(continuing scribblers.us’ irregular tribute to Archie Comics’ unparalleled mastery of punny story titles)

Net Fret

Handy Dandy

Gee, Ma, I Wanna Stay Home

Matter Over Mind

Channel Chump

Chore Corps

Alibi Awry

Prize Size

Strange Change

Ice Cream Dream

Smart Art

The Three Marketeers

Go West, Young Dudes

Yes Table was writing a press release. They compared their music to a splattering painter. They used the phrases “Deep Cloud” and “Fragment of a Hymn.” They described their sound as “the end of jazz” and “a courtly poem.”

Then they saw what they’d written, laughed, cried, crossed the whole thing out and stuck it in a drawer. They never released a press release, but now they’ve released an album—The Boom The Strain—and that tattered, florid prose constitutes its cover. Album of the month, cover of the year, and self-deprecating band of all time.

Love Lion Book and There is Not Passion Enough smoke your soul at the Bullfinch… Drunk Variation and Poisoned Wheat at Hamilton’s…

Thought mar would hate the barrel job, but now she’s talking about managing her own store. A least the hours would be better. We could go prank shoppings again.

Junior Doctor, Clumsy Words and Bad Pickup Lines

Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when major labels signed hotshot regional pretty-boy pop-rock bands, they groomed most of them to sound exactly like Junior Doctor does. Nowadays, such peppy , riffy, well enunciated clean-pop seems an absolute novelty. The busy guitars, changing tempos and theatrical delivery really want to impress with their professionalism. But who listens to professionals anymore?

How could Russian Caravan Tea have eluded me for the 300-some years? I’ve only just discovered the stuff, and I’ve been a tea-drinker my entire life. (British parentage, don’tcha know—been on the hard stuff like English Breakfast and Earl Grey since the womb).

Bought a half pound of loose Russian Caravan at Willoughby’s on Grove Street Saturday and brewed my first pot the following morning. Strong and dark, but doesn’t get bitter after a few hours as a lot of tough teas do. This is important to my regimen because for Christmas I got a huge teapot (not to mention a coffee table). I fill up that immense kettle in the morning and sip from it all day.

Looked up Russian Caravan online and besides how I just described it, it’s apparently supposed to be “smoky.” One of those tea (and wine, and cheese) words I don’t understand. Am I supposed to light it on fire? Did I buy incense, thinking it was tea? Do I have to chase down some long-departed caravan to find out?

MC Lure’s rap make our body acihe. Lots of women have problems with how rap dehumanizes them but Lure’s raps turn everybody, every body, into meat. Frozen or grilled. Sizzled, burned. He kills, he burns. And he redeems.

We know our readership isn’t crawling with hip-hop enthusiasts. (It’s the only genre where, when we mention it, we get negative comments. Not even classical and reggae get that response.) But MC Lure, to uphold the cliché, transcends genres. He refutes stereotypes. He stares stereotypes in the face and spits at them.

Hence his lyric:

I stare stereotypes in the face. I spit.

We miss mar. Woke her in the middle of the night to talk to her but she just got mad.

Metal Mountains, Golden Trees.

Those who still carp that Radiohead have never looked back to OK Computer should wise up and start looking elsewhere. Metal Mountains is as good a place as any—winding gentle journeys into smart soundscapes of reflective meditative. Misty but not zoned out. Psychedelic violin sounds from indie rock’s string accompanist of choice Samara Lubelski mingle with the spacy guitar and demure vocals of Helen Rush (of proto-neo-folkies Tower Recordings) and the atmospheric guitar of P.G. Six himself, Patrick Gubler. Heck, it’s ALL atmospheric. Seals up every crack with plaintive swoops.

Look among the titles in the banner of this site (underneath the picture of a teen me balancing a beer bottle on my head) and you’ll find “McLuhan ’67,” a scholarly goof  I wrote in 1984 for the Tufts University student journal Omnibus.

I’ve edited out some of the most sophomoric sentences (I was actually a senior at the time), but I find the research is still useful, and it demonstrates my life-long interest in McLuhan better than anything I could start writing now.

Some of my wordplay (in the unabashed style of McLuhan, to whom all was pun and subtext) is so audacious it makes me wince with awe at my younger brain.

I grew up on college campuses, and from when I was in kindergarten until second or third grade I can’t remember seeing a coffee table in my parents’ social circle that didn’t have a Marshall McLuhan book upon it. My father, on account of hthe marionette productions he did of Greek plays, was interviewed by McLuhan for the journal Counterblast.

I’m still a devoted McLuhan fan. Tremendous material on him is still being released, from the bonus interviews included in the DVD version of the 2007 documentary McLuhan’s Wake to the 2003 collection Understanding Me: Lectures and Interviews (edited by Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines, MIT Press).

Don’t call it scat. They’ll think it means something else. But Tomit and Vommy, the punk twin brothers who front two drunk two screw, have devised their own musical language.

It’s startlingly similar to old jazz records where a vocalist mimics a musical instrumental, or where a clarinet closely apes a trumpet solo. Similar, only it’s yammering soused twin brothers.

Spot sprinkle, flurry chance and tapering at the Bullfinch (rescheduled show from the bad weather in January)… Aging jam band High in our 30s at Hamilton’s, with party sunny (featuring sonny degrassi)…Guitar legend strat nimbus and local pickup band the four casters ( who’ ll also do an opening set sans Strat) at Dollaire’s…