By Artie Capshaw

We hoped we’d never write anything that would cause a band to break up. You want the comments to be constructive, the jests made in the right spirit. Then again, when the band is the freshly reunited (and, as we wrote, “overripe”) Georgia’s White Flesh, you suspect a distinct lack of a sense of humor from leaders Mary and Pete Papadumus, not to mention simmering discontent from some of the band’s founding members.

M&P had the band learning gimmicky new routines, in the hopes that they could get lucrative wedding and corporate gigs. After our review came out, elderly guitarist Benny Rabbit, feisty fiddler Lady Min and brassmaster Patches Smith—who’d already been balking at the new choreographic and joke-telling requirements—quit the band. The good news is that they’re back working with the two guys M&P ousted from the White Flesh: vocalist Singing Sam (do we really have to write the word “vocalist” before his name? Hasn’t he qualified himself enough?) and keyboardist “Cringe” O’Leary. It’s a decidedly straight-ahead and unornamented R&B project with this working title: The No-Show Stoppers. There are multiple meanings within that name: “No showstoppers,” as in “no fancy dance or comedy routines like the GWF” and “No-show Stopper,” which is Singing Sam’s pledge not to miss any more gigs, which is one reason he got let go from the old band. The No-Show Stoppers. We helped with the punctuation. Do you like it?

We’ve certainly mended fences with Sam, Patches, Benny and Min. (Southern Comfort will do that.) Mary and Pete aren’t speaking to us, so our news of their forthcoming new act is hearsay: A Southern folk duo, with Mary swapping her bass for an acoustic guitar and Pete scaling down his drum kit to washtub percussion. Maybe they can do a little tapdance in the tub too.

While we’re in an apologetic mood, we must say “Sorry, sorry, sorry” to those who clean and maintain the bathrooms at the Bullfinch. You know who you are, and you were rightfully offended by comments made in our “Comfy” contest recently.
In our defense, we can only say that we were quoting someone else (who has personally apologized to staff, fearful that he’d lose all Bullfinch bathroom privileges.
“It was a dumb joke that occurred to me because of the whole “Comfy” thing, and wasn’t really about the Bullfinch at all,” the evildoer maintains.
For our part, we can’t remember ever setting foot in the ladies’ bathroom. True, we’re told we were in there once, getting very sick all over everything, one time when the men’s room was unavailable. But we don’t remember it, and in any case we would have been in no state to notice whether the toilet paper rolls had been properly placed.