The band Beverly gets airy and thumpy in equal measure on its single (and video) “Honey Do,” which is kind of a liberating answer-song to the defensive rockabilly classic “Honey Don’t.” Not that “Honey Do” is a retro record. It’s a straight-ahead punk rock groove adorned with exquisite high-register vocals. A real charmer.
Monthly Archives: January 2015
In a Craft Shop in Harvard Square
In a craft shop
in Harvard Square
I saw a sign
That I thought said
“Reading Glasses”
But I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses
And the sign really said
“Beading Classes.”
Rock Gods #316: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene
The Red Bibles named themselves after the red-covered bibles in the pews at Church in Town, the Presbyterian parish which the family of guitarist Jan Ganglie attends.
A protester outside the Hamilton’s on Thursday night, brandishing an American flag, saw something more sinister in the band name. He railed against Communism, godlessness and rock & roll. Yes, that still happens.
“It’s really kind of a pun,” Ganglie says. “It’s like, read your bible.” He calls himself “not a heavy Christian scholar or anything. That’s my dad. But I do go to church and I do read the bible and I guess I find it weird when the only references to religion in mainstream music are, like, comical or negative.”
“We could have called the band The Red Textbooks, right? Would anyone have picketed us then?”
Sure. The accountancy students at the college on the hill.
Tonight: Cabbage Palmetto (solo acoustic, if you can imagine that) and CLAO at the Bullfinch, making noise… Smilodon, with vocalist Daph Naocyon, at Hamilton’s, doing covers, though they might be allowed some originals in the third set… An Evening With Struthiomimus and the Neocalamites at D’Ollaires. We’ll say that again: An Evening With Struthiomimus and the Neocalamites at D’Ollaires.
Riverdale Book Review
Jughead’s Double Digest #54 (October 1998) contains a Jughead story entitled “Winner Takes Almost All” as well as a Betty & Veronica story entitled “Loser Takes All.” Other stories include “Rejected,” “The Gamblers” and “Prize Fool.” The competitive spirit has always persevered in Archie comics.
For Tomorrow We Shall Die: Diary of a College Chum #266:
The club was OK, but we have decided not to go back and start our own club instead.
Scribblers Music Review
Miniature Tigers’ hysterical, glossily overproduced yet understated soul pop anthem “You Used to Be the Shit” has a video accompaniment. It’s basically a song about old romance and lost youth, augmented with references to once-hot items such as laser disks. The video, which came out last summer, ramps up the retro with clips of everything from Jerry Springer and Urkel to Michael Jackson’s Bad and Friends to pogs and AOL. “We used to be free,” the harmony group intones, “but now she’s just used to me.” The song’s on the most recent Miniature Tigers album Cruel Runnings.
January 7, 2015
Magic number: 11433
Magic word: coolth
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Magic number: 74326
Magic word: fringe
The Ice Cream Dream
When I learned they had 102 ice cream flavors, I had to try 17 of them. That was about six sundaes, plus toppings. I would have been embarrassed to ask for so many taste spoons.
The flavors:
• Chocolate Chocolate Chips Ahoy Ripple
• Frozen Cheese
• Shoe Sherbet
• Low Hanging Fruit
• Vanilla Monkey
• Curry Couscous Swirl
• Friends of Moose Tracks
• Sprinkle City
• Yellow
• Black Bubblegum Burst
• Mice Cream
• Vegetable Medley
• Plain Ice
• Cruller ’n’ Cream
• Batman & Raisin
• Stinging Nettle
• Taste-o-saurus
Rock Gods #315: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene
Matthew, Mark, Luke & Bink—the local supergroup made up of members of The Subcharge and Porchlight Marauders, distinguish themselves from their rockier main projects by writing issue-laden folk-rock anthems. The songs aren’t acoustic, but they do have harmonies. They also have old-fashioned sing-along choruses. Not shouty modern-day mosh chants but multisyllabic messages such as “No eruption of corruption” or “Traction for Environmental Action.”
“We start with those choruses, says Lou Stackridge (“Luke” in the title line-up) “and build the rest of the songs from there. It’s like a term paper or something. The chorus is the thesis. The rest of the lyrics are arguing that thesis.
“We could just do shouting songs—commandments, I call them—but that’s too easy. We like the songs to contain the reasoning behind the protest that’s implicit in the song.”
Bandmate Bink (Ben Kleinman, aka Cliff Clitsnit from the Subcharge) is more succinct: “Lou does all that. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I play drums.”
Thesis/protest slogan: Follow your own beat.
Tonight: Evolution of Horse Teeth at the Bullfinch. The bar is offering free wings… Allegheny Spurge at Hamilton’s (more folk rock)… The Bourgets and Zoofest at D’ollaires. Behold! Some actual contemporary bands at the recently retro-happy club!…