It came upon a midnight clear: a theremin keening in the town square. In the still of a holiday eve, the sound tore through the air. Some folks liken theremins to modern bagpipes, but they have a modern, electronic, techno sound that’s ideal for soundtracking small cities.

The late-night live theremin concert was the brain(snow)storm of DJ Dingleberries, who changed his name to JInglebells for the occasion.

Who listened? In a way, everybody. The sound of that electrically enhanced metal structure spread into the stratosphere. You could certainly hear it clearly several blocks away.

DJinglebells played all original stuff—even the best theremin air-strokers have trouble with covers—but it certainly sounded Christmassy, evoking the mysteries of the ages.

After half an hour (with Jing saying he was prepared to play all night), there was a complaint, and the show was shut down for lack of permits. Face it, if animals started to talk on Christmas eve, somebody somewhere would want to shut that down too. Sometimes magic gets shut down. But it doesn’t stop being magical.

A guy was sound-checking at Hamilton’s Thursday. He launched into one atrocious classic rock cover after another. He was laughing, but we in the audience (there early but not for him) were cringing. We could see straight through to his soul, see.

He slurred and leered and spat and otherwise mocked the lyrics of these egregious tunes, but he knew them too well. He wanted to come off as a jester for the hip kids. But we suspected that he had a happy hour gig Friday nights in a seafood restaurant at a strip mall, where they (and he) didn’t get the joke.

Tonight: Sloven Cina and The Norsk at the Bullfinch (holiday reunion show)… Suomi at Hamilton’s (holiday party show)… Permanent Link at D’ollaire’s (holiday hell show)…

In Paradisum, a religious a cappella ensemble from the college on the hill, opened for Der Flay, the basement metal band, Thursday at the Bullfinch.

The pairing was repeated, with different repertoire and band order, Sunday at In Paradisum’s school recital at the campus chapel.

Well, who hasn’t heard hi-falutin’ classical chords and angelic voices as intro music to savage rock shows? This just made that blend more human.

The classical chorale wore the traditional choral cassocks and cottas. So did Flay frontman Master Ratzenberger, who was clearly concerned about how his new collegiate classical pals would relate to his sinister scenester acquaintances. Ratz needn’t have worried. The choir drank the Flaymeisters right under the table.

Tonight: CYO at the Bullfinch… Yes Penguins Fly at Hamilton’s… D’ollaire’s is closed for repairs (we’ll explain sometime)…

We all thought it was good-natured mockery, but it turns out that Jake 10-Ant, the new wave working-class savior of local yore, really did have a chip on his shoulder when it came to higher education.

Jake’s tune “Professor Pits” was released 20 years ago this month. It became an anthem for the 100-watt radio station at the college on the hill, especially around exam time. Jake’s opinion of this success was unknown. His was a one-man-band hermit-with-a-bedroom-four-track operation. He played every instrument on his records and never played out as 10-Ant.

Later on, Jake got social (under his real surname, Tennant) and joined the No One Heres, ultimately taking the band over as a vehicle for his own songs.

So when the class-of-20-years-ago at the college on the hill was planning its reunion party earlier this year, they realized there was a chance to hire Jake and hear their precious “Professor Pits” live at the shindig.

They called and offered real money. Jake said no. Jake said he’d never appreciated the irony of the song getting played on college radio. Said it was a slam on all academia. Wished the students had gotten the message, dropped out, and made a difference.

(We deliver this version of the conversation second-hand. Jake was unavailable for comment due to a recent death in the family.)

College grads can get lofty and superior-sounding when they deal with School of Hard Knocks rabble such as Jake 10-Ant. They blustered and bullied and otherwise insisted. When he continually declined their increasingly less gracious offer, they went to the remaining members of the No One Heres and asked them to do it instead. The band’s guitartist Rick Renkrack (ne Wankrackowicz) took the money and agreed to play the gig, only because he hadn’t been told of Jake’s refusal. When he went to round up the rest of the band and learned the truth, he was stuck. The college reunionizers had anticipated this and drawn up a nasty contract. Jake was immovable, implacable in his convictions.

So how’d the show go? Like a college textbook with a chapter missing. Jake actually played, under a hat and sunglasses, with the No One Heres—on nearly every song. When it came time for “Professor Pits,” the band bowed their heads and put down their instruments. A button was pushed and the original recording of “Professor Pits,” replete with old college-radio tape-pod ID-check intro, blared over the PA. There was a lone complaint from one of the event’s overbearing organizers. Everyone else gave high marks to the maneuver, and took part in a particularly embarassing collegiate conga dance.

Tonight: Heated Hot Hotter at the Bullfinch. Candles will apparently be utitlized for a light show… A.O. Smith & The Naviens at Hamilton’s… An Evening with Bradford White (who of course is nothing without his guitarist Core Noritz) at D’ollaire’s…

Cool new pop act Quiescent Frozen Confections popped up unexpectedly during a set by cofounding bassist/ vocalist Trish DeLish and did two tunes: the catchy “Pop One” and the even catchier “Pop Two.”

An hour later, giddy with glee from how well the hit-and-run gig had gone, QFC tried to get lightning to strike twice by interrupting headliners Sour Patch. Something did strike, and they got burned.

Sour Patch drummer Kent Cantiglionessi erupted, beating back the  interlopers with incessant booms and crashes while singer Chimmy Accione chided the all-woman band with remarks that many took to be sexist and offensive. Accione apologized later in the set, but not in a manner which struck onlookers as sincere. Afterwards, he simply said, “Dude, don’t even pretend you’d do different.”

Trish is sheepish about the dis. “We should’ve quit while we were ahead,” she avers. “Like, two or three vodka tonics ahead. We felt strong, and we got knocked back down to size. It’s what happens in bars a lot. It just doesn’t happen to bands on the stage.”

Quiescent Frozen Confection’ s remorse has stalled their long awaited full set debut. It has, strangely, gotten them a couple offers to crash other bands’ sets. “One was a joke, we think. But the other’s for real.” If you DON’T want a QFC incursion during your band’s set, you might want to notify the bouncers.

Tonight: The Pop Sickles and The Sore Bays at the Bullfinch… The Bertollis, Italian family reunion bash (open to the public) at Hamilton’s. Lots of wedding-type covers… An Evening with Lemoncello at D’ollaires, with nary an original member of that once-tart, now jaded-by-fleeting-fame outfit…

The Performacnes (so named due to their bad skin) have standards; they just don’t let them get in the way of a good show. So when there was a series of disruptions during their set Thursday at the Bullfinch, they kept playing and kept playing.

Even though the disruptions were power outages.

Some electrical storm, huh? We thought the block was going to explode. But nobody wanted to rush out into the street either. And while we all recalled the common wisdom that a car was the safest place to be in a storm, we were fuzzy on the details.

So we stayed at the Bullfinch and drank, while the persistent Performacnes strummed and drummed regardless of whether electricity

There was the added percussion and harmony of the crowd groaning en masse every time the lights dimmed, then cheering when they went on again. There were rumors of a back-up generator, it really felt as if we, as a group, were powering the powering the room with our raucous ale-stoked energy.

The most consistent electrical vibe, however, came from that tireless band, who played those electric guitars and bass hard, even when it seemed futile. There was just this continuous four-chord clang raising and lowering through the night, but staying on beat.

How were we when the lights went out? Lit.

You can’t say it wasn’t as advertised. “An Evening of Acoustic Guitar With a Guy Who Can Barely Play” featured Barry Blitz—the aging punk once known as Sonny Blitt—attempting solo renditions of punk and hard-core tunes he’d written decades earlier.

“for this show,” Barry announced, “I really do wish I could play guitar better. But if I could, these songs would never have been written. I’d rather be known for the dozen bad punk songs than the immortally lousy prog rock operas.”

Here, here. The show was decidedly ramshackle. We stopped counting broken strings at seven. It got so bad that Barry had borrowed, and snapped at least one string, on every guitar in the joint; those generous singer-songwriters who were scheduled to play after him were frantically restringing and tuning—but not too obviously, lest Barry borrow and bother their axes again.

Acoustic chaos, verily. But the joy of this stop-start-smash-grab set was in seeing Sonny Blitt settle into himself. There was a time when Sonny was the most solipsistic, self-centered, shamelessly self-promoting music-ass in the scene. But time wounds all heels, and the erstwhile leader of the Blats has appreciably mellowed.

Sonny Blitt is the guy who, when his band disbanded under him a few years ago, took it upon himself to spraypaint “Sonny Blitt is God” on club walls and alleyways around town. He had a ways to fall, vanity-wise.

This night, he hadn’t dyed his hair orange, or pierced his cheek, or done his nails, as in the old days. He had no band behind him to berate. He had no handmade merch to hawk, no home-recorded tapes or disks to push. He had two new songs, one of which was called “Nu Sawng” and the other “Newer Song.” The Blats oldies

“I don’t care anymore,” Barry informed me after the set, with characteristic emphatic repetitiveness. “I just don’t care. Don’t care, me. I just want to play. Play. Play my songs. My songs. Play my fucking songs.”

Then he passed out.

The Slipperz never forget their first show. It’s the only one they’ve played so far. They had just found a lead singer, Ben Monck. The debut gig went OK. Then Monck had a climbing accident the following week, went into a coma, and remains at Southwest Central General today, four months later.

The other Slipperz, who admit that they were just getting to know Ben, and had all turned down invites to join him on the mountaintop that fateful Friday, feel dutybound to honor their fallen comrade. They’ve played several shows without a vocalist, as the Lipless, NoBen and Monck-Ridden.

“There’s a resolve,” says Jen Essanay, who grew the band out of her knitting circle. “You hear bands say ‘This is bigger than any of us.’ More than the sum of its parts, like that. Well, this is about Ben, and Ben’s not here, and we’re only here doing this because of Ben. Make of that what you want.”

Ironies linger. Ben’s fall was due to slipping on a wet rock. This observations drives his bandmates nuts. “We were named after shoes. We were padding around a dorm room watching The Shocknuts on TV and saying ‘Hey, we should start a band. If we’d wanted it to be about climbing, we’d be The Cleatz.”

Monck-Ridden plays The Bullfinch on Thursday, a benefit to pay some of Ben’s bills.

Tonight: Ha Hoo Whooeee! at the Bullfinch; they’ve finally written a theme song that uses their band name as background sounds. … The Silent Years at Hamilton’s, doing pre-fuzz trance covers … Mr. Inferno hosts a goth nostalgia night at D’Ollaire’s, featuring underworld one-hit wonders Unkindest Cut, Extreme Decorating and Surprise Presents. …

The DeLuvians braved a downpour—75 miles of it—to make their opening set Thursday night at the Bullfinch. “We’ve never missed a show,” they bragged, while admitting that most of the shows they’ve played are within a couple of miles of their shared domicile along the shoreline. They play a lot of lobster shacks and roadhouses along the tourist strip.

So who did miss the show? Everyone else, including us. We slid in, sodden, soon as we could, for headliners Ptune, who mocked the turn-out as “torrential” and made swimming gestures whilst he sang.

The DeLuvians stuck around town rather than drive home, and got an open-air road race gig tomorrow in the center of town. There is no rain date.

Tonight: Facebaby at the Bullfinch, making up songs from ideas sent via phone from friends. … King King and the Double Dukes at Hamilton’s, swinging the soul covers with that insane sax section… An Evening with Ham & Mac (formerly of Cheeses Crust) at D’Ollaire’s. Acoustic novelty songs. What is the world coming to—no, wait, sounds cool, we’re in. …

L’il Yvette, whose name is often misconstrued as Lilly Vet (or worse) in the local media, wore, by our count, seventeen scarves to the Thursday show at Hamilton’s. The mostly retired R&B vocalist did half a dozen songs backed by the exemplary cover band Loos & Tite.

Scarves were L’il Yvette’s style long before they became associated with hippie ‘70s rock stars. She wears them not as glad rags but as a field of color and light, veils upon veils. Her songs can be like that too. Not “Sassy Broad,” of course, the regional hit with which she opened her set, but “Big Brute” is a sensitive song about the threat of romance,  and “Ginger” is a spicy tune about living one’s life to the fullest.

When she sang about Salome, however, it got a bit obvious. Not to mention rather embarrassing. Even Loos & Tite looked the other way.No, she wasn’t stripping. She was doing that dippy scarf-juggling routine that bad magicians do to fill time. Worse, she wasn’t doing it to the beat of the song, and it even messed up her timing when she had to jump back into the vocals.

Scarves are fine when your neck is cold. Or when you want to cover up a hickey. Or when you want to escape from a second-story window. Can’t think of any other thing scarves are good for. Can’t think of one.

Better distractions: Ties for Tots benefit (so kids can dress up for job interviews) at Hamilton’s, with 2 Dogs Works, White’s Family, Special Italian Dishes, Tripe, Ocean Fish and The Tomlinsons. Some of those are one-off local-supergroup ensembles; if we’d been more observant of the Hamilton’s scene in recent months we could tell you which ones…. Could I Have Lupus and C Something Essay Something at the Bullfinch… An evening with 498,632 Wins and Blast of Hydration at D’ollaires. Acoustic numbers.