“It’s very clear…,” sang Mar.
“Our love is here…”
“Tuesday!”
“Uh, it’s only Monday. Where is our love on Monday?”
“It’s over there.”

1. Stardust. I try to play this on the ukulele, and my voice always cracks when I get to the bit about “The nightingale tells his fairy tale, of Paradise where roses bloom.” But, truth be told, this song made me weep before I even heard the lyrics (and there were several hit records made of the tune before words were even penned for it, by Mitchell Parish). The solo piano recording of “Stardust” by its composer Hoagy Carmichael is one of the most beautiful records ever made.
2. This Guy’s in Love With You. I’m a child of the ‘60s, so this song (and Herb Alpert) have always been a part of my life. There was a little train-car diner in Northampton which had this on the jukebox for decades, just proving its timelessness. The barely sung, understated vocal here is a masterstroke of soft-pop production, contrasting with the trumpet blasts the way a later Bacharach/David cover, “Close to You,” would set Karen Carpenter against a booming angelic synth-choir. Due to the fact that you don’t need a strong voice to sing it, “This Guy” is one of the few Burt Bacharach tunes which Burt Bacharach himself can pull off as a concert vocalist; his recorded version is darn good, though of course no rendition can compete with Alpert’s.
3. Mr. Bojangles. A man who has nothing left mourns the dearest friend he ever had. I always start bawling when that line about the dog up-and-dying comes along. Doesn’t matter who’s singing—Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Stafford, the cast of Bob Fosse’s Dancin’…
4. Marie. From the finest concept album ever made, Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys. It’s a song of regret and vulnerability and and great, great love. Newman’s voice wobbles dramatically when he repeats “I loved you the first time I saw you/And I always will love you Marie,” showing how hard it is for his self-admittingly weak, lazy and hurtful narrator to say the words he needs to say.
5. When She Loved Me. Randy Newman again. I think there’s something in the chords he chooses that sets my tears flowing on so many of his songs, but his lyrics—which nail the fragility of affection—surely help. This is the song Sarah McLachlan sings to illustrate how a young girl in Toy Story 2 grows up and forsakes her former favorite toy, the cowgirl Jessie.

Like fingernails on a fretboard.
We know it’s cool to include string squeaks on lo-fi recordings—adds to the purity of the exercise. But, as the new solo CD from Moon-Eyed Horse ably demonstrates, if you do it on every track it’s not lazy. It’s a reason for some of us to avail ourselves of the suicide prevention hotline. M-EH isn’t the only offending excavator of the rustic-miner veins-of-gold-amid-a-lot-of-slate sound hereabouts, however: There’s Scarebird’s “Ghost in the Noonday Sun” (how haunted can you get?), the amusingly titled (if you like fart jokes) “Big Wind” by Mr. Mysterious & Company, not to mention Bo and Mizz Mad’s entire album “The Ghost on Saturday Night.” If we want to scratch a tune out of a dish plate and clothesline on our back porch, we’ll do it ourself.

Cover band Giant Rat of Sumatra is at Hamilton’s Wednesday, oblivious to everything that’s going on in the region formerly known as Sumatra… Jim Ugly and The White Elephant rage at the Bullfinch, together and separately, with new songs promised… And finally, a band we can all agree is too cool for D’ollaire’s: The Bullwhip Griffins, who remain hip despite a massive mainstream hit we won’t mention, with Clancy and the Grand Rascal opening. Here comes McBroom!!…

An anorexic hippie stayed the weekend. Not even sure whose friend she was. We made popcorn and she insisted on putting soy sauce on hers, said it’s the only condiment she ever used. (She had a better word than condiment, but I’ve forgotten it.) Gar said he only ever put fresh lard on his popcorn, and went to the farm down the street to get some. She’d fled the room before he got back. I just ate plain popcorn—couldn’t top that.

In vaguely chronological order from their release dates, here are ten worthwhile songs with the word “Love” right in their titles which emanated from the fertile, love-stunned New Haven music scene.

Pearlean Gray and the Passengers, The Love of My Man. Sweet early ‘60s soul/R&B balladry released on the New Haven-based Co-op label, available on that label’s comp Connecticut’s Greatest Hits.

I Love the Way You Love Me, Bram Rigg Set. A garage tune credited to Trod Nossel studio founder Doc Cavalier, enlivened with ratty keyboards, hummingbird drumming and the squeakiest guitar solo ever created. The Bram Rigg Set ruled the New Haven scene in the mid-‘60s, and featured among its membership one Beau Segal, son of Ben Segal, founder of the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford. Beau became an L.A. session drummer at the center of the ‘70s folk-rock scene, and later took over the reins of the Oakdale when his father retired.

The Stratford Survivors, Need Your Love. A yowly, power-chorded ode which is as much about when (“Tonight!”) as what (“Need your love!”). The Stratford Survivors were one of Connecticut seminal punk/new wave act in the mid-‘70s. They occasionally reunite—you can see them a couple months from now at the 2011 Meriden Daffodil Festival.

Epitome 5, The Thief of Lover’s Lane. A chunky rock tune from New Haven’s New Wave era. I was turned on to this rangy, if riff-ruddered, slab by Hank Hoffman of the Suburban Poser local-music archive.

The Huntingtons, The Only Love. A late-‘80s 45 featuring Derek & Tom of the fantabulous Furors alongside timbales/claves rhythmatist Maria Murphy. A self-reflective act of esteem building and coming-to-terms.

She’s in Love, The Ghost Shirts. Janglingly abrasive wordiness from an eclectic area band from the late ‘80s, who later relocated to NYC. From the diverse 1990 Incas label comp Getting Noticed, from which I could have also have picked for this project “Hey My Little Love” by Tsunami Poets or “Long Lost Lover” by Secret Smile.

Miracle Legion, Say I Had a Lovely Time. From Miracle Legion’s overlooked and misunderstood final album, which—for a band flummoxed by record company betrayals and an uncertain future—seems full of optimism and blissful meditation. Unless it’s all supposed to be ironic, of course. This one’s refrain pleads “Just as long as you say ‘I had a lovely time.’”

The Gravel Pit, Loved One. The patented Jed Parish wail has never been used more assuredly to pace and structure an entire song. This has got everything The Gravel Pit was great at: the sharp shifts of style and decibel level, the overpowering vocals and solos, and the tender open lyrical sentiments that descend into snide remarks about the world at large: Inthese droning crowds of nothing, ooh, you were actually something.”

Rohn Lawrence, Have You Ever Loved Somebody. Smooth jazz recording by the guitar virtuoso who owns Monday nights at Toad’s Place’s Lilly’s Pad. Chris Parks, who plays keyboards on the track, co-wrote the tune with Joe Cunningham.

Mocking Birds, All the Love. James Velvet’s written lots of love songs—there are three with that word in the title on his old band The Mocking Bird’s retrospective CD Last Call alone. This jauntily paced one’s about the apprehension of loving and losing.

Christine Ohlman & Rebel Montez, Love Make You Do Stupid Things. A gritty layered electric blues penned and passionately crooned by the Bee Hive Queen, who’s never let her tough demeanor mask her honesty about those who act like fools. Gorgeous, concise backing vocals and winding, fluid production on this thing, one of several stand-out tracks on Ohlman & Rebel Montez’s 2009 album The Deep End.

The First Hipsters didn’t even have a band until a benefactor (drummer Benny’s dad) bought them matching outfits for a Mardi Gras party. Then it was inevitable.
FH play their own style of party rock, mixing colorful cocktails of sound out of a literally random assortment of instruments. Benny totes a snare just in case, but prefers to bang on a stainless steel cocktail shaker which once belonged to his grandmother. Keyboardist ginny Gilbert has taught herself to play tuned water-filled martini glasses (at least she says it’s water). Likewise, B. Diamond plays guitar in his other bands (bar band extraordinaire Maverick Head-Kick and the blues duo The Troubles I’ve Seen, with Ginny– the two are also married), but for First Hipsters gigs has built and learned to play… a lamp.
“It’s this atrocious old tacky tasselled thing I found at a garage sale. It was already strung all around with these hard wires, and I found I could ping them and even tune them. So I took it as a challenge. I can get least six real chords out of it now.” And how many do you really need?
So far, the First Hipsters have only played living rooms– we caught them at our (full disclosure) girlfriend Millie’s house on her mom’s birthday. They have only four or five “real songs” (including “Hungry Mental Lion,” “See You in Hell, Alligator” and “American Mystery Man”), B. and Ginny admit, yet they played all night. It’s a relaxing ambient sound that catches your attention afresh when Benny starts beating his sticks on the furniture, on Ginny’s glasses, on dripping faucets, on whatever’s handy.
It’s the best party trick in town, and may eclipse their blues duo in popularity. Which should improve everyone’s mood in the process.

Maverick Head-Kick has its own gig this week, a full-bore blues nite at Hamilton’s also featuring Trucking Through the Tears and Little Bit West of Chicago… The Bullfinch has yet another mosh marathon, a real free-for-all this time with City of Scars, The Failure Business, Suicide in Toyland, Our Lunacy in America, Blackburn and Kiss the Blood Off My Commercial Realism… At D’ollaire’s, the same old party-band drivel with Making It!, Studs Daley, Hearing the Roar and—what’s this?—a bonafide HOST, as in Master of Ceremonies, for the otherwise by-the-fakebook show: Lox-and-Bagelman, an undergrad comedy act from the college on the hill. Nice of them to spread it around a little…

Mar says she decided to join or house when she looked out the little window of her little suite in little dorm and saw that one of a family Ogg pigeons that had built a nest on a tiny ledge outside the window had died. The other pigeons, pinched for space, had left the body there and built a nest on top of it. “bad vibes,” mar said. “and bad architectural planning.” Gael said he would nominate it as the worst wildlife safari attraction ever.

The Friday before Valentine’s Day should be given over to the loveless, and made into a Black Friday of Broken Hearts.
I am not among the afflicted—indeed, I expect I might be the most happily married man you’ve ever met. But just as I prefer novels about sin to ones about virtue, I have a thing for break-up songs. And there needs be a designated day on which to share them, not just those awkward times when a friend is getting over a busted relationship

Here are five that rock rather than whimper.

The Continental Co-Ets, “I Don’t Love You No More.” The most haunting track on the extraordinary anthology Girls in the Garage Volume 2, a red-vinyl treasure on Romulan Records released in 1987 and gathering girl garage groups from the mid-‘60s. Many are Beatlesque, but this one has a nifty surf beat.

The Real Kids, “Who Needs You?” A delirious cathartic riff blows all of the love right out of the room on the highlight from Live at the Rat (which I’ve already mentioned in an earlier post is the Album That Changed My Life)

Harry Nilsson, “You’re Breaking My Heart.” Might not hold up to repeated listenings, but just about everyone laughs the first time they hear it, and the tune actually sustains itself beyond that funny “Fuck you” lyric.

Leslie Gore, “I Won’t Love You Anymore (Sorry)” A lot of orchestral sass on this single. I like the way the “Sorry” part actually overlaps the “I won’t love you” part. Zippy strings and an exceptionally busy drummer.

Groucho Marx, “Hello, I Must Be Going.” Groucho sings it in the beginning of Animal Crackers, where it’s augmented by chorus shouts and vocal contributions by Zeppo, then segues directly into “Hooray for Captain Spaulding.” Over 40 years later, it’s the opening number for the live “An Evening With Groucho” concerts.

The Tweetle Beetles won the battle of the bands at that new club on the turnpike, the Puddle. A tribute act! And look who lost: downtown college town icons like The Blats (Blits, Blots, Bloats, whatever), The Model Marvels and a brand new band which we’re so excited about we won’t even mention who they are in case it sullies their nascent reputation to have lost their first band battle to some noodle-eating poodles. Wahhhhhh!, we cry… Or rather, “wha…?” We roll our eyes with incredulous wonder.
We’ve never been a fan of the competitive music process. It’s one thing to say like one band better then other, another still to gauge them by appreciable standards. But to shunt them into a popularity contest without even the usual weaponry of sashes and fancy gowns! No wonder the wig- wearers won.

At the Bullfinch for the Sunday high school mosh pit: Our Game is Done, Chicks With Bricks and Sue’s Clothes, plus a zillion other kiddie bands yet to be announced (because they probably haven’t formed yet)… Blues cover act Slow Joe Crow at Hamilton’s, which expects oldsters from some college alumni gathering to turn up… The salacious song parodies of Is Your Tongue Numb? returns to D’ollaires for No Date Nite, which has now become a regular monthly stag party at the venue…

All the literary journal cats meet at the middle eastern joint with the two dollar grenadines, where if you wear a beret you get served quicker. This place makes our journal sick. We found a cheap Chinese place a few blocks off the hipster path, where we could actually spread out the galleys and the templates, and have room to do more than just watch each other think.