providing comprehensive tuition assistance for individuals pursuing careers in early childhood education, potentially allowing students to earn credentials with little to no personal expense. According to a press release, this initiative is due to collaborations with the State of New Hampshire, the University of New Hampshire’s College of Professional Studies and the NH Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Children Youth and Families. Scholarships available include Early Childhood Tuition Assistance and Granite Steps for Quality Tuition Assistance, along with the newly introduced CCSNH ECE Scholarships. These are designed to fill gaps left by other aid programs and make early childhood education programs more accessible to residents.

Better internet

New Hampshire is seeking public input on improving internet connectivity, especially in areas currently lacking service, NHPR reported. The state has received nearly $200 million in federal grants aimed at providing high-speed internet connections to about 25,000 residents who are part of the 8 percent of the state’s population without internet or a device to access it. The Department of Business and Economic Affairs is calling for suggestions from residents and community leaders on the best uses for these funds to enhance broadband access. Public comments are open until Dec. 13 and must be submitted in writing via email to broadband@livefree.nh.gov. For additional details, the public can visit the website at nheconomy.com.

Bank layoffs

The Bank of New Hampshire has announced the layoff of 19 staff members and has ceased accepting new mortgage applications, NHPR reported on Nov. 15. This decision, as stated by the bank’s president and CEO Christopher Logan, is a result of unstable markets and diminished returns on loans, the article said. According to the article, existing customers will not experience changes to their loans or services, and the bank will continue to service existing loans and those currently in process.

Fewer students

New Hampshire has experienced a consistent decline in student enrollment over the past two decades, with the New Hampshire Department of Education reporting a 1.4 percent decrease in public and public charter school students for the 2023-2024 academic year. According to a press release, this year’s enrollment stands at 165,095, down from 167,357 the previous year and significantly lower than the 207,684 students in 2002, reflecting a 20.5 percent decline over 21 years. Specific districts such as New Castle and Stewartstown have seen the most considerable declines, while others like Marlow and Landaff have experienced increases. Even the state’s largest districts, including Manchester, Nashua, Bedford, Londonderry and Concord, have not been immune to this trend, with all reporting fewer students compared to last year. This decline is mirrored in the state’s higher education institutions, with a 13 percent drop in enrollment at the University System of New Hampshire since 2019.

Behavioral health

The New Hampshire Insurance Department (NHID) has released a bulletin, Docket Number INS 23-038-AB, to improve access to Behavioral Health Integration (BHI) services and address the reimbursement challenges faced by behavioral health practitioners. According to a press release, the bulletin provides guidelines for health insurers on the use of billing codes for BHI services, aiming to clarify billing protocols and the roles of Behavioral Health Care Managers, as well as the eligibility of clinical practitioners. The NHID recommends that insurers follow guidance from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the American Medical Association to align with industry standards.

The Bedford Facilities Information and Communications Committee has announced the advancement of the South River Road Police and Fire Complex, with the town planning a new station and substation due to increased service demands since 1994. According to a press release, the project, located at 300 S. River Road, is estimated to cost $34 million, with an extra $2.5 million for existing facility renovations, funded by a proposed 20-year bond. This bond, expected to impact taxes by $0.531 per $1,000 property valuation, will be discussed in a public hearing on Jan. 24, 2024, followed by a March 12, 2024, vote. Public sessions and tours are planned to inform residents about the project.

Gov. Chris Sununu joined New Balance leadership on Monday, Nov. 20, for the groundbreaking of the company’s new manufacturing facility at 12 Innovation Way in Londonderry, which had been previously delayed. According to a press release, the event marked the start of a $70 million investment by New Balance into the 102,000-square-foot facility, with an expected addition of more than 150 jobs. The facility is scheduled to begin production in 2025.

C&J Bus Lines has announced the resumption of its bus services from Dover Bus Terminal to Boston’s Logan Airport and New York City, starting Feb. 4, 2024. According to a press release, the service will provide 26 daily roundtrip schedules between Dover and Logan Airport, along with a daily service to New York City. The Dover terminal, which operates 24 hours a day, offers free parking facilities. C&J has also introduced a reservation system for these routes. Visit ridecj.com.

54 recipes — 11/16/23

To get through the holiday season, with all its parties and gatherings and family dinners. John Fladd presents to you 54 recipes — from cookies and ice creams to potatoes au gratin and scallion pancakes. And, for the nights when you just can’t with cooking — drinks! Photo at right and on the cover by John Fladd.

Also on the cover Mya Blanchard looks at the paper ornaments at the League of NH Craftsmen gallery in Nashua. Henry Homeyer considers the garden chores of November. Michael Witthaus talks to Panorama, which will pay tribute to The Cars at a Tupelo Music Hall show also featuring Bikini Whale and its take on The B-52s.

View entire selection throughout the years here

54 recipes — 11/16/23

To get through the holiday season, with all its parties and gatherings and family dinners. John Fladd presents to you 54 recipes — from cookies and ice creams to potatoes au gratin and scallion pancakes. And, for the nights when you just can’t with cooking — drinks! Photo at right and on the cover by John Fladd.

Also on the cover Mya Blanchard looks at the paper ornaments at the League of NH Craftsmen gallery in Nashua. Henry Homeyer considers the garden chores of November. Michael Witthaus talks to Panorama, which will pay tribute to The Cars at a Tupelo Music Hall show also featuring Bikini Whale and its take on The B-52s.

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First Wave

Cars tribute act hits Tupelo

The best thing about playing in a Cars tribute act is it never gets boring. The Boston band broke out in the late 1970s with a string of hits that ran the gamut from edgy jangle pop to swirling, ethereal rock, and no song exactly resembled another.

“The Cars had such a diverse palette of musical tastes, you listen to some of their music and sometimes wonder if it’s the same band,” Ken Marchione said recently. Panorama, the band he co-founded, will bring its pristine Cars reproduction to Tupelo Music Hall on Nov. 18, a co-bill with B-52s sound-alike Bikini Whale. “Their music will live on, and even after all these years they still sound fresh.”

That said, anyone looking to tackle The Cars’ catalog, from their eponymous debut to 1984’s Heartbeat City (the last-gasp Door to Door three years later doesn’t really count), should be more than a fan. The variety and complexity of songs like “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Hello Again” can challenge the most talented musician.

The five members of Panorama are up to the task. In fact, their stage act often improves on, or at least cleans up, the original group, as it employs prerecorded multitracking and layered vocals to emulate The Cars’ album sound.

“We want to make it note for note as perfect as we can,” Marchione said. “Because in a lot of ways they really were a studio band.”

Marchione and keyboard player Darren Muise, who are also in the J. Geils Band tribute act Whammer Jammer, came up with the idea for Panorama in 2019. The two were already Cars fans. Muise went to Berklee College of Music, where he latched onto Cars keys man Greg Hawkes, particularly liking his synthesizer work. Marchione picked up the guitar at age 6 and was smitten since “Just What I Needed” hit on WBCN and WRKO.

He marvels at guitarist Elliot Easton. “His solos … are songs within songs that can be hummed; the average listener gravitates to that,” he said. “That’s why I think he’s been so successful as a soloist and a writer because he makes these intricate arrangements for the guitar that everybody can latch on to.”

The first piece in putting the band together was singer-guitarist Darin Ames, who answered Marchione and Muise’s Craigslist ad. Drummer Gary Agresti came next, bringing additional skills as a sound man — he runs the mix at BankNH Pavilion in Gilford during the shed season. Bass player Jeff Ares came in last, replacing one who’d only played one gig.

Ares was a find. “It was fate — he knew about 25 songs when he walked through the door,” Marchione recalled, adding they did a full rehearsal with him the same day. “He just stepped in, he knows every song, he’s a great bass player, he looks the part and he loves The Cars. It was just an absolute perfect fit, and that completed the band.”

The doppelganger band opens its show with a brief Cars history video and uses career-spanning visual imagery throughout the set. They perform a couple of times a month and recently completed a well-received jaunt to Wisconsin. They’ve even received acknowledgement from the objects of their tribute. At a recent benefit concert, Ares and Ames sat in with Eliot Easton for a pair of songs.

At the show, Marchione had a chance to speak with his musical hero Easton.

“I got to ask him a bunch of questions about a lot of the solos that I’ve been playing for years now,” Marchione recalled. “He was fantastic, and a super nice guy. He knew that we had a tribute to The Cars, and he wasn’t in any way upset; he was flattered. That was a bucket list item for me.”

Panorama (The Cars tribute) w/ Bikini Whale (B-52s tribute)
When:
Saturday, Nov. 18, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $30 at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Panorama. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 23/11/16

Local music news & events

Purple like: Get funky with LoVeSeXy, New England’s top Prince tribute act. The six-piece band also covers Prince-adjacent acts Morris Day & the Time and Sheila E. Backing vocalist Jodee Frawlee does a great job with the latter, as well as with Prince’s duet partner Sheena Easton, on “You Got the Look” and “Love Bizarre.” Thursday, Nov. 16, 8 p.m., LaBelle Winery, 14 Route 111, Derry, $40 at labellewinery.com.

Storyteller: A common thread running through 1970s rock, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter plays a solo concert that will include reminiscing about being a founding member of Steely Dan; he played on their first three albums before leaving to join the Doobie Brothers in 1974. Baxter got his start in Boston with psychedelic rockers Ultimate Spinach, and his session work includes Joni Mitchell and Rod Stewart. Friday, Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $39 and up at palacetheatre.org.

Tail-wagger: Whether covering old-school soul or doing an original like “Without You,” Fox & the Flamingos can get a party started. Fronted by fluffy-tailed singer Maizy Rae (she often sports one, along with furry ears), the group charms with vintage favorites like “Tell Me Something Good” and “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” Their reinvention of The Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride” is a revved-up delight. Saturday, Nov. 18, 9:30 pm., Peddler’s Daughter, 48 Main St., Nashua (21+); see linktr.ee/foxandtheflamingos.

Soft rock: Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock formed Air Supply after touring together in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1975. They topped the Australian charts soon after the musical closed; big hits include “Lost in Love” and “All Out of Love.” Sunday, Nov. 19, 7 p.m., Capitol Center for the Arts, 44 S. Main St., Concord, $68.25 and up at ccanh.com.

Indie songs: Judging by the musicians she’s collaborated with, singer-songwriter Leslie Mendelson is truly special. Her most recent studio album was produced by Peter Asher, who guided Linda Ronstadt into superstardom, with a band including Jim Keltner and The Section’s Leland Sklar and Waddy Wachtel. Sunday, Nov. 19, 7 p.m., The Press Room, 77 Daniel St., Portsmouth, $15 to $20 at eventbrite.com (21+).

The Marvels (PG-13)

Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau team up, much to Ms. Marvel’s teenage-fangirl glee, in The Marvels, a mostly fun adventure movie in spite of some Marvel Cinematic Universe “did you do your homework?”-ing.

I came to this movie slightly more prepared than usual with these Marvel movies that have TV series tie-ins, having seen — and absolutely loved — the Ms. Marvel series all about high schooler Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a comics-making, Avengers-loving Pakistani-American girl from Jersey City. I did not see the Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson)-centric Secret Invasion or WandaVision, where I gather we meet the grown-up Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). But it’s fine; the movie recaps enough about who everybody is and their relationships to each other — like, for example, that Monica still thinks of Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) as Aunt Carol Danvers, best friend of her mother, the late Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who died during the five years Monica was Blipped away.

Monica has superpowers now and works for Nick Fury at the S.H.I.E.L.D.-in-space-like S.A.B.E.R. Carol/Captain Marvel is still traveling the universe looking to help people, basically alone except for her cat, Goose, who is a tentacle-mouthed Flerken. Kamala is still in Jersey, still in high school, still making comics when she should be doing homework — as her loving and rightfully suspicious mother Muneeba (Zenobia Shroff) reminds her.

Muneeba, Kamala’s dad Yusuf (Mohan Kapur) and Kamala’s older brother Aamir (Saagar Shaikh) are deeply confused when, after a crashing noise upstairs, Captain Marvel comes down from Kamala’s room. At the same time Kamala finds herself floating in space, where Fury, watching from a space station, had expected to see Monica, who is suddenly on the strange planet where we had just seen Carol. It seems that some kind of space-time-portal-thingies have entangled Carol, Kamala and Monica and whenever they use their powers, they change places. This phenomenon has something to do with the bangle (one identical to the one Kamala wears) that Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton), our antagonist, has dug up and put on. Dar-Benn, a Kree warrior/leader person, is trying to use the power she gains from the bangle to transport, via wormhole, resources from other planets to her people’s dying homeworld, Hala. From a Skrull planet, she steals the atmosphere. From another planet, she attempts to steal the water. From Earth’s solar system, she intends to steal the sun.

(OK, so — Skrull, Kree, Flerken, Blip? Translation: The first two are warring aliens who appeared in Captain Marvel and other MCU properties, a Flerken is a cat that’s really an alien and the Blip was the whole Thanos thing. And, Thanos? Look, I don’t feel like this is anybody’s MCU entry point but if it is maybe just take notes for post-film Wikipedia-ing. It took catching a bit of Captain Marvel for me to remember “oh, yeah, Hala is a thing we know.” Meanwhile, we are introduced to a brand new planet, Aladna, and an alien people who communicate largely through song and I feel like, if we want to pile on the lore, why not go with new, delightfully weird lore like that?)

Monica and Carol haven’t reconnected since Monica was a child and of course everybody seems a little uneasy about bringing teenage Kamala to intergalactic battles. But the three women eventually realize that their tangled powers mean they need to work together.

The movie has some fun with the powers-tangling concept. The scene that sort of introduces the three superheroines to each other features a prolonged fight with the three swapping places throughout, occasionally pulling bad guys with them, which is how the Khan family ends up fighting Kree and how Goose ends up at the family home, at one point eating some Khan family knick-knacks. It’s choreographed for maximum fun, with the three characters figuring out the rules and what their powers are and who they’re fighting. Later we get a training montage of the three learning how to use the position swaps so they can mount a fight against Dar-Benn.

I also appreciate that the movie pulls the Khans into the adventure, as Kamala’s family was so central to her story. Plus Shroff’s Muneeba is great and I found myself wishing that the movie had given her some superhero-ing of her own. Muneeba’s “you’re not allowed to go on a space adventure” protectiveness also helps to root Kamala’s character in her teenagerness.

The chemistry between the three women is nice too. We don’t get some antagonism-for-the-sake-of-antagonism shoved into the relationships. Instead, we get Carol and Monica reckoning with their past and all three of them learning to work together and value each other’s contributions. It’s a small thing but it keeps the movie relatively light and fun.

The Marvels mostly keeps its head above the Kree/Skrull-ness MCU soup but it does feel like a struggle. The whole business of Dar-Benn’s planet and Captain Marvel’s past feels like it gets in the way of really setting this movie free to be the buddy-adventure it wants to be. B

Rated PG-13 for action/violence and brief language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Nia DaCosta with a screenplay by Nia DaCosta and Megan McDonnell and Elissa Karasik, The Marvels is an hour and 45 minutes long and distributed by Walt Disney Studios in theaters.

Featured photo: The Marvels.