I’m just glad you’re OK.

If you’re happy, then I’m happy.

A birthday wish… FEWER BIRTHDAYS!
(Well, enjoy this one anyway)

Hot Dog!
You’re not even 6 in dog years!
(Happy 40th)

Next time, can we talk first?
Just so I can remind you that I love you.

You’re too good for this card.

The Capas, the Del Monicos and the Derbys XL (the lineup that uses the much-splintered act’ s original 1940 arrangements and doesn’t delve at all into the later R&B hits) make up a so called “woo wop” (hey, don’t blame us; we only retype ’em) fest this Friday at the Sphinx club. You don’t have to be a member to attend shows at the Sphinx, but nobody its allowed outside the auditorium at this ultra secret society. Even the bathrooms are of limits; the promoters have to install porta-potties on the front lawn…
Everybody has a favorite Capas song. Ours is the one about wearing the same hat on a bus trip from Ohio to Connecticut, then hanging it in a new home with a new relationship. Or at least that’s what we think “Led by the Lid” is about. Mostly it’s about the baritone guy going “led lid led lid lied…”

Har, who suns himself out there even in wintertime, found a birdfeeder half-buried in the backyard. We had no seed, so we filled it with bread.

1. Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems. That’s all it said, along with a brilliantly boring company logo. Yoyodyne is the New Jersey company which is a front for an alien invasion of earth in the film Buckaroo Banzai– Across the Eighth Dimension. I bought the mug at a science fiction bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., years after the movie had been released, when the reference would be grasped by very very few. Nobody ever got it. Broke the mug when I dropped it in the kitchen of the old New Haven Advocate offices on Long Wharf (Long Wharf itself could be a reminder of the film’s villain, Lord Whorfkin).
2. Drabble, the underrated comic strip loser created by Kevin Fagan. Clean, colorful drawing of Drabble, the strip’s logo, and that’s it; no slogan or punchline to get tired of. It broke in a moment of Drabble-like klutziness, when I knocked it off a bookshelf onto a carpet. (Yes, it shattered on a carpet.) It’d be easy enough to get another one–it was one of those Cafe Press print-to-order jobs. But I’d moved on. I like a lot of different comic strips, and it seemed unfair to dwell on one.
3. Twin Peaks. A Double D diner mug touting the virtues of their coffee. Not as subtle a the Yoyodyne mug, but in the same vein. From the Twin Peaks official fan club. When it cracked, I used it as a planter for a while.
4. Archie. I’ve owned and broken many of these– not as many as I’ve owned and broken of Archie-themed Welch jam jar drinking glasses. But a lot. The ones I’d never seen before or since came from a vast comics shop in NYC, where they were covered in dust. We’re a rare breed, we Archie collectors.
5. Biggest One I Ever Owned. Basically a soup bowl with a handle. I don’t mind cold coffee or tea, so having a quart of caffeinated fluid in easy reach was sheer joy, though a calamity if I spilled it. As I did on brand new New Haven Advocate carpeting one day.

By Artie Capshaw

The Shaking Quakers live in an old farmhouse about 20 miles out of town. Their home is a registered haven for runaways, and bandleaders Joe and Lucy Meach both are licensed social workers. When not doing double-shifts at halfway houses, they design and build custom stereo cabinets and inlaid guitar fretboards.

In town, the Meaches have been derided as “The Mooches” for their habit of scrounging trash from the dumpsters behind clubs they’re playing at. When they appear on bills with unlike-minded bands, The SQs come off uncertain, insular, twee. At home, however—as we can loudly attest, having spent three nights there this past month—they rock the heavens. This is their world, and they shake it righteously.

Imagine a ballroom-sized barn with stiff wooden bleachers and a hayloft you can jump from, the walls rattling—shaking, technically—with the sound of a six-guitar attack, as many as a dozen screaming vocalists and frenzied dancers whose workboot work-outs obviate the need for bass drums. All rhythm is banging. Some of the guitars have only two of three strings. The bass is electronic, and can make your bowels move against your will.

The chaos is orchestrated, and actual songs emerge. One recent set list: “The Turk Song,” “Dismission,” “Mother (Safely Landed)” the new wavey “Precept and Line,” “My Carnal Life,” “She Wars,” “Ram Pang,” “All That” (“A wolf can not become a sheep/because they’re here for all that/For all that and all that”) and a culminating “Quick Dance.” You’ll recognize the titles of some of those, but not what’s been done to the tunes—jagged, angular akimbo noise. Play loud, very very loud, and long. The instrumental guitar jam in “Ram Pang” went on for 25 minutes, but so did the verses—16 of ‘em—in “Mother.”

Since these jams are held nightly with ever-changing line-ups, hundreds of songs have been written and several bands have been formed. Members of Limber Zeal, The Shameful Three, Silver Cup and Balls of Simplicity all came out of the SQ scene. Those bands plus out-of-towners Nightengal, The Shoulder Blankets, Mistaken Thought and Square Order are all heading to the farmhouse this weekend for a non-stop marathon of shaking, quaking and cabinet-making. Visitors are welcome; camping is even available. But to comply with local ordinances, guests must register beforehand and agree to follow certain set rules of conduct. The model is of an invitation-only conference. In a kickass barn.

Back in the land of bricks tomorrow evening: the rapidly aging New Century band at Hamilton’s (two sets, each with a different vocalist)… Another “New” band, the trad-alt-prog-crap New Music Tradition at D’ollaire’s, headlines a full-on road show in which a couple of the early acts are actually worth your time: Strange Land and Him Noddy…. Finally, at the beloved Bullfinch, camp cut-ups with Evan Jellicle and the Magniffy Cats. Scenes, and obscenes, for everyone. Us, we’re heading back to that farm.

Gar spent the entire afternoon in the town historical society researching our ghost. He was told there has never been a murder or an unusual death in the history of the house. We find that hard to believe.

“Flub Bub,” “Hair Flair,” “Nifty Gifty,” “Sprawl Stall,” “Bath Wrath,” “Rare Flair,” “Work Quirk,” “:Less Mess,” “Mark Lark,” “Broke Bloke,” “Shape Jape,” “Fuel Fool,” “Sad Saturnian,” “Classy Lassy,” another “Work Quirk,” “Bird Herd,” “Dough Row” and “Dough Woe” (on adjacent pages), “Goof Spoof,” “Bread Dread,” “Pain Refrain,” “Quack Pack,” “Play Ploy,” “Great Weight,” “Date Bait,” “Fab Gab,” “Ace Place,” “Slick Pic,” “Heap Sleep,” “Tight Plight,” “Sly Buy,” “Muzzle Puzzle,” “Quiet Riot,” “Lid Kid,” “School Rule,” “Jog Jag,” “Dance of Romance,” yet a third “Work Quirk,” “Drag Gag,” “Type Gripe,” “Act Tact,” “Brain Refrain,” “Stick Trick,” “Fear Jeer,” yikes!—”Work Quirk” again!, “Tall Fall,” Trick Kick,” “Chess Mess,” “Swipe Gripe,” “Guinea Pig Gig,””Spy Guy,” “Non-Scene Nonsense,” “Keen Screen,” “Brat Spat,” “Spat Chat,” “Tune Croon,” “No Hope Rope,” “Throw Woe,” “Borrow Sorrow,” “Fright SIght,” “Phone Tone,” “Read Deed,” “News Blues,” “Group Scoop”… and a few dozen that’s aren’t rhymes or plays on words at all.

By Artie Capshaw

Martin Gibson unveiled his wireless guitar at The Tailors reunion show (amusingly dubbed The Retailers) Thursday at the Bullfinch. As prophesied, being untethered made absolutely no difference in Gibson’s performance: he stood, he soloed quietly, he sang back-up, he smiled. The guitar did not have a chance to enjoy its freedom.

Martin had read our column predicting this very situation, but told us after the gig that “it just didn’t feel right” for him to move around the stage. So he’s allowed the peripatetic Eddie Rick to borrow the axe-pensive toy for the next RickNBacks gig, this Friday at Hamilton’s. Just call us Matchmaker Capshaw.

Baffled bear and Poppleton are also on the bill Friday at Hamilton’s; album release for both those acts, but the RickNBacks will be stealing their thunder all right… Same night, R&B masters Dark Dark Room rule Dollaire’s (see, we can be nice to them sometimes), with locals (or rather less-regionals) Henry & Mudge opening…

We think there might be a ghost in the house. Behind the bathroom wall.

What’s with all the superheroes dying lately? Is there something in the water? Besides Aquaman, I mean—we know he’s not killing ‘em.
Water could well have been the substance that did in The Human Torch, who was snuffed out in the flaming prime of his life earlier this month. But no, he was extinguished by a mob of slobbering cretins.

With his given name of Johnny Storm, The Human Torch could easily have taken a job as a TV weatherman and left the derring-do to others. But no, he was a team player with an invisible sister, a rubbery brainiac brother-in-law and a surly sedimentary colleague playfully known as The Thing. They all wore “4”s on their uniforms. Did the Three Musketeers or The Secret Six or the Chicago Ten wear numbers on their shirts? This was some TEAM.

Now what happens? Well, there’s one potential scenario drawn from pop music. When Lawrence Payton passed away, the three remaining Four Tops toured for a while as just The Tops before enlisting a new member (that group’s first new recruit in nearly half a century). Granted, this is unlikely to happen to, um, The Fantastic. They complement each other’s other superpowers, not each other’s ability to harmonize well. Then again, how do you pick a suitable replacement for a man who can turn himself into a ball of flames on a whim? Do the auditions involve matches and gasoline?

I’m going to stretch this Fantastic/Tops comparison one step further. My wife had never listened closely to the lyrics of “Bernadette.” Her mishearing of the title? “Burning Death.”

And not even the elastic Mr. Fantastic could “Reach Out!” this time.