Almost burned them, but didn’t.

About a cup of cocoa powder
About half a cup of margarine
Six eggs
A tablespoon of vanilla
A little salt
Two cups sugar
A third of a cup of corn syrup
One cup white flour
One-third cup whole wheat flour
One a half cups tiny marshmallows.

Melt the cocoa with the margarine in one bowl and add the dry stuff. Froth up the wet stuff in another bowl. Blend them together. Add the marshmallows last.
Bake at 350 degrees for around half an hour, but these brownies WANT to burn, so watch them carefully.

Waiting for a streetcar, or a trainwreck. When it takes three hours for a show to happen, you can’t help but have expectations. Waiting around a place even as pinball-happy D’ollaire’s can grate. Especially when the unready, unsteady band in question has some questionable conceptual fixation with controlling all aspects of the show.
There was no jukebox music, or other any sounds produced by other bands, allowed before the egregiously delayed set. We were out of quarters and drink tickets over an hour before showtime. And who do we ever want to talk to at D’ollaire’s?

Location B at the Bullfinch, with Bottles & Cans… Watch the… (their ellipses, not ours) at Hamilton’s with The MTA Band…

Regretted mailing it.

Surfer Blood, Tarot Classics EP
There’s a preparedness and precision to this band that undercuts some heartfelt lyrics. Crisp, clean, lullingly repetitive even when it rocks, this is what New Wave did to punk in order to sell records to college students and not just drop-outs. History’s repeating, since Surfer Blood is opening for The Pixies Oct. 29 at the Waterbury Palace.

The Race
By Clive Cussler and Justin Scott.
I made the same mistake with The Race that I made with Cussler’s previous three Isaac Bell adventures: I blew through the first half of it in one sitting, then put it down and someone didn’t get back to it for weeks. Call it Cussler syndrome. He grabs me, drags me into the ocean, I break free, I gasp for air. Then I remember I forgot something and plunge recklessly back in.
The Bell books—The Chase, The Spy, The Wrecker and now The Race—are outstanding because they’re upstanding. The hero is loyal to his friends, would never cheat on his liberated-woman fiancée, loves his country and can smell a terrorist half a continent away. He’s Yale-educated. Thanks to a flash-forward coda in one of the books, we know he lives to a ripe old age and has a long and faithful marriage.
How could this goodie-two-shoes derring-do not be boring? Because Isaac Bell’s world-saving exploits happen at a time when the world was becoming connected in ways it never could be before. The adventures occur in and around steam locomotives, ocean liners and (in The Race) airplanes. Bell represents an old ideal of self-reliance. He’s battling Robber Barons, industrialists, inventors and other new breeds of power-hungry scoundrel.
I love knowing that Bell will never succumb to the charms of the comely lasses in distress who bat their eyes at him in every book. It makes for a whole other sort of conflict than what you’d find in a James Bond book. It also provides a momentum that is respite-free, just derring-do after derring-do without any derring-don’ts.

Think longterm. Think rematch. Think encouragement for future underdogs. Think that nobody has gotten much more than a token 30 percent against DeStefano in the 18 years he’s been in office, and that Kerekes got 45.
I have no great kick against the incumbent—he’s enacted some progressive policies that you’d be hardpressed to find even in other liberal cities. With a viable opponent for a change, the mayor had to defend the main thrusts of his government style, and discuss the company he keeps, adding to our knowledge of how the city is run.
What sours me still is the nastiness of the DeStefano campaign, smearing his opponent with obvious stretches of truth and distasteful social stereotyping (“landlord,” “Tea Party-like”) and offering only lame excuses when challenged by press watchdogs on the accusations. This was DeStefano’s manner as well when he was the underdog, not the overdog he was here (and with different campaign advisors), in the gubernatorial race against Jodi Rell a few years ago.
One last kvetch of a long, drawn-out election season, where a host of candidates changed affiliations so they could reenergize and keep on running: Where was the excitement in the media? If you peered at the top half of the front page of a New Haven Register in a vending box yesterday, you would have had no idea it was Election Day: not even a reminder above the masthead, or a little box on the side. It’s as if they didn’t want you to vote.
The Yale Daily News, by happy contrast, headlined its top story “Polls Open for Election Day.” For a student paper, the YDN has admirably balanced coverage and doesn’t forget what day it is. The campus also seems to have a fervent interest in the Democratic process. There’s hope.

Elton John: Your Song
Petula Clark: This is My Song

John Waite: Missing You
Jack Johnson: You’re Missing Me

Petrie & Wingate (1898): I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard
Paul Gilbert: Get Out of My Yard

Noel Coward: Someday I’ll Find You
The Fray: You Found Me

Irving Berlin: When I Lost You
J. Geils Band: I Must Have Got Lost

Milli Vanilli: Girl, You Know It’s True
The Black Seeds: So True
Spandau Ballet: True

The Beatles: Yes It is
Yoko Ono: A Thousand Time Yes

Elvis Costello: Accidents Will Happen
Tech N9ne: It Was an Accident

The Temptations: My Girl
Paula Abdul: Forever Your Girl

Mary Wells: My Guy
Josh Turner: Your Man

Neil Sedaka: Oh, Carole!
Carole King: Oh, Neil!

Grease soundtrack: We Go Together
Tom Lehrer: We Will All Go Together When We Go

Do you realize how many bands think it’s cool to take their promo photo out standing in a field? Like, one in three. And how many do you think like to use the railroad strain as a backdrop? Nearly as many.
That’s why cat vomit got our attention. They don’t have photos of themselves, of any kind. But they’re playing a gig Friday in a field they found on a deserted rail track just within the city limits.
Turns out the land is managed by a private developer happy to rent it for a day as a social experiment, and who has already been inspired to try rounding up some potential festivals.
So it’s only a matter of time before ethnic folkdancing overwhelms this quaint rock field. Toss the pebbles while ye may. This land is still our land for the nonce.

Track Field Festival Number One features Mattie B. Sack and Kuttomquosh, Stooping Bush, The Beldens, West Crib and Ghost Mother in Law. No other shows worth mentioning. This one is outstanding in its field.

Mailed it.

There can’t be too many covers of Bacharach/David songs. Especially “Walk On By,” which has been walked around the block by everyone from Isaac Hayes to the Stranglers. This is one that might as well have come from one of those faceless lounge-music slabs of vinyl in the 1960s. Which is a compliment—it captures a mood perfectly, and understands the technology required to make something sound truly Bacharachian. The two originals on this EP sound, if anything, even more true to the period—the soaring, weaving backing vocals, the woody percussion, the flamenco guitars…

Californian is the first of three three-songs EP which Explorers Club is putting out in advance of its second full-length album, Grand Hotel. Each “Suite” contains two songs which will appear on Grand Hotel (albeit mixed differently; Mark Linnett is handling the album versions) plus one cover tune which won’t. The EPs are available free on Amazon.com. Californian Suite is out Oct. 25, with the Carolinian and New Yorker suites following in November and December.

Explorers Club makes the sound assimilations of Wondermints or High Llamas sound distanced or ironic. The elderly should pick up on this band along with the retro-hipsters. I fully expect to see these Suite EPs in the bins alongside 1000 Strings at the local Salvation Army.