Best acoustics in town? A church. Several contenders here—really, any church. Folkies play there unamped. Hecklers come through crystal clear when grumbling from the pews, and that irony is delicious.

Tonight: Winged Euonymus at The Bullfinch… The Disenchanted at Hamilton’s (black-clad covers)… An Evening With Sunday Hats and Hair Store, the doo-wop gospel bands, at D’ollaire’s…

We meet after work for drinks.

Omniflux, “Dance in Your Blood.” Omniflux is Mahsa Zargaran one-woman band born in Tehran and high-schooled in the United States. Interesting that she uses “flux” in her name, because her rangy-singing-over-beats style is reminiscent of Fluxus Group member Yoko Ono. She doesn’t do randomness like Ono does, though; this is a carefully constructed, slowly building, layered effort, passionate and pure but neatly crafted as well.

On occasion, I like to go to IKEA and pose the stuffed animals in their children’s section in action scenarios.
Here is a pack of overall-clad wolves attacking their prey.

Here is fox in the pig crib.

As if the ice wasn’t enough, somebody left a full ripe banana by the side of the road about half a mile from our new home in Bethany.
This would perhaps not be as amusing in downtown New Haven, but in Bethany there is never anything by the side of the road. No litter. No “We Will Buy Your House” fliers. No abandoned shopping carts. Nothing.
A fresh banana. All by itself amid acres of trees and snow.

And search all corners of the new-found world
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates
—Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

A local radio station has changed its format and become The Whale, playing classic rock. (The first two songs it aired were the old Hartford Whalers hockey theme and AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock…”

A classic rock station named The Whale naturally made me think of ‘80s metallists Great White. So I went searching for other whale songs. The initial obstacle was that whales sing songs themselves, and there’s a lot of online activity about that. Then I found someone had already made a very good list of whale-themed songs that I doubt I could beat. That whale of a list is here, and runs the gamut from Captain Beefheart to Lou Reed to Laurie Anderson to Tom Waits to Judy Collins to Pete Seeger to Yes. Thanks, Thousand Mile Song, for saving me the trouble. Whale on!

“Will you stop jostlin’?”

“Jocelyn! Stop!”

Life’s Too Short

Life’s T-Shirt

Touché

You know how many cool versions of Bacharach/David songs there are from the 1960s? Several zillion. From the ‘70s? Still oodles. From the ‘80s? Enough. The ‘90s? A severe drop-off, but those few are dark and distinctive:

• Back to Back Bacharach, Casino Royale (1999). A Herb Alpertian lounge go-go act. Irresistibly oddball, like a costume party put-on.

• That’s New Pussycat, Various Artists (2000). Indie surf and punk acts turn Bacharach & David tunes into instrumentals that might have co-existed (in a different ‘60s genre) with the pop originals, but didn’t. There’s some brilliant interpretations here, from Connecticut’s own Mill Valley Taters doing “Walk On By” to two different versions of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head,” by Deadbolt and Mummy the Peepshow.

• What the World Needs Now, Various Artists (1998). Power pop bands from the Big Deal label take the songs out for a spin. Splitsville’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” redrawn in a litany of pop styles from Merseybeat to ELO, is leagues beyond the rest, but The Absolute Zeros’ “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me is killer enough.

• Meow, “This Guy’s In Love With You.” From the album Goalie for the Other Team (1995). Morose, droney reading of the classic. Dark and mysterious as the original, an inspired update for the early emo era.