(Forgot to do one of these items last week, so consider this a twofer.)

I love scripts. At my acting debut, at the age of 3 in a production of The Miracle Worker at the Ledges Playhouse in Grand Ledge, Michigan, I had no lines yet I demanded a script. My father mollified me by scrawling on a single piece of paper “Christopher runs onstage. Christopher stands onstage. Christopher runs offstage.”

Forty-seven years later I am still an avid consumer of scripts. I

On a trip to England in the late 1990s, I attended five separate Royal Shakespeare Company productions in a single week. A couple of these were new works, and I was  impressed, pleased beyond measure, when my press packet included a paperback copy of the play I was about to see. These weren’t photocopies but edited, published editions.

In the U.S., it took years of browbeating theaters until they realized I was serious about wanting copies of new works. Burned by too many insufficient summaries and misleading interviews, I began to insist that I wouldn’t write preview articles of new plays unless I had access to the scripts.

I’ve heard all the caveats and hesitations, and understand them—up to a point. Scripts only give you one dimension of what a full production will reveal. A reader’s imagination can lead to unfair expectations when the reader becomes a viewer of someone else’s interpretation. Scripts are subject to immense changes. They can be guides and should not be taken as the ultimate documentation of the theater process.

Yes, but they help much more than they hinder—for critics and arts writers as much as for actors and directors. Basically, I d0n’t like being ignorant, and it just makes good journalistic sense to make sure you have access to a text version of what you’re writing about, in the same way that political reporters have access to texts of speeches.

One of the best reasons to collect scripts as I do is that a lot of new plays are scuttled by hands other than the author’s. Or they are too expensive to produce as written. Or they have fleeting flaws which make them unproduceable yet otherwise enjoyable to read.

When the Yale Drama Series was created a few years ago (with monies from the David Charles Horn Foundation), its greatness was not just that the prize would be judged by some of the world’s greatest living playwrights. Nor was the prize of a reading in a Yale theater performed by professional actors the main excitement. To me, the wonder of the award is that the Yale School of Drama conspired with the Yale University Press to get the winning plays published.

I have two of these published scripts on my desk as I write this: The 2008 winner, Grenadine by Neil Wechsler; and the 2009 one, Lidless by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig. Somehow I still haven’t picked up the published version of the inaugural winner in the series, John Austin Connelly’s The Boys of Siam (though I saw the reading). The 2010 winner, which had its reading a few months ago, is still months away from the release of its print edition. I’d prefer the immediacy with which new scripts are published in England, but you can’t have everything.

Both Grenadine and Lidless have introductions by the judges who picked them out of hundreds of submissions. Both judges—no less than Edward Albee (who did the honors for the prize’s first two years) and David Hare (who’s did the next two) take time to explain the selection process, which for both of them involved appointed surrogate readers to sift through the mountain of submission and winnow it down to a few dozen. Both Albee and Hare sought to use the Drama Series to further the art of playwriting rather than merely validate traditional forms. Both chose works notable for their contemporary resonance, topicality and unorthodox characters.

The judge for the 2011 edition (for which the submission deadline was back in August) will be John Guare, so we can assume similarly high and self-conscious standards.

I’m not going to review the plays here. I saw the live Yale reading of Lidless, which concerns Guatanamo Bay tortures, PTSD and family strife, and will withhold judgement until I’ve seen a full production. (The play’s had several since it won the Drama Series crown—at the University of Texas at Austin, at the HighTide Festival in Suffolk, England, and at the Scotland’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.) I missed the reading of Grenadine, a great regret since it involves four main characters with the other 26 being played by two performers.

My admiration here is not (yet) for the plays, which will hopefully grow in stature. It’s for the exercise of choosing, reading aloud and especially publishing the plays for a general audience. It’s for the opportunity to keep these beautiful volumes with their colorful covers on my bookshelves while so many cool yet unwieldy photocopied scripts I’ve been given have to settle for an unsorted stack in the basement. It’s for the ruminations of Albee and Hare on what makes a good new play. It’s for the valuable cross-fertilization of Yale School of Drama and Yale Press in discovering new writers and proclaiming what might be breakthrough works. It’s for fond memories of theatergoing in Europe, where they’ve long been better at this (though wait and see what happens when the austerity cuts kick in). And it’s for two fields considered on their deathbeds—playwrighting and print publishing—banding together and doubling their strength and influence.

Smallest stage ever!

Last night the finch had some kind of college sorority fundraiser. Yes, there are still college sororities, though apparently shone of them haven’t been able to hold onto their sorority houses so they have to hold their suave fundraising functions at places like the Bullfinch.

Yet they’re still thinking old school, and wide open ballroom spaces. The party, to which we were not invited but stumbled upon when an “interview” in the Bullfinch basement ran a few drinks overlong, featured:

• A table of volunteers filling out nametags.

• Three tables filled with items for a silent auction.

• A couple tables reserved for wealthy alumnae in case any happened to show up.

• A merch table for those who read Greek (or at least three particular letters of Greek).

How many tables does the Bullfinch have, anyway? Seems like more when you’re crashing into a couple, but the correct answer is seven. So this shindig was standing room only from the get-go.

Oh, and did we mention the R&B band? Well, that’ s what the club’s corner stage is supposed to for, though it wasn’t really built for swinging septets. Yep, seven on a stage where folk duos often awkwardly elbow each other.

And then there was the matter of the podium. The lovely ladies of Gumma Felta Cramma or whatever (it’s all Greek to us) had speeches to make, and needed the speechmakers to be seen. (They get their hair done specially for these things, you know). S0 they stuck their pedestal right in front of the band, which we can only hope was getting added combat pay for the number of jabbing elbows it had to dodge (on top of continually ducking each other’s instruments).

A real stateroom scene, to be sure. And unlikely to be repeated. Enough alumni are already complaining that the university will be designating a banquet hall on campus for future gatherings, and perhaps building a whole new building if the complaints turn into cash contributions.

Pity. Those sisters really showed the Finch that all those shoulder-to-shoulder shows of years past were actually roomy. New boundaries, people—fill it up!

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Tonight at the Bullfinch: The Chetniks and The Fall of the City … Big local Europop/punk festival of sorts at Campbell’s Saturday from 4-8 p.m., clearing out before the dance party: The Bishop, The Trial, Cosette, The Grave and The Barricade. It’s a CD release for The Bishop’s Between Americans, which is getting national distro on the Gulf Screen label …

I’m a walker, which means I have something major in common with Superman. It’s been rainy or snowy or cold these days, but I still prefer walking to riding when I need to be at, say, my kids’ school four miles away, or need to clear my head before or after a show at the Long Wharf Theater, or just need to return library books or buy milk.

Often I can take literature along. Audiobooks on the iPod (odyssey stories work well—Homer himself, or Jim Harrison’s The English Major, or Stephen King’s Cell), paperbacks or magazines I can nimbly peruse on the quieter sidewalks…

All the sidewalks tend to be quiet. Pedestrianism has been out of fashion for decades. Yet some of the most popular writers and thinkers of the 20th century were voracious walkers: Dickens, Thoreau, silent filmmakers D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett and, ironically enough, Henry Ford.

Now add Superman. I’ve been staying home and putting my feet up so I can follow the coverage of the Man of Steel’s year-long constitutional alongside browses through Aaron Sussman & Ruth Goode’s 400-page 1967 monument to foot-movement The Magic of Walking (Simon & Schuster, and available here in New Haven at the Institute Library on Chapel Street—once I walk up those stairs and return it, that is.)

The book is a litany of leg-stretching insights, including this one from Robert Louis Stevenson:

In the course of a day’s walk, you see, there is much variance in the mood. From the exhiliration of the start, to the happy phlegm of the arrival, the change is certainly great. As the day goes on, the traveller moves from the one extreme end towards the other. He becomes more and more incorporated with the material landscape, and the open-air road, and sees everything about him, as in a cheerful dream. The first is certainly brighter, but the second stage is the more peaceful. A man doesn not make so many articles towards the end, not does he laugh aloud; but the purelyu animal pleasures, the sense of physical well-being, the delight of every inhalation, of every time the muscles tighten down the thigh, console him for the absence of the others, and bring him to his destination still content.

Superman’s decision to take a year off from interplanetary battle and other supersonic tasks and simply stroll across his adopted USA homeland has been met with confusion, derision and incredulity. Yet this is just a slight extension of the sort of restraint Superman has offered to America all along. He could do everything he does at super speed, all the time. He has no real need to slow down to the point where he can interact with humans, let alone cobblestones. Yet he’s always chosen to, explaining his actions and debating morality when he could easily frame his exploits as forces of nature or inexplicable miracles without need for discussion at all. He could work in mysterious ways, yet he walks among us.

Amazing, considering that he’s an extraterrestrial who is literally tireless, Superman has developed an innate understanding of the human need for contemplation, downtime and “getting away from it all.” It’s long been rumored that he has a “secret identity” through which he communes with mortals on our own terms. Another longstanding rumor concerns his Fortress of Solitude, a sort of vacation home for harried superhumans.

Whether or not it’s true that Superman disguises himself as a “regular” person (but what happens when he shakes hands?), or takes the occasional weekend to recharge (though what exactly in his literally indefatigable body or spirit he needs  recharging is beyond our understanding) doesn’t matter as much as the existence of the rumors themselves. Why on Earth would we expect someone from not on Earth to take an interest in commonplace activities like work, leisure activities or long-distance walking?

Yet Superman plays readily into these imaginings. He walks. He talks. He flies mostly out of convenience, not to distance himself from real-world relationships. A real stand-up guy. His current wanderings (chronicled monthly in the pages of the graphic magazine bearing his name, starting with issue #701 and expected to continue at least through #712) evoke some of the greatest walkers of all time: Johnny Appleseed, Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood, Art Garfunkel and the countless folks who’ve trod countless miles for charitable causes. Superman’s walk is equally reflective, rejuvenating, resonant. Yet his is profoundly at odds with those other willing walkers because he’s not gaining fame or fundraising ability or even that much greater a consciousness of his surroundings through his journey. He’s exercising restraint with this exercising. He’s even predetermined that he’ll need a year to get the most out of it.

If folks didn’t grasp the power of walking before, that Stevensonian contentment outlined above, will this super example help or hinder?

Some shows you just don’t want to have happen yet because you want the fliers to stay on the telephone poles longer. So it is with the latest photocopy touting The Modern Madcaps, who got a friend (known only as “Harvey”) to draw all the band’s members as big-eyed cartoon characters.

“I know, it’s only a flier and it should be like an album cover,” quoth MM drummer “Katnip.” To which bassist Audrey hopefully adds, “Maybe it will be.” Alas, the other half the band, purposefully sluggish guitarist Tommy and speed-rapping vocalitst Moe, are due to graduate—from high school!—next month, leaving the band’s future in doubt.

Post-Modern Madcaps, perhaps?

“We’re working on something. We’re obsessed with keeping something together,” Katnip klaims.

He’s making a joke—we once described the band, not altogether positively, as “obsessed and overwhelming.” One set had them pasting polka dots all over the Bullfinch stage, then doing an entire set of songs about dots. Another time, their “money set” had them spilling bucketfuls of play money out into the audience.

But we’d be the last to want them to burn out altogether. Their cartoon energy is more needed than ever in our currently oh-so-serious scene. Hold onto that poster art, pals.

Kat and Aud, by the way, won’t tip as to whether this Friday’s show at Hamilton’s will have an aesthetic concept, or what it might be. Also unverified—whether this could be the Modern Madcap’s final set ever. We’d ask Tommy and Moe, but they’re not talking to us anymore.

Less decorous gigs in the offing: Dollaire’s has a dance party with Hot Stuff and Spirit of ’76 and Magic Master, with Black Cat doing an early set in the back lounge for the really old class-reunion cretins. Sounds like a crowded line-up for a dance party, no? But we’re told that Spirit of ’76 and Magic Master are basically the same band, only one’s got a disco set and the other does Motown.

At the Bullfinch: Call it solo indie pop if you wish, but some of the old-timers in town it will seem awfully like old-school acoustic folk. Short sets by Captain Flower, Pirana, Tiger Boy, Jack Q. Frost and ringleader Royal Roy…. Wednesday, Hamilton’s may not have realized they booked a hardcore show, but they kind of did, starring The Sad Sacks and featuring up-and-coming cuththroats Boy’s Ranch and Stumbo. It’s a basement show gone bigtime…

Before that Sad Stumbo Rancho round-up, have dinner across the street at the Blazing Scarab Asian restaurant, where The Ghostly Trio are trying to start a midweek houseband jazz tradition. Don’t know ‘em? Oh, but you do—Stand-up bassist “Stretch” Fusso is from the same Fusso family that gave us The Wendys, pianist “Fats” spent time in Scare School, and percussionist Lazo is still one of The Uncles….

“Diet Riot”

“Prize Rise”

“Kick Shtick”

“Polite Invite”

“Bowl Toll”

“Snack Attack”

“Door Flaw”

“Drive Jive”

“Tower of Power”

“Goldy Oldies”

“Pet Set”

“Hobby Lobby”

“Tame Game”

“Slide Guide”

“Grid Kid”

“Vain Swain”

“Sounds Silly to Me”

and

“Soaps Get in Your Ears”

Actually…

A band with actual talent, a band we can actually believe in, has ascended the national pop charts. Such unexplained phenomena calls for a bout of excessive drinking at the Finch. In our revelry, we decide that there’s only one explanation: someone has juiced the stats.

We know that the talent exists in our humble burg to engineer such an upset. Breaking into a database and tweaking a few 0s and 1s comes as easily to some of this college town’s scenesters as does drumming one’s fingers to Tide’s “Freshness” riff.

Why, just over  there at the next barstool is Persil Gel, well-known bassist, indie music enthusiast, ace engineering student and suspected hacker. Could he have pulled off this magnificent heist of public adulation for a band that actually matters?

“Of course,” he smiles when first approached for a confession. Later, when the accusation is amiably repeated (we are on our fourth rum and ginger ale by now), he’s asked why he wouldn’t send his own band, Pure X, up the charts instead of an act from outside the city limits? “Too obvious,” at first he smirks. Then, “that’s your shtick anyway.”

It takes us a moment to get our head around the phrase “shtick anyway,” due to the inebriation. Then, when we get it, we feign umbrage. Then, six g-and-rs to the wind, we feel it for real. How dare…?! Who does…?! Why, we…!!

We believed we stood accused of patriotism for personal gain, of impure passion, of compromised community-fueled fandom. We’ll restate again, for the congressional record, that we love this town. We love the sounds of this town. We’re sorry we caused a disturbance. (We left of our own accord, in case you’ve heard from anyone that Q had to eject us.)

The meteoric rise of one of our favorite misunderstood national bands was shorter-lived than our hangover—a hallucination, probably. We have apologized to all concerned for our fervor.

It’s in the clear, sober, light of day now that we consider this burning question: Why do we get so excited about this stuff? For a moment it seemed that our team was winning, and we went wild. We jested about how this couldn’t possibly happen in the real world, and when a decent person bought into our joke and twisted it a little too hard, we went bonkers.

We love this town. We love its sounds. We love the folks who love the music we love. We love those who translate it into the language of far-off lands, or who journey perilously to bring our immortal poetry to the ears of other, less fortunate cultures.

What we can’t do, clearly, is take a joke. We’ll be working on that. Meanwhile, if anyone wants to jigger the chart standing of Zanella a few notches upward, we’d be happy to buy you a drink.

Coming clean about upcoming gigs: Ecos accosts the Finch, shattering the day of rest with Soap Nuts opening…. College jams with Planet Ultra and Squeaky Green at Hamilton’s just before the students all hightail it for home… A daft (or will it be deft?) set by The Drefts begins a banquet at Gamble’s, the restaurant next door to Dollaire’s, where the band will play Tuesday. Is there a closet or a parking space where they can store their equipment in the meantime so they don’t have to lug it home to their overstuffed Dreft studio pad?…

Seven or so years ago I was on the fundraising committee at my kids’ nursery school and offered to ask some of my musical friends to play at the annual Scholastic Book Fair there. Mabel and Sally have long since graduated from pre-K, and I’m still booking the Book Fair. Because it’s a gas.

This year’s event, Saturday, Dec. 4 from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.,  is one of the most diverse, jam-packed and original line-ups ever. Without further ado:

10:00-10:30 a.m.: Jonny Rodgers (tuned drinking glasses, tape loops, guitar and vocals. Jonny is of course the guitarist from Mighty Purple, whose neo-classical solo material has taken him in fresh new directions.)
10:30-11:00 a.m.: Wayfarers (traditional folk group doing children’s songs)
11:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.: Toddler Tunes (guitar tunes for kids, played by the inimitable Robert Messore)
11:30 a.m.-noon.: Mangold-Heisers (family act featuring world folk music, homemade instruments and even clog dancing)
Noon-1 p.m.: Puppets! Betty Baisden performs a full-length Roxi Foxx show (like the ones she does regularly at the Peabody Museum and elsewhere), plus there’s an added Chinese puppetry performance.

1:00-1:30 p.m.: Bill Collins, fresh from winning a “Giant Steps” trophy from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven at its annual arts awards ceremony this week, is making his UCNS Book Fair debut with a conceptual concert of songs in many styles, all inspired by the P.D. Eastman classic Go Dog Go. Bill is best known locally for his rockabilly stylings with The Swaggerts and The Big Bad Johns, his Irish pub songs and his extraordinary contemporary union rally songs.

1:30-2 p.m.: The Acoustic Sparrows (original and classic roots duo). James Velvet and Johhny Memphis are the toast of the New Haven Cityseed farmers’ market circuit. Their musical collaborations go back decades, to the New Haven Radiators. James, of course, is the co-host of WPLR’s Local Bands Show, a great singer-songwriter and the former leader of Cafe Nine legends The Mocking Birds.
2-2:30 p.m.: Dean Falcone, Chris Arnott (pop fun with guitar and ukulele). Dean is the guitarist and co-leader of the Shellye Valauskas Experience. His local band legacy includes The Excerpts, Dean & the Dragsters and 100 Faces. Christopher Arnott is the proprietor of this website, longtime writer for the New Haven Advocate and leisuretime ukulele maniac.

See? Cool line-up?!

The event is a benefit for United Community Nursery School, a downtown institution for over four decades. So there’s a small admission fee. The Book Fair also features a Scholastic Book Fair with hundreds of books, a bake sale, kids’ activities and other stuff.
The United Communited Nursery School Book Fair is Dec. 4 from 10-2:30 p.m. at the school itself, inside the Parish House of United Church on the Green, 323 Temple Street. (The parish house is NOT the church itself—it’s a block away, at the corner of Temple and Wall streets.) There’s parking in the lot behind the building, and in the lot across the street from the front of the building, plus there are meters all along Temple Street.

Be there, and be a kid again.

Rock Enroll!

First, a couple of academic annotations: Zanella (formerly Prunella) has an accent over the second “a” in the band’s name, something we can’t figure out how to do on this keyboard. It’s important to Zanell-ehh anyhow; after getting denied the rights to their previous name in a nearly legal throwdown with a band in Canada, they’re not taking any chances, and are also considering an umlaut over the “e.”

Shantung, along with Red Stammel, who oversees the Bullfinch BandFinder series, took offense with our astonishment that the band, which has been around for years, would be part of what has been advertised as a “New Band Nite.” You can find a detailed Letter to the Editor printed about this in another Note-able publication, but their argument essentially boils down to “they’re new to SOMEBODY.” Oh, and they have a new bassist. Who doesn’t? …

Perhaps you can tell it’s a slow news day. Time, then, to dig our teeth into one of those ongoing local-band stories that never ends: the “Rock Course of Study” at Occlusal Community College.

We have heard four of the supposedly umpteen bands which have emerged from this program: The Pathogens, Space Maintainer, TMJ and Midline. Of these, only The Pathogens seem destined for anything other than Thursday College Nite gigs at Hamilton’s. They have two songs already that would make for a great, timeless, seven-inch. But we suspect that the quality of these tunes—the monster ballad “Maxilla” and the exhilaratingly sickening screed “Cross Contamination”—has nothing to do with book learning or with the lectures of Prof. Caries and Crown, who oversee the program. Nah, it’s all about the studio. In case you’re wondering, completing the “Rock Course of Study” gets you no course credit, no degree, not even a certificate which might get you a job sweeping up a real studio. But it does—for a fee they can’t honestly call “tuition”—gets you access to a rehearsal room and equipment which, while not exactly state of the art, is at least as functional as any other affordable studio in town. Oh, plus you get to sit in class while Prof. Caries plays you old Diagnosis records, while Crown explains such terms as “debanding” (i.e. going solo) and Bruxism (the 1970s Franco-German electronic philosophy that governs the records of Mathieu Plier and his followers, which include Bite Stick and Eztraoral). Seriously, they’re on the quizzes.

We’re not opposed to modern music infecting college curricula, but this program seems antithetical to a business-minded community college program. Why even have the classes? Why not just pay for the studio time?

We ran our learning-by-doing theory by The Pathogens’ Arch Form, who says we might have a point. “I missed a lot of the classes—I know the history, and the tests are mostly multiple-choice facts. But I never missed a studio session. At night, they let you stay until the custodians [that is, the OCC janitorial staff, not the band) come to lock up.” Form (ne Farmaglia) tries to break the class payments down into an hourly figure for me, then laughs and says maybe he should’ve taken a math class at OCC instead. But he adds “Don’t diss Crown & Caries. They’re cool. A lot of that equipment is their personal stuff. This is how they want to do things, it’s fine by me. I learned a lot.”

More on this educational development later…

At the Bullfinch Wednesday, by coincidence, is another OCC-trained band, Acid Etch, with Scaler and Christian rockers Curing Light. … Hamilton’s is dark Tuesday due to bad taste. … This just in: The Consultations’ “Twirl On” got three spins in a row on a commercial radio station in Spain, and is getting college radio play throughout Europe. We’ll investigate, and report soon …

We broke out the Christmas CDs this morning. Mabel laid them out carefully so they covered an entire table, then sorted them into stacks of the most important. Here’s today’s top ten. Expect the seasonal tone to become more sentimental as the holiday draws nearly.

1. The Chipmunks: Christmas with the Chipmunks (the 1950s/60s version of Alvin et al.) and A Very Merry Chipmuck (from 1994, and more in debt to the Chuck Jones chipmunk treatment).

2. The Rat Pack: Christmas with The Rat Pack, Dean Martin: Making Spirits Bright and A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra.

3. The Fleshtones: Stocking Stuffer.

4. Ella Fitgerald’s Christmas.

5. The Macaroons: Let’s Go Coconuts.

6. Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas.

7. The Archies Christmas Album featuring Betty & Veronica.

(Local-band, soul/R&B and other Christmas music lists forthcoming. Just getting started here; the tree lighting on New Haven Green was just last night.)

Curious place, the Bullfinch. For instance, who runs it?

Hamilton’s, we all know, is on the third generation of its hallowed titular family: Edie’s the current figurehead, running the restaurant end weekdays. Dollaires (yes, we really do know how to spell it, it’s just more meaningful for us this way) is largely controlled by the booking agency which relies on it as a geographically perfect venue for touring bands migrating through the state on the way to larger cities.

But the Bullfinch? Technically, it’s owned by a faceless consortium of low-level investors who generally cede control of day-to-day operations to a paid manager. Said manager, the fabled Yuri Theotokoski, is pretty hands-off himself, bound more to the back room than to any action at the bar or stage. Most patrons wouldn’t even recognize him as a regular, and would only know his name because it’s emblazoned on the liquor-license “proprietor” plaque on the Finch’s front door.

So who does propel the Bullfinch? Surely, there’s no end of entertaining personalities happy to bask in the club’s limelight whenever the house mic is plugged in. But these are largely (and we know we’ll get heat for this) king-for-a-night types who host their own events or lead their own housebands. Much as we love and respect Open-MIc Merck, he’d be the first to say that he’s AT the Bullfinch, not OF it.

So who’s the foundation, the wallpaper, the thread, our metaphor of choice to represent the alchemical spirit and soul of this invaluable amped-up, tuned-in watering hole we call home?

Our candidate is Q, the humble barback. He seems to log more hours in the place than anyone, from lugging the beer deliveries down to the basement in the mornings to locking the doors at closing time.

He doesn’t book the bands—anyone who waits around to catch Yuri’s attention will be penciled in on the grid. But from what we can tell, Q provides essential quality control in that process, gleaming the sched for double-boookings or too-frequent appearances. When some out-of-town touring act gets a last-minute opening slot at the Finch (and thus are able to afford a meal or even a motel room en route to the nearest metropolis), that’s usually Q’s doing. Some of these acts turned out to be sensational. At least a couple have repaid the kindness by returning to the Finch when they’d made it big. That includes, as we all know, one certain superstar band in particular (a national act too big for our local-motive mouth to speak aloud in the context of this column) which has continued to sneak into the Finch amid its sold-out stadium tours, under such made-up-for-the-occasion monikers as Shower of Gold, Leda’s Swan and White Bull. For such divine favors you can credit the unassuming Q.

And he’s young! Still in his 20s, anyway. He’s been hanging around the club since he was a toddler, we’re told—grew up in the neighborhood—and has worked there since he came of drinking age. (Not that he drinks.)

Some have said Q has secret, simmering musical projects of his own. If that’s true, Q’s humility must be superhumanly high (or his self-esteem extremely low), since the Bullfinch stage is the most open and undaunting in town.

If he’s got artistic aspirations, we’d love to hear about them, but our advocacy of Q as the hard-working heart of the Bullfinch is not based on that sort of ambition. We know he’s got taste, we know he’s got style, and we know he’s the only one at the Bullfinch who ever dares to clean the bathrooms. Makes him godly in our eyes.

Our devotion is, at this point, one-sided. As they say in journo circles, Q “would not consent to be interviewed for this article.” That just means he shrugged, didn’t understand why we’d want to make any sort of deal over him, and went back to work. We realize that this story, singing praises of a guy who doesn’t mind them unsung, may limit our communications with him even further. Maybe we’ll just have to pray to him quietly over here for a while.

Enough about the Finch, which—for all our unremitting praise—is closed tonight AND tomorrow for private parties. Here’s what’s up elsewhere:  Reach Out and Semester Abroad bring their tireless, endless world jams to Dollaire’s on doomsday, or Tuesday, whichever comes first… Hamilton’s has The Sandwich Hams tonight and—we can’t make this stuff up—Stinky Leftovers tomorrow. The undercard includes Bar-S, White Egret (which, to save you some trouble, is a new local band that has nothing to do with White Bull and Leda’s Swan as referenced above) and a short acoustic set by the Allen Brothers tonight, then Sadia, Morrell & Co. and Guy’s Real all tomorrow….

Plan your weekend stroll now: Art Books Bibles, Custom Framing and the sanctimoniously self-descriptive known simply Gospel Music will all be playing at stops along A Walk In Truth, the charity walkathon which winds around the downtown parks Sunday, starting at 1 pm at town center common. We mention it now so you won’t be surprised when you run into any of these bands at clubs this week and they hit you up for contributions. These three acts boast some 22 members amongst them, so you can’t escape. And with them all playing, who’ll be left to walk the trail?…