I won’t be writing for the Daily Nutmeg anymore. My last story for that notable New Haven-based e-mail/online publication ran today. If you noticed and enjoyed my work there, I thank you.

I wrote well over 200 articles for the Nutmeg during its first 18 months of operation. A third of those pieces were “This Week in New Haven” events-calendar highlights columns. The others were feature stories, ranging from musings on local landmarks to profiles of small businesspeople to provocative arts lists (the best New Haven rock bands of all time; books and movies set in New Haven). Today’s final story was a thought-piece about Alexander Calder’s sculpture Gallows & Lollipops in Yale’s Beinecke Plaza.

Much of my Daily Nutmeg work, to me at least, was reminiscent of essays and columns I did for the New Haven Advocate back in that publication’s 1990s heyday. But my many gentle, city-boosting pieces are not what I’m remembered for Advocate-wise. (Likewise, you could read me in Daily Nutmeg and not know that much of my writing reputation elsewhere is based around a strong critical voice.) It was nice to find my more understated, positivist work so roundly validated, and so neatly packaged, through Daily Nutmeg. The publication also spurred me to become a photographer, illustrating my words with pictures.

But other challenges were not as pleasant or rewarding. I will not disguise that there were administrative, editorial and other behind-the-scenes disappointments that led to my leaving Daily Nutmeg. Having been out of its particular deadline grind for a few days now, consciousness is dawning. This was never destined to be a good fit. It was more a convenient overlap of tastes and abilities than a shared vision. It had been an especially awkward relationship for the past eight months or so. I’ll miss the elegant platform on which I was allowed to stand and proclaim my love for New Haven. I’ll miss the wondrously appreciative readership. Yet there were anxieties and frustrations at Daily Nutmeg as well, and it’s a great relief to leave those behind.

Since the publication doesn’t print a masthead, I frequently had to correct fans of the Nutmeg who had convinced themselves that I had something to do with running or founding or designing the thing. I  fear that I came off as curt or dismissive in some of these denials, but I really didn’t want to say anything to further false impressions, and wouldn’t ever want to take any credit for the hard work of others. My work was strictly freelance writing (and photography), and I kept my input about all other aspects of the publication to a minimum. The Daily Nutmeg is the brainchild of Mike Mims, former longtime publisher of Connecticut Magazine, and is edited by Mike’s son Daniel. It remains an intriguing business model for post-print journalism. My contribution to the Daily Nutmeg was content-based, not conceptual. That should be easily divined now that I have nothing to do with it.

I’ll continue to write informative essays about the beauty and charm and singularity of New Haven. Some already appear regularly in such well-run and well-mannered publications as New Haven Living magazine (for whom I do a piece on a different New Haven neighborhood each month) and the New Haven Advocate’s Annual Manual guide to the city. Some stuff will likely end up here on my own little blog, and there are already discussions happening about whether there’s room for another New Haven-centric site on the internet. No longer having a commitment to produce three 1000-word articles a week for a single client has, as you can imagine, opened up a lot of other possibilities for my freelance writing career.

Meanwhile, my myriad Daily Nutmeg articles remain archived at www.dailynutmeg.com. It was an interesting 18 months for me, and I’m glad there’s some record of it.

Finally got my hair cut. Hadn’t bothered in six months. I go to D’s (formerly Smooth’s), on Whalley Avenue just a block and a half from my home.

“You look like a whole different dude,” quoth the barber.

I bought two pairs of socks yesterday at Railroad Salvage. For 88 cents per pair. And if it were 30 years ago, I could have saved 25 cents more on my next purchase.

I’ve been reading Edward Eager’s Half Magic to my daughters. The fantasy novel was written in the ‘60s but set sometime in the 1920s (when its young protagonists aren’t traveling through time, that is). Within a few pages of each other, two culinary curiosities are mentioned: “Parched corn” and “a double hot fudge dope.”

Parched corn is an old Native American snack made by cooking (in oil) and seasoning (with brown sugar or spices) dried corn so that it’s chewy.

“A double hot fudge dope,” on the other hand, is a double scoop of ice cream  in a cup with sauce, but none of the trimmings which would make it a sundae.

Unsuspectingly, I’ve been eating double hot fudge dopes for years. It’s my standard order at Ashley’s Ice Cream on York Street: “…and can you just put a little hot fudge on it?”

I’m currently chronicling events at the 2013 International Festival of Arts & Ideas for several different publications, so before the fest ends this Saturday (June 29), I thought I’d better get them straight.

I did a preview story on the festival which ran on the cover of the print edition of the New Haven Advocate, and can be found on the ct.com website here.

I’ve also been doing a diary of sorts for ct.com, covering Arts & Ideas events as they happen. The early entries are here and here and here and here and here.

There’s also a stand-alone review of the Bristol Old Vic/Handspring Puppet Company production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, here.

For the Daily Nutmeg, where I’m called “Lead Writer,” I did a preview story here.

And a mid-fest round-up here.

I’ve also been touting A&I events in the Daily Nutmeg’s Monday calendar columns, here and here and here.

I’ve also been doing a photo-and-caption box of a different Arts & Ideas image nearly every day during the festival, which runs at the bottom of the e-mail edition of the Daily Nutmeg sent to subscribers. (To sign up for the free email subscription, go to http://dailynutmeg.com/)

This past weekend, I attended two Arts & Ideas events which I ended up writing about for the New Haven Independent. I may do more stories for that august online periodical this week. Coverage of the Kronos Quartet on New Haven Green (including the last-minute crisis when U.S. Airways smashed Wu  Man’s pipa) is here.  A review of Le Train Bleu’s performance of John Luther Adams’ songbirdsongs in Yale’s Marsh Botanical Garden is here.

Last week, I appeared on an episode of the Colin McEnroe show expressly devoted to the festival. That show, featuring numerous festival artists and A&I Exec. Dir. Mary Lou Aleskie, is archived here.

Finally, there’s been some blogging at my own sites, with over half a dozen recent items at New Haven Theater Jerk. Of the last ten or so posts, at least half a dozen pertain to the festival, including full reviews of My Friend’s Story and The Quiet Volume.

If my A&I coverage ends up anywhere else, you’ll be the first to know.

Just finished watching Duck Soup.

It’s a tragicomic ritual I’ve observed for decades now. Whenever our country gets into a new war-like situation, I get incensed and sorrowful and sullen. So I screen this Marx Brothers war parody from 1933 and while it doesn’t change anything it reminds me that war is crazy and that humankind is mad and bent on self-destruction. That ridiculousness and lunacy helps me maintain balance and a modicum of sanity in a society whose bloodthirstiness I cannot fathom.

Last night’s announcement that the U.S. will be arming Syrian rebels against their ignoble dictator is not, I realize, any sort of declaration of war. It’s not even necessarily an altogether bad thing, though my own absolutist pacifist nature does not really allow for such gradations and generalizations.

But the door has just been opened for further justifications and threats and power plays. It’s disheartening that even before President Obama announced that the Syrian government had crossed the “red line” and that U.S. intervention was now inevitable, some Republican senators had already leaked the plan and were saying it hadn’t gone far enough.

This is scary talk, on a subject that should be discussed much more carefully. The situation is also full of a lot of bad signals. A lot of international conflicts have conveniently served as distractions from domestic scandals in a presidential administration. The timing is too right for that right now.

Upstarts! Fredonia’s gone to war.

Getting my house in order before the International Festival of Arts & Ideas starts taking up most of my time for the next fortnight.

Here, for the first time in months, is a list of where you could find my writings. It’s been a pretty busy time, which may explain why my blogging has been so sparse here and at New Haven Theater Jerk.

I’ll be working on that blogging discipline, as I hope to start a new page shortly, to promote my first-Monday-of-every-month storytelling series Get to the Point! at Cafe Nine here in New Haven.

So here’s where the other words are:

• Last fall and winter I was helping Hashim A’Allah of Hallah Edutainment with a broadcast journalism project he set up at Metropolitan Business Academy, the business-oriented magnet high school in New Haven. I did some teaching and some blogging with the students. The MBA program ended a few months back, but Hashim has other similar projects thriving at other schools in other states, and it’s possible I may return to the fold sometime. The Hallah Edutainment site, with some of my work, is at http://hallahedutainment.com/.

• In March my dear friend and fellow theater critic Lou Harry and I were the advance team for a new-media experiment supported by the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. The idea was an extension of Engine 28, where a group of arts journalists covered the heck of several arts conferences and festivals in Los Angeles in the summer of 2011. This time, we hit the 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky. Lou and I filled the site with all kinds of stuff, some of which has since been removed, but most of which remains, at http://www.engine31.org/

• While I was in Indianapolis visiting Lou Harry prior to hitting Kentucky, I got a surprise phone call from Paul Bass at the New Haven Independent asking if I’d review a film for that wondrous hyperlocal news site’s new arts section. I have been quoted in the Independent a number of times, but until now had not written for it. Paul and I worked at adjacent desks for a decade at the New Haven Advocate, and it was nice having him for an editor again, if only for a day. The review is here: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/freak-out_plays_well_on_big_screen/

• I have a story in the current (summer) issue of the New England visual arts magazine Artscope. It’s a feature about the Create.Here.Now project which unites civic leaders, property owners and artists to stimulate underused or blighted areas of Connecticut cities with creative and potentially sustainable arts enterprises. Since the article was published, there’s been good news about the program. It received a major national grant and will expand from its pilot program in Bridgeport to several dozens towns and cities statewide.

• I write two regular features for New Haven Living, a slick new culture magazine covering the city in which I’ve lived for half my life now. I do a calendar-highlights thing called Best Bets and another column where I describe a different New Haven neighborhood each issue. I’ve also down a Spring Arts preview feature, a story on New Haven theater history and a couple of other things for them. Best thing about it is that my old friend Frank Cohen is the local editor of the thing.

• For New Haven Living’s sister publication Hartford Magazine, I did something on the new children’s theater program at Hartford Stage. That story also ran in a new magazine from the same publishers, CT Family Fun.

• I write for another Connecticut-based magazine as well. Hoffman Decades is a quarterly general-interest publication sponsored by the Hoffman auto dealerships in Hartford. I’ve done two or more stories for each of the last three issues, including the cover stories for each of those: a history of the Hartford Civic Center/XL Center, a top 40 of signature events in the history of Hartford and a history of Lincoln Continental automobiles (for which I came up with a list of songs about that car spanning most of the 20th century). Good fun.

• I continue to write regularly for the New Haven Advocate, which I served in a number of different editorial positions for 17 years before quitting the desk job to go freelance in 2007. My online work for the paper, which gets posted directly to www.ct.com, is too voluminous to recount here, but I was especially proud to be asked to write an obituary for the great local pop-rocker Steven Deal, and to plug a host of worthy plays and concerts. In the print edition of the Advocate, I continue to be the main theater critic and the go-to guy for features on the Meriden Daffodil Festival, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and other great local arts traditions. The site’s search engine can be frustratingly spotty, but if you Google may name and the name of any play at the Long Wharf or Yale Rep (and in some cases Westport Country Playhouse and Goodspeed Opera House) you’ll likely pull up a ct.com review of it. Recent New Haven Advocate features I’ve done include an interview with jazz pianist Donn Trenner and a cover story on the Arts & Ideas festival.

• For the Hartford Advocate, I write the Roundabout theater-preview column bi-weekly. My favorite recent one connected the demise of the TV show Smash to the Hartford-bound national tour of Catch Me If You Can, featuring the same composers.

• Then there’s the Daily Nutmeg. I do three articles a week for this online magazine, which has a website at www.dailynutmeg.com but is best accessed through a free subscription which lets you receive one story every day by email. One of those articles every week is “This Week in New Haven,” which highlights upcoming cultural events in the city.

• I won’t bother to include all the links—the Nutmeg site has a fine search function—but here are the feature stories I’ve done over the last few months:

A bus trip down Route 34 from New Haven to Derby. (The story ran March 1).

Coverage of the Edwardian Opulence exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art. (Ran March 6.)

A joint review of Michael Bolton’s autobiography and Tony Consiglio’s memoirs of his years as Frank Sinatra’s confidante. (Ran March 8.)

A comic concept about all the blue-colored or blue-themed things in New Haven. (Ran March 13.)

A Saint Patrick’s Day piece about New Haven’s Irish mayor Frank Murphy, the years before there was a big parade, and other things. (Ran March 15.)

A litany of Paul Giamatti’s theatrical accomplishments at Yale, prior to his grand return in Hamlet this year at the Yale Rep. (Ran March 20.)
DelMonico’s hat shop! DelMonico’s hat shop! (Ran March 22.)

A musing on slogans and messages posted on New Haven streets. (Ran March 27.)
A local baseball story. (Ran March 29)

Coverage of the Arts & Ideas 2013 festival announcement. (Ran April 3.)
A profile of Merwin’s art framing shop on Chapel Street. (Ran April 5.)

A piece on the collaboration betwen Long Wharf Theatre and New Haven Free Public Library, which created a bookcase in the theater lobby stocked with titles relating to the current production. (Ran April 10.)
A preview of the Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival. (Ran April 12)

Praise for Artspace. (Ran April 18)
A pleasnat walk down Chapel Street, from one end of New Haven to the other. (Ran April 19.)

A brief history of New Haven, to mark its 375th birthday. (Ran April 24.)
A comment on how many New Haven musicians were performing at the Meriden Daffodil Festival. (Ran April 26.)

May Day coverage, including labor history and the annual festivities on New Haven Green. (Ran May 1.)
Robert Greenberg’s extraordinary private museum of New Haven history. (Ran May 3.)

An interview with Long Wharf Theatre Associate Artistic Director Eric Ting regarding his directing of Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park. (Ran May 8.)

A preview of the annual ArtWalk in Westville Village. (Ran May 10.)

Another “walk down…” piece, this time along Howard Avenue to the waterfront. (Ran May 15.)
Something about Sleeping Giant State Park, after I’d been on a field trip there with my daughter Sally’s third grade class. (Ran May 17.)

A concept piece on outdoor seating at downtown eateries. (Ran May 22.)
A Memorial Day feature, with a strong pacifist theme. (Ran May 24.)

A profile of guitarist Shawn Persinger, focusing on his new book The 50 Greatest Guitar Books. (Ran May 29.)
A thought piece on “change,” as when shops close downtown while students are on summer break. (May 31.)

A preview of summer concerts on New Haven Green and elsewhere. (Ran June 5)

A fun interview with the acting ensemble and Artistic Director of the 2013 Yale Summer Cabaret season. (Ran June 7.)
The three churches on New Haven Green, as they celebrate the 200th anniversary of their respective buildings. (Ran June 12.)

An Arts & Ideas preview, on the eve of the 2013 festival. (Ran June 14.)

That’s enough for now. Don’t feel like I’m expecting you to read it all, or even any of it.

Nice to be able to recap all that work from recent months. Am kind of amazed I got all that done. Accomplishment is cool.

In 2003 Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, published The Work of the University. A decade later, he’s just produced its sequel, The Worth of the University.

Now he’s retiring, he can write these:

The Worm of the University. (Composting comes to the sustainable-food Yale Dining Services.)

The Whirr of the University. (Only way to get from class to class, with the campus expanding so broadly, is to take a helicopter.)

The Woot of the University. (A necessarily brief history of hip-hop at Yale.)

The Woof of the University. (Bulldog! Bulldog! Rah! Rah! Rah!)

The Whorl of the University. (Yale has its fingerprints everywhere.)

The Wart of the University. (What’s that on Elihu Yale’s face in the old portraits?)

 

For many people, the Meriden Daffodil Festival is simply a great spring festival, one of the outdoor fried-dough and touring-carnival extravaganzas held in glorious springtime in a lush city park.

But for the Connecticut local music community, it’s much more than that.

This growth from the city park affair to unparalleled local band showcase is due largely to one man, Rob DeRosa, and a horde of Daffodil volunteers. DeRosa spends months every year investigating new talent, keeping in touch with established acts, and creating a balanced two-day schedule of bands loud, soft, rocky, folky, melodic, raw, tribute-oriented, and excessively original.

According to DeRosa, exactly half of the 36 bands booked this year are new to the festival. Some are brand new acts; others (such as the nationally known Poor Old Shine) are well-established, but have just never made it out to Meriden before this. The others are reliable and popular acts who’ve rocked the Daffodil on other occasions, some of them numerous times. But just because those bands are have played before doesn’t mean they’re safe selections. I don’t think you can look at a list that has The Peacock Flounders, Mold Monkies, The Sawtelles and the great Mark Mulcahy on it and call it common festival fare.

Yes, Mark Mulcahy. The Miracle Legion founder and acclaimed solo artist makes a welcome return to the Daffodil Festival after an absence of several years following tragedy and upheaval in his personal life. While away, Mulcahy’s songs became the subject of a 2009 tribute album, Ciao My Shining Star, which included interpretations of Mulcahy tunes by Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe, Frank Black, A.C. Newman, Chris Collingwood, Juliana Hatfield, Ben Kweller, Dumptruck and dozens of other acts.

Other clear highlights of Daffodil 2013: Hartford’s Little Ugly, New London’s wondrous Daphne Lee Martin, the educated jazz combo Sparkplug, instrumentally inventive folkies Goodnight Blue Moon, alt-rocker Hostage Calm, singer/songwriter Becky Kessler and Falcon Ridge festival showcase winners Poor Old Shine.

With rare exceptions—The Manchurians, the now-presumably-retired Reducers, or  those with deep Meriden connections such as Sean & Kelley of the Omnibus Band (playing their 18^th consecutive Daffodil Festival), the cover bands Chico & Friends and 691, and singer/songwriter/bandleader Frank Critelli—Rob DeRosa avoids booking any act for two years in a row. This not only assures variety, it proclaims without doubt how many worthy Connecticut acts there are out there to choose from in the first place. Cool returnees this year include Christopher Bousquet, The Furors, The Sawtelles, The Ivory Bills, The Mold Monkies and of course Mark Mulcahy.

Without further ado (and I realize that’s just been a heck of a lot of ado), here’s the 2013 line-up for the Meriden Daffodil Festival. I’m honored that Rob DeRosa has entrusted me with this information; this is a scoop, the first place you’re reading this list.

The 2013 Meriden Daffodil Festival takes place Saturday, April 27 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, April 28 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Meriden’s Hubbard Park. There are three separate stages for live bands: the Welcome Stage (with its own bleacher seating) near the festival entrance; the Band Shell stage near the carnival rides; and the Food Tent stage, where bands play to a captive audience of thousands of hungry people standing in line at dozens of food booths.

The dates, times and stag locations for each band will play have yet to be announced. The festival’s own website is here.

The Alternate Routes. The nationally touring acoustic/folk/rock/and beyond act that grew out of a friendship at Fairfeld University. The Alternate Routes get one of the prime “Fireworks Show” slots, playing on the Welcome Stage whilst bombs burst in air.

Breakthrough Frequencies. A modern rock act with Meriden connections.

Chico & Friends. The Meriden-based cover band which plays every year.

Christopher Bousquet. The poet who filters West Coast country rock influences through acute East Coast sensibilities.

Dan Stevens Trio. The noted blues guitarist.

Daphne Lee Martin. Winner of both the Advocate Grand Band Slam and the Connecticut Music Awards, the Raise the Rent frontwoman is more than a little bit country. Her new album is Moxie.

Ellison Jackson. Not a guy but a three-piece Americana band based in Berlin, Ct.

Food. A jazz band, presumably not the European combo of the same name. Do you have any idea how hard it is to Google “food jazz band” and find a meaningful result?

Frank Critelli. Never misses a Daffodil Festival, where he’s played with a number of different bands and also served as a host.

The Furors. The grand return of frequent Daffodil duo Derek & Tom, whose singular brand of two-man high-energy pop has endured since the mid-1970s.

Goodnight Blue Moon. The Daffodil debut of the tremendously popular and emotionally moving Americana band. The “Fireworks Show” attraction in the festival’s food tent.

The Gonkus Brothers. Covers, Irish songs, Mersey beat and more from these Meriden favorites.

The Guru. The return of the young neo-psychedelicians.

Hannah Fair. Daffodil debut of the blonde “Lonesome for You” singer/songwriter.

Hostage Calm. First Daffodil gig for the nationally touring rock/hard pop act that’s been around for five years or so now and have been comfortably compared to The Smiths and Quicksand.

The Ivory Bills. Most Daffodil fests feature some manifestation of local band statesman James Velvet, who fronts several pop or acoustic acts and is the longtime co-host of the Local Bands show on WPLR.

Kelley & Sean. Low-key covers by members of the Omnibus band; their 18^th Daffodil appearance.

Becky Kessler. This Advocate Grand Band Slam winning singer/songwriter has a rich electric sound influenced by everyone from Jeff Buckley to Nina Simone.

Last Licks. The classic rock combo’s Daffodil Festival debut is also the Bandshell “Fireworks Show” on Saturday night. Last Licks is known for exceptional ‘70s covers: a Queen medley, Elton John’s Funeral for a Friend, Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band,” etc.

Little Ugly. Best Rock Band winners in the Advocate Grand Band Slam, Little Ugly is literate, eclectic and features a violin as well as guitars and stuff.

The Manchurians. Blues-rock exemplars led by Roger C. Reale.

Mark Mulcahy. The long-awaited return of the beloved Connecticut bandleader (Miracle Legion!), singer/songwriter, poet and spiritual magnet of the old New Haven music scene.

The Mold Monkies. Nick Appleby and Russell Shaddox’s loud swirly pop band. Since the last time the Mold Monkies played the Daffodil Festival, Thad Brown has left the band and Gerry Giaimo is now the lead guitarist. (Wade Rice drums.)

1974. Daffodil debut for the longform-conceptual-song-cycle bunch awarded Best New Band in the Advocate’s Grand Slam poll

Orquesta Afinke. And now for something completely different. The first Daffodil gig for this eight-piece salsa band, well known on the Latino club circuit hereabouts.

Paper Hill Casket Company. Daffodil debut. The PHCC album Undertow came out just a few months ago. The band describes itself as “Gothic Americana,” and blends bluegrass, rock riffs and ethereal clashing cymbals.

The Peacock Flounders. I’ve really got to stop referring to these guys as “a local band supergroup,” since I believe this post-punk pop/rock concoction (now a decade old) has lasted longer than nearly all the other bands these guys have been in. Ron Sutfin, Jeff Wiederschall, Kerry Miller and Sal Paradise have all been part of the scene since the late 1970s.

Poor Old Shine. Daffodil debut for the highly regarded Americana/roots band from Storrs which recently earned top honors at the Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist Showcase.

The Radiation. First Daffodil show for WNPR and CPTV broadcaster Ray Hardman and his psychedelic garage/punk outfit. The repertoire ranges from the Yardbird’s “Shape of Things to Come” to The Sonics’ “Have Love Will Travel.”

Rani D’Arbo & Daisy Mayhem. Middletown’s D’Arbo brings her blissful fiddle folk (featuring Scott Kessel’s 95% recycled percussion set-up, plus Anand Nayak on guitars and bassist/banjoist/ukeist Andrew Kinsey) to the Daffodil fest for the first time.

River City Slim & The Zydeco Hogs. Hartford’s jammy blues hogs are back again, washboard at the ready.

Rob Messore. If you’re a parent or a child, you know that acclaimed classical and acoustic guitarist has another side of him: a children’s entertainer. As such, he opens for SteveSongs.

The Sawtelles. The area’s prevailing “nerve rock” husband-wife duo are marvelous mavericks of the music scene. With Peter’s alternately tuned guitars and Julie’s sparse, stand-up drum kit, they provide simplicity and edge.

691. Meriden-friendly cover band, specializing in Motown hits.

Sparkplug. This Wesleyan-based jazz/funk quartet pays tribute to the late guitarist Melvin Sparks (with whom Sparkplug organist Beau Sasser and drummer Bill Carbone played regularly for years; percussionist Jamemurrell Stanley and saxophonist David Davis sat in frequently with the Sparks combo), but has also devised their own sound and style.

SteveSongs. The Connecticut-based, nationally known (and televised, even—on PBS!) children’s entertainer plays a special family show at 1 p.m. Sunday at the festival.

 

 

 

Turn On Your Love Light, Bobby Blue Bland. The great popularizer of the love light. This song has been covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Blues Brothers.

 

Love Light, CNBLUE. A Korean pop boy-band. Can’t tell what they mean by love light, but it’s something smooth and creamy judging by their vocals.

 

Lovelight, Robbie Williams. Crazy video in which the heartthrob entertains a factory full of uniformed models, like a cross between Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video. The song was composed and originally recorded by Lewis Taylor in 2003, three years before Williams got to it. The lyrics are a rarity among Love Light songs, in that they comment on such a light dimming:

I wanna know

Baby when you’re with me

Who do you think you’re foolin’?

Making me feel so sure

Turnin’ your lovelight down again.”

 

Lovelight, ABBA

This one begins with a complaint that a room’s too dark… until “you” arrive. So a love light is like a flashlight?

You must have a lovelight
Everything around you is lovelight
And I can feel your love everywhere
Maybe even when you’re not there
The lovelight
Everything around you is lovelight
You’re shining like a star in the night
I won’t let you out of my sight
I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want to lose your lovelight

 

Love Light in Flight, Stevie Wonder.

Love light in flight
Fuel injection passion

That’s the chorus. Really confuses the issue. Is love light similar to a lightwave or the speed of light now?

 

When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, The Supremes. The group’s first Top 40 hit, written and produced by the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland triumvirate.

 

The Love Light, 1921 silent film drama starring Mary Pickford about a female lighthousekeeper in Italy who takes a shine to a sailor who is revealed to be a German spy.

 

Love Life, The Rutles. What’s an “F” or a “T” among friends? Comes closer to the meaning of “Love Light” than any of the above:

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love…