Bird By Bird, While You Sleep.
West Coast pop that wants to seem aggressive as well as stylish, while singing about sunglasses and “Simple Days” and “Making Music.” I say it’s warmed-over ‘80s AM pop and I say the hell with it.

They did it up right. For years, the corner of Park and Chapel streets in New Haven had been marked by a small area at the base of the bulding housing Dunkin’ Donuts which spelled out, in mailbox-sticker letters, “GAG JR.’S CORNER.” A few months ago, a petition circulated asking the city to improve upon this recognition. As of last week, there are not just two hefty new metal plaques marking the corner by a shiny green streetsign.

I haven’t run across him in eons, but I’m told by his tenants that Mr. Gagliardi is still with us, still overseeing his properties and occasionally visiting them.

His name is already emblazoned on Gag Jr.’s Liquor Shop at 1183 Chapel. But this latest encomium is welcome. Those of us who’ve been in the neighborhood since the 1970s or 1980s fondly recall that corner of Gag Jr.’s old breakfast joint, adorned with mugshots of actors who’d eaten there—everyone from then-Yalies such as Mark-Linn Baker to bigwheels like Sammy Davis Jr.

I remember getting the sad scoop that Gag Jr.’s was closing, sometime in the late ‘80s. I was covering a whole different story about the restaurant, and Mr. Gagliardi casually mentioned that he was giving up the daily grind. The announcement was met with the same sort of panic which arose when the Yankee Doodle Diner closed on Elm Street more recently.

A relative took over Gag Jr.’s and made changes, and it didn’t last long after that, becoming the Dunkin’ Donuts it still is today.

Having housed one comics shop or another for a couple of decades now, plus the amiable package store, it remains a cool corner, where the gregarious gather in gaggles.

Say a prayer—or rather , curse an oath—for the band we’ve known all these months as the Rock Pirates, or equally piratical (and pirated) variations thereof. That name, perfect for their buccaneering, show-stealing manner, had been taken ten times over by other bands. Some of those priar Rock Pirates were more

So, long gangplank short, our local RP went as long as they could without a name to their names. They became known for unannounced, hit-and-run shows. They went on tour (and sent us a postcard) with the same anonymity. But now they have an album due and have to ante up with a monicker.

So here it is: THE ACROBATS OF ETIQUETTE.

We know, we know. We tried to talk them out of it ourself.

Luckily they haven’t changed their songs, attitude or talent. The, um, Acrobats of Etiquette album-release bash is still weeks away, so we all have time to mull this over and readjust how we once thought this was a band with all good ideas.

Better-named bands on the horizon: Ride On to Die and The Bacchus Dykes at the Bullfinch… Wondering Eyes, Power & Reign and Squadrons of the Sky (the middle band made of members of the other two) at Hamilton’s… Meek Head and Last & Fiercest Foe at D’ollaire’s—which, if they keep booking bills like this and offering beer specials besides, we might have to stop mocking for a while…

I was the only one raking again.

Jim Jones Revue, Burning Your House Again.
Finally, an affordable domestic release, a North American tour (Sept. 1-18) and hopefully a welcome burst of stateside hype, for this antic album, the British release of which occurred almost a year ago.
Not that timeliness is a huge factor here. JJR deals in roots rock with an uncanny Jerry Lee Lewis edge. More jaded ears might wonder why this sound is getting such worldwide acceptance now, when slews of worthy punkabilly and ‘50s-rebel-revival bands of the past couple of decades have been consigned to mere cult status. I would suggest it’s because Jim Jones Revue is on the faster, louder side of even that heady genre, and they know their way around a studio better than than a lot of “purer” acts. Also, though I’m personally immune, there’s a Steven Tyler/Axl Rose wail evident in the vocals, which will suck in lots of mainstream rock fencesitters. Something for everybody, as long as everybody is still rolling their packs of cigarettes up inside their T-shirt sleeves.

Are We Not New Wave?—Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s
By Theo Cateforis (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2011)
Here’s a book that is incapable of answering the very simple question in its very title.
It doesn’t set workable definitions of “punk” or “new wave,” basically just wanting to write about the bands it wants to write about. In assessing an era of music that was largely defined by regional movements, college-prof author Theo Cateforis focuses instead on Devo (part of a thriving Akron industrial-town music scene in the 1970s) as an “art-school” band and The B-52s (from the fertile and diverse Athens, Georgia scene) for its camp-kitsch elements. This is a cosmetic gloss on music that runs deep beneath its surface. Cateforis also overstates critical reaction to these bands to prove his points
I’ve learned to be wary of overacademicized university-press books on pop culture. I should have known better about this one. I liked the candid, colorful Devo photo on its cover. I was surprised, given the Devo-coverage, not to see The Waitresses, Tin Huey, Pere Ubu or Rocket from the Tombs listed in the index, but checked Are We Not New Wave? out of the library anyway. The language will make your eyes glaze over, and you realize after a while that the only real problem evident in sections like “Power Pop and the Problems of Genre” are Cateforis’ difficulties fitting some of these bands into narrow and arbitrary categories—something he continually accuses mainstream critics of doing
Ultimately, you feel that this book centers on the most commercial and accomplished “new wave” bands because Theo Cateforis either wasn’t there or wasn’t paying attention while the movement was actually happening. Oh, for a real historically based, rather than theoretical, study of the new wave!

The Beanbag Chairs had another gig. Remember last time, when they emerged from beanbag chairs to play? This time, they had a merch table with their new album– How Have You Been, You Old Bag?–stuck inside the pocket of little homemade beanbags. A few of the bags ended up onstage, but in a nice way, with mash notes inside them. One of them read “Rage, Bags!”
The real rage came later, when The Beanbags were forced to clean up all those tiny Styrofoam beads from the floor before they could get paid.
The Deli Cats for two sets at the Bullfinch. What its this, Hamilton’s?… The RoPi (you know who) and Sonny Blitt’s new band, Blitster, at Hamilton’s. What is this, the Bullfinch?…

I was the only one raking.

Fountains of Wayne, Sky Full of Holes
It’s wonderful, of course it is. Fountains of Wayne albums are too rare, too impeccably crafted to be anything less. But if there’s a quibble, it’s that I’ve listened to Sky Full of Holes several times through and it hasn’t spoken to me yet.

My initial discovery of this pure pop powerhouse couldn’t have between purer: an advance copy of their first album, with no prior hype top bias me. They had me from “Radiation Vibe”. When I got to interview them a year or so later, I learned they’d even lived here in New Haven for a short while, and had sublet an apartment from my favorite band of the time, The Gravel Pit.
I missed the first Fountains of Wayne show in Connecticut, a midweek affair at the El n Gee in London, but so apparently did everyone else; I recall Chris Collingwood telling me that they played that night exclusively for the club’s staff.
I did see Fountains of Wayne live several times since then in New Haven as their fame grew: at Toad’s Place, then at the New Haven Coliseum opening for Smashing Pumpkins, then back at Toad’s Place, where Collingwood referenced the Coliseum gig and a lot of people thought he was joking, since they’d just discovered the band. This was all before Fountains of Wayne made “Stacy’s Mom” a household name. (They should get a cut of every MILF porn website’s profits.)
In every album, Fountains of Wayne has spoken to a certain variety of disillusioned, socially awkward, suburban youth with uncertain future prospects. These are profound statements logically and emotionally on par with Brian Wilson’s hallowed “Don’t Worry Baby.” The new album hasn’t hit me that way yet. The loudest message on it is one I don’t really want to hear–” Richie and Ruben,” about a couple of lousy businessman through whom the song’s narrator has lost a lot of money. It all sounds painfully nouveau riche rock star. There’s probably a good reason why The Beatles never wrote a song about Magic Alex.

1. My Pet Lion, Juliana Hatfield. Not really about a pet lion. More allegorical, about inner youthful rage and desire.
2. My Pet Sally, Blink 182. “A long and skinny friend” who happens to be a salamander.
3. Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Paul & Mary. Imaginary pets count.
4. The Dog Song, Nellie McKay. “Well, just go right to the pound/And find yourself a hound.”
5. The Monkees, I’m Gonna Buy Me a Dog. Micky Dolenz is an immensely appealing vocalist, even when he’d goaded into missing his cues by Davy Jones.