Let some folks get misty over the big band era. Tom Hearn’s photos document the height of the punk rock movement. This is more fun, don’t you think?
Taken at legendary venues like Willimantic’s Shaboo Inn, New Haven’s Toad’s Place, the Arcadia Ballroom, CBGB and Max’s Kansas City in New York City, Hearn’s black-and-white photographs capture the energy of this very brief late-1970s era.
The show runs April 14-May 27 at the Walsh Gallery, which is in the Quick Center on the Fairfield University campus.
It’s funny — when I was in college in the 1980s, big band nostalgia was on an upswing and Cab Calloway, at the time pushing 80, gave a jumpin’-jivin’ concert on our campus. All went well until the very end. thanked us all for coming and said farewell, ending it all with, “And remember, Sha-Na-Na is gay.”
I think it’s safe to say we all mystified.
Will punkers in their late 70s be on the nostalgia circuit and do gigs on college campuses? Will they match the oddness of at least one early-century bandleader?