“New” Beatle Songs for New Year’s Eve

• “New,” Paul McCartney. From the album New.

• “What’s the New Mary Jane,” psychedelic trifle left off the White Album and beloved of bootleggers until the Anthology 3 set made it legit.

• “Good News,” Ringo Starr (from Vertical Man, 1998)

• “New York City,” John Lennon & Yoko Ono (from Some Time in New York City, 1972)

• “New Blue Moon, from George Harrison’s Traveling Wilburys (Vol. 3, 1990)

“New Way to Say I Love You,” Billy Preston (Let It Be’s fifth Beatle) & Syreeta.

“Something New,” the third British and fifth American Beatles album.

plus “Ding Dong, Ding Dong,” George Harrison. An actual New Year’s Eve song that never caught on:

Ring out the old

Ring in the new

Ring out the old
Ring in the new

Ring out the false
Ring in the true
Ring out the old
Ring in the new

Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding dong

Yesterday today was tomorrow
And tomorrow, today will be yesterday
So ring out the old
Ring in the new
Ring out the old
Ring in the new
Ring out the false
Ring in the true
Ring out the old
Ring in the new

Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding dong

Rock Gods #311: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

How many CDs can one amass on one single Xmas day? Dozens. Thank you bands for the all the disks (some even on vinyl; one was a signed cracked cymbal). We will load them in the 20-disk player and play them all night, as we sort the rest of our CDs and make more room on the shelves.

Red is a popular color on local CDs this year. So is white. The age of two-guitar bands may be over. Drum kits are not as elaborate, in general. Basses have just four strings. Acoustic guitars are only for coffeehouses. At least where we’re from.

Rockers are cutting their hair. It used to give them strength. Now it get caught in the chains around their necks.

There are still fewer women in the scene than many, but they are staying, and getting stronger. They won’t get turned into trees.

Love bloomed in the scene, but it usually didn’t affect bands. Jealousies and divisions came from idiot managers and money misunderstanding more than romantic breakups. At least from what we’ve divined.

Everybody’s changed their sound from album to album. Nobody sounds alike. They all have their own powers. Watching them fight brings thunder and lightning, which can be fun for a moment but then just scary. Watching them get along, gang up, is to witness harmony and wonderment. The heavens open.

Happy New Year to the little girl across the street from the Bullfinch who’s not that little anymore. She’ll have a band soon.

Happy New Year to the tribute bands, in hopes they will come to their senses.

Happy New Year to the unsung, the unheard, the uncherished, that they might find the scene and the scene might find them.

Just happy and new will do for us.

Tonight: Live shows are few and far between. And all of them are R&B bands, retro bands or tribute acts. What a way to start a year. The Bullfinch, often the savior of such a backpedaling night, is closed after the bad vibes of exactly a year ago. Stay home and listen to local bands CDs. That’s what we’re doing.

Riverdale Book Review

Best Archie Digital Only Graphic Novels

Archie at the Chocklit Shoppe. Site of many an ensemble story that can’t be set at a school or party.

Archie’s Jalopy. The original jalopy was of Model T vintage so it could seem ancient in the 1940s when Archie started driving it. The car was retired in the 1970s when it was old enough to be a priceless collectors item (and in fact there were numerous stories based on that concept). It was replaced by a newer really old car, seemingly some kind of Mustang.

She’s Josie. The pre-Pussycats Josie, delineated by Dan DeCarlo who named the heroine after his wife). Her distinction was not ghost-chasing or magical friends or ears for hats. It was simply that she was a female equivalent of Archie.

Archie 1. Archie and the gang’s primitive ancestors discover basic tools of civilization, from arrows to kissing to fire to School. The stories are vaguely creationist, since humans are coexisting with dinosaurs. But the best ones are hysterically funny, true social satire.

Archie’s Campaign Trail. So many school elections! So much corruption! So many bad reasons for running!

Archie—Tennis Racket. There are several sports-based “digital exclusives.” This is the least violent one, even though characters invariably end up with broken  tennis rackets dangling from their necks like collars.

Archie Presents: Tales Calculated to Drive You BATS! What panic was to Mad, bats was to madhouse; a comics company”s own knockoff of its popular humor title. Compared to satirical humor mags like Mad, Cracked and Sick, Bats was big nosed and cuddly.

Archie & Friends—Movie Magic. Film parodies and celebrity encounters.

Archie’s Fall Fun! It’s easy to forget how many Archie stories involve the taking of leaves.

Archie & Friends—Father Figures. Archie’s dad Fred Andrews practically ran away with the Archie radio series in the 1940s, and insinuated himself into many a comic story too. Stereotypical harried-Dad stuff: overworked, misunderstood, short-tempered, vain, etc. There’s a digital exclusive devoted to Archie’s mom too, and it’s of a rather different temperament.

Scribblers Music Review

The Foresters are young, but that’s not really what they’re about. Leader (and eldest of the three brothers in the band) Evan Nork writes about relationships, and society, and common sense. He and bassist Hayden and drummer Liam bash out these songs amiably in a confident, accomplished punk-pop style that allows for melody and harmony and nuance. The Bethany-based band’s new seven-song EP shows how The Foresters are maturing. They can play more complicated riffs. They can sing high notes like Robert Plant. Then again, that may be because their voices haven’t changed yet. Again, that’s not the point. They are present and active and fast and loud and in the moment, and they have fast loud things to say about how people interact in this headlong day and age. They are quick and smart and capable. They are fast and loud. They are young, yes. And they have something to say.

Scribblers Music Review

Dexys, One Day I’m Going to Soar

So many of my favorite bands from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s (Real Kids, Faust, Gravel Pit) have returned after long absences that I’m a little worried that it’s a portent of doom. But considering how strong all these albums are—remarkable returns to form, after years in the wilderness—it’s more of a portent that space and time will come to lack meaning and the future is uncommonly bright.

This Dexys album has been out in the UK since 2012, but wasn’t available for US download for ages after its overseas release. Unable to get it at first, I forgot all about it and only this month was reminded of its existence.

One Day I’m Going to Soar represents the first Dexys (or Dexys Midnight Runners) album in something like 27 years. Strangely though, it begins right where the last album, Don’t Stand Me Down, left off, with long conversational songs about romantic confusion and bitter break-ups. Stranger still, Don’t Stand Me Down was a record that basically destroyed the band, taking them in a leisurely, reflective direction that the hordes of peppy, stepdancing “C’mon Eileen” fans could not fathom.

Me, I was a fan of all Dexy Midnight Runners albums, from their high-energy early experiments blending punk, trad folk and soul (“Dance Stance,” “Geno”) to their later soul-searching (“This is What She’s Like”). I was enraptured with Don’t Stand Me Down, played it endlessly, forced it upon friends. proclaimed it the best thing I’d heard in 1985 and felt validated when many of the British music journals which had lambasted it upon its initial release did complete about-faces and sang its praises highly when it was reissued on CD in 1997 and again (“the director’s cut”) in 2002.

One Day I’m Going to Soar has the same mawkish inward-turning sentimentality as Don’t Stand Me Down, and yes it’s no surprise that it may be a turn-off for many listeners. But both albums have sustained drama that I find riveting even it when it gets flip or melodramatic. Midway through One Day I’m Going to Soar is a mini-musical called “I’m Always Going to Love You,” in which Kevin Rowland (Dexys leader and only sustaining member) tells a woman (Madeleine Hyland) he loves her, gets her to confess her love for him, then abruptly has second thoughts and dumps her. It all takes place in one four and a half minute song, but what’s truly distinctive is the torrents of abuse hurled at Rowland by the aggrieved Hyland. “Kevin! Don’t talk to me!,” she wails in Aretha Franklinesque female soul-furor. It all happens over an old-school Philly-soul beat, with the vocal interplay sounding improvised even though it’s obviously tightly scripted. There’s little you can compare this song to. And it’s matched by much of the rest of the One Day I’m Going to Soar album. Mixing soul swagger with insecurities, antagonisms and oafish insolence is something Dexys has done for years, and it’s still unsettling and disarming and bizarre and brilliant.

Riverdale Book Review

Betty & Veronica #269 is a classic modern Archie story. The issue- length adventure takes place in a single  day, from dawn to late night. Each page is divided into three panels–one following Betty, another Veronica and another Archie. They all end up in the same places with different perspectives. Not exactly Rashomon, but a well constructed, creatively told typical day in Riverdale. Just reread it on the Archie digital service, and marveled at its efficiency.

Rock Gods #310: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

The Stripey Shirts ran a marathon Monday in their stripey shirts. For years they had been one of the live bands that played along the road race route, encouraging the runners. The runners in turn inspired the band to don sneakers, begin an exercise regimen, fill out applications, get up earlier than they’ve ever gotten up together, and join in the race.

Every one of the Stripey Shirts finished the 10K, an amazing show of unity. But when it came time for them to play a post-race party at their own loft, they ran away. Bassist Elizabeth Labienza (informally known as Betty LaBunz) had trouble standing. Drummer “Fill” had fallen. Only guitarist Rich Snot and singer Slim Syl (Sylvia Platwright to the hospital she was born in, and now works at) persevered, with an acoustic duo set of Stripey Shirts classics and covers. The set ran on and on, with idle runners tapping their shoes in solidarity.