My weekly highlights column for the Daily Nutmeg is here.

http://dailynutmeg.com/2012/04/09/this-week-in-new-haven-april-9-15/

1. Cheap Trick. I heard the band do this in a concert at the Orpheum in Boston well before a different  live version was released on their Found All the Parts EP in 1980. It blew my mind. Cheap Trick often did covers, but to actually do a Beatles song at the time was significant. This was the apotheosis of the  Power Pop movement, and it was considered far cooler to do fairly obscure covers of British bands or ‘60s garage acts than actually acknowledge the band to which every single Power Pop band owed its largest debt. It’s also a riff that fit Rick Nielsen’s wild-yet-precise live playing style perfectly. (Cheap Trick, of course, went on to work with John Lennon in 1980 and, in 2010, cover Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in its entirely with orchestral backing.)

2. Nancy Sinatra. Instead of guitars, the riff is handled first by a brass section, then by a chorus of go-go dancers. And she growls it like “Boots.”

3. Otis Redding. He uses horns too. And seems genuinely perturbed to have “found out.”

4. The Fleshtones. Soaring instrumental rave-up, one of many uncanny Fleshtones recreations of a ‘60s Northwest frat party soundtrack.

5. Jimi Hendrix. On the BBC Sessions. Strips it down to garage essentials: “Can you hear me now?

6. Ramsey Lewis. The pianist attacks it in a manner similar to his biggest pop hit, “The In Crowd.”

7. Yellow Magic Orchestra. Messes with the Beatles timeline and does it in a psychedelic “Strawberry Fields” style.

8. Capital Gain. A consummate try-something-a-little-new local band cover for the largely extraordinary Boston Does the Beatles double-album in 1988.

9. Mongo Santamaria. The horns take the riff again, with a cha cha beat and an active dialogue among keyboards, saxophone and trumpets.

10. Daniel Ash. The riff and beat becomes the Goth undercurrent of a downbeat confessional.

11. Mae West. She acts it to the hilt, actually becoming the Day Tripper herself: “I’m a big teaser/I took him half the way there.” Produced by the great tin pan alley scholar and ukulele popsmith Ian Whitcomb.

12. Booker T and the M.G.s. Unending delights. The guitar part comes out from under the riff and plays a transformative blues solo. The rest of the band vamps on the basic melody, as a unit.

Tied for 13: Sham 69 and Bad Brains. Inventive live versions that nonetheless share a “guess you had to be there” vibe.

Five Worst: James Taylor, Anne Murray, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Lulu, Type O Negative.

The wave of “Are You a Betty or a Veronica?” merchandise was rather shortlived. The characters have retuned to somewhat less arch (to coin a phrase) postures. I still have several of the greeting cards (which have Betty proclaiming :”It’s so hard being the SMART one” while Veronica inquires “Who doesn’t LOVE to shop?”).

In older times, Betty and Veronica were celebrated for their similarities, not their differences. The best stories, in their Betty & Veronica title, had them adventuring together and enduring each others personality extremes. Apart, they became one-note jokes: Betty the salivating puppydog who chases after Archie but is too insecure or inexperienced to win him; Veronica the spoiled, worldly flirt who takes Archie, and the rest of her devoted friends, for granted.

It’s not their  rivalry that makes these characters work; it’s their complementary qualities. How they have distinct yet equally worthwhile reactions to the same teen situations. How they prioritize differently. How they respect each other, reassure each other and validate each other.

Ginger vs. Mary Ann? That’s a random poll of comely castaways from disparate cultures. Betty & Veronica, on the other hand, are lifelong friends coping with the turmoils and triumphs of being teenagers in Riverdale together. That’s the attraction.

When I told the landlord my suspicions about the heating ventilation, he told me to get more exercise.

Thicker Fuller’s a fun band. Good songs, short and sweet too.
But the magic act has got to go.

Not that we mind card tricks, and yes,we understand that this band had its origins between the lines of a young adult novel, and incorporates several thematic elements into its stage act. But certain gimmicks just don’t wash with the sensitively scabrous Bullfinch crowd.

For one thing, a card trick can take up the space of entire freaking song. For another, only those down front can see the cards. Play it, don’t shuffle it!

Hair in Weeks at the Bullfinch next, with Out of the Clinic & Into Your Home (is that one band or two?)… New All Natural at Hamilton’s, covering the hippie hits alongside the much more contemporary Healthier Smile… D’ollaire’s is dark. Why?…

Posted a new Play in a Day project, Plautus’ Menaechmi, at http://scribblers.us/nhtj/?page_id=1500

Been meaning to mention that, on a winter vacation trip to visit our Vermont in-laws, we insinuated ourselves into an article in The Barre Montpelier Times-Argus (for Monday, Feb. 20, 2012) about the prominent lack of snow in that state this past winter. (The girl in the pink jacket sipping cocoa is Mabel and Sally’s cousin Kiki.

Happy Easter! Smithsonian Magazine goes right to the scientific heart of the season, here.

Of course, if you want scripture on that, try Colossians Chapter 2, verse 8:

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

Three tulips came up in our backyard. Sally, 7, commented on the phenomenon thus:

“It reminds me of boys and girls. There are two red ones, which are girls—Betty & Veronica—and a white one, which is a boy:  Archie!”

Think I am deeply affected by the heating system in the house.

A clever college band, Conflation of Misspent Youth, had the bright quasi-theatrical idea of reciting a short story to instrumental backing at the Bullfinch last Thursday. Unfortunately, there had been no rehearsal beforehand, and the recitation/recital went overlong.

The playing got repetitive. Yet the story—an original, we’re told, by Curt Wain, boyfriend of Cam Greenberg, who read it—was riveting.

The set went scarily into overtime, nearly bumping middle band No Pimple in No Time, who settles for four songs in 10 minutes on the first band’s equipment so the show could get back on track. When headliners Relief Pod, from out of town, began, they were so shaken by the reading that the singer was practically sobbing, and asked Curt if he had “a poem of something WE could jam to.”

He did.

Tonight, the Bullfinch has Emergency Backpack and Home Car Work School Travel. The band could probably fill a D’ollaire’s with enough notice, but is old pals with Bullfinch booker Q so didn’t even look for elsewhere to play. Organized Color Coded Compact opens…Makes a Great Gift at Hamilton’s, rescheduled from some time ago, now alongside RP114… The Probiotic Mints, at D’ollaire’s, have a zillion festivals on their plate following this gig. What do you bet that next year they’re opening stadium shows for the top touring bands and we’ll never ever see the likes of them in this town again?…