Percy S. ( for Snickety) bumrushing the stage, slicing Dusa of the Snakeheads (who’d taunted him, but that’s no excuse) on her head with the mic stand. Kim Era breathing fire. Peg and Minnie grabbing Percy and throwing him at the Musos, who took him to the bathroom and kicked the shit out of him.

It was cosmic, it was mythic, it was scary as all hell. Rather than banish or otherwise punish these artistes, they have been sentenced to community service, fixing and cleaning the stage, then performing solo acoustic until they get their manners back. First such Happy Hour decompression is tonight at 5 p.m.

Tonight: That thing we just mentioned. The later show is Kick from Hoof, with Havoc Lycia… Hamilton has Pro and Anti… An Evening With Hippo Cream at D’Ollaire’s…

The Twark Main’s new song “Dialogue” is based on a Bullfinch incident where they were drinking at one of the tables and couldn’t hear themselves talk. It was at what is usually a quiet, conversational time, just before Wednesday Happy Hour. So they played a note-passing game, during which they were aware of the conversation slowing and then stopping. They looked up and everyone was watching them play their game.

Their lyric (with many lines borrowed from that noted mustachioed gent who often has a drink at the Bullfinch on his way back from the Hannibal dive bar on Clemens St.):

I will subdue this riot

I will silence this racket.

There is only one way to do it, but I know the art.

You must tilt your head toward mine and seem to be deeply interested in what I am saying

I will talk in a low voice

Then, just because our neighbors won’t be able to hear me, they will want to hear me.

If I mumble long enough

you will see that the dialogues will one after another come to a standstill

and there will be silence

not a sound anywhere

but my mumbling.

Tonight:

Torrent Loach and the Wedge Tails at The Bullfinch. The horn section from Monterey Skate will be in attendance… Triggerfish at Hamilton’s, doing a few of their grind-movie instrumentals but mostly their roots-rock covers… Araugarian Conifers at D’Ollaire’s (make-up gig, all tix will be honored)…

Holiday all-day band affairs can be so overwhelming, and so hard to cover comprehensively in a limited space. Take the King Day Peace-a-thon at Hamilton’s: this many bands, who were bracing (Crisscross Prickleback), slow (Alligator Pipe), quirky (Teleostei), loud (The Audax), smart (Arch Elon), shimmering (Ishie Rose), vapid (Style Mys), vivacious (Testudo), slick (Chrys Emys), slight (Sea Lily), saggy (Siggy Laria), sharp (The Calamites), ridiculous (Fossilized Dung) and so odd we’re still searching for the best adjective besides “odd” (Grallator).

The stage was decorated in purple streamers, which had all been destroyed by the time the third band had played. Each act did a full 45-minute. Changeovers were remarkably fast, thanks to Q (moonlighting from the Bullfinch) and his crew. Someone thought to bring cheese plates and popcorn. Wild, long, ungainly, unbalanced, perhaps even unnecessary. But undoubtedly overwhelming.

Tonight: The Human Bedbug and sister act Winghead at the Bullfinch. Someone go tell the little girl across the street. She likes bugs… Ox-Eyed Oreo, the regional soul band, at Hamilton’s… Lori Cariid Pirillo at the new World Stage Center (or is it World Center Stage?) at the College on the Hill… Pancake Batfish, one long jam, at D’ollaire’s…

We’ve written aplenty about bands which turn their backs on the audience.

LAst week, we couldn’t see a band for the trees.

It was a grand return to the farm where we once memorably saw The Shaking Quakers and other acts drawn from a religious collective. (When we have raved about this music, we’ve been accused of pimping for a cult, which has caused real complications for us and this publication, and no end of negative press for the bands.)

The management of the farm has turned over. The current occupants are religious as well, they confess, but of a more conventional and non-proselytizing breed.

But they’ve inherited the same spiritual desire to use the grounds of the farm to make interesting  sounds. Where the SQs once shook the barn the old-fashioned way, there are now speakers and microphones surreptitiously planted to broadcast, eternally, the noises of the barn itself.

Composers and sound engineers have been doing things like this for decades, in oceans and canyons. The new farm crew—for that’s their name, The New Farm—adds more human elements to the mix than the more purist and naturalistic found-sound collages, however.

A barn door has been designed to creak in rhythm. A chicken coop has been placed centrally, so as to sing lead. The hayloft is left open, causing certain proscribed wind effects, directed at windchimes and bell-bearing windvanes.

This is not a calm night in the country.You can’t hear much when it’s unamplified, but when it is there’s a whirl of sounds and beats and ca-ca-caws.

The New Farm Crew is at work on its first album, Sounds Like Barn.

Tonight: 466488 and Except Hydrangeas at the Bullfinch. We know, we know, it doesn’t add up… Shirt Special, covers, at Hamilton’s…An Evening With dark, death-obsessed Canadians Satuit Post and Nothrotherium at D’ollaire’s. Lighten up, already…

Noa & The Hark missed their Thursday Bullfinch gig a couple of weeks ago due to a ridiculous misreading of the calendar. They had even renamed themselves New and the Yeark especially for the occasion. They promise not to be late Monday for the next holiday gig they could finagle. They’ve been added to an already packed bill and will be going on at 5 p.m.

Why make room for them at all? Besides them being a fairly decent band, we mean, with shiny new equipment. They’re related to some high-and-mighties at City Hall or Town Meeting or somewhere. They’re ambassadors for town/gown amicability. They’re poster children for a cleaner club scene.

If they’d ever bother to show up.

Tonight: Bliss Kook at the Bullfinch, with a new drummer… Through With You, all break-up songs, at Hamilton’s… Undue Bill & the Money in the Banks, seedy R&B, at D’ollaire’s…

The Stage IIs were formed as the live band for a theater musical, and stayed together originally so they could play other musicals. Then they found clubs liked them too—at least clubs that could handle a nine-piece ensemble with several banks of synthesizers and endless percussive devices. SIIs did showtunes sets for a while, but got bored so they found some off-copyright scripts and started performing those with vibrant ambient musical accompaniment. Classical scripts, mostly, but also some really obscure 19th and early 20th century stuff. These worked best at college basement gigs, but spread anyway down the hilll to the Bullfinch, where on Thursday the Stage IIs presented Messalina’s Muse. It was an odd production, staged deliberately so that you could barely conmprehend the words.

Tonight: Sweet Tart Slush and Quirk Jeep at the Bullfinch, with free slush while it lasts… Greenbash and The Humarocks at Hamilton’s inevitably closing with “Close Your Eyes”…  Drolleries’ is jam-crazy, with Blu’s Shower Door and Oakman Wayne…

The Hummel Brothers, a sibling folk trio, can intuit each other’s inner feelings the way only family members can. This leads to some gorgeous harmonies. But God forbid one of them forgets some lyrics. Because fighting is another thing families are good at.

When Joe Hummel missed the bridge “Heart of Kentucky” at a Bullfinch happy hour set Wednesday, brothers Bill and Jim both erupted. Four shattered pint glasses later, the set was abruptly over, and the brothers still had to grab their gear, drive home together… and prepare for tonight’s gig at the Fool You coffeehouse.

The BeSticks and Brass Kettle Professionals, college professor rock, at the Bullfinch. Yes, It’s “Soak Your Term Paper Night” again. … The Cohassets and All About Swing at Hamilton’s. More old people dancing. … An Evening With Yield on Green at D’Ollaire’s.

Flip of the Pencil Holders has discovered a lost chord. It takes four fingers from two different hands to play. He has to strum it with his nose. It’s one of just three chords in his new song “Perambulator,” and it’s by far the best.
“They stole my song,” Flip says of, well, everybody. He claims that just about everybody with a guitar or keyboard has purloined one of his original tunes somehow. The counterargument usually goes like this: “They’re not that original.” So Flip set out to create a number that was all his, contorting his hands into knots as only he could. (He’s double-jointed.)
When Flip debuted “Perambulator” at the Bullfinch on Thursday, someone near the stage had the temerity to mutter “I wish I could do that.”
“Well, you CAN’T!,” Flip flipped out.

Tonight: Beulah & Buford at the Bullfinch. No, guess who really… Fastedge at Hamilton’s; cars & girls, cars & girls… Seven a cappella vocal groups at D’ollaires, some sort of college competition to be filmed for television…

Best band of last year happens to be one we discovered in December. There may be a psychological basis for this. Record labels often release certain albums at the end of the year on the expectation that critics preparing their top ten lists have already forgotten the beginning of the same year.
It’s not like that with local bands.

Tonight: The Wofts and Mihtohseeni Onki at The Bullfinch. They’ve rehearsed a band-merging finale… Evidence As To Man’s Place in Nature, college rock, at Hamilton’s… Baron of Fancamp, seriously, at D’ollaire’s. Not “an evening with,” either—full band, all-electric, endless set…