Signed up to rake leaves on campus for a couple of weeks.

Guano Apes, “Oh What a Night” video
Creepy name, creepy looking, creepy ‘80s rock obsessions, from captivity lyrics (“You’ve got to let me go”) to the stifling walls of drumsounds and backing vocals. Rocks itself right into a corner. Strangely fascinating, since this is a German band aspiring to be bygone American commericial pop, but mostly disturbing.

The Blues Brothers film (dir. John Landis, 1980) its being screened tomorrow night (Friday, 8 pm) on New Haven Green. The outdoor showing was rescheduled following the egregious rains of a few weeks back.
It actually would have been nice to see blues brothers in the rain. That film drips worth lot of things– sweat, beer, holy water, Midwestern lakes, smashed beer bottles…
I’ve been privileged to see blues brothers through many prisms. I remember viewing the original Saturday night live routines while in High school, and how this was one of the hyperphysicalized belushi bits I could really get behind. (never really dug the samurai.) the first blues brothers album came out while I was the music director of the high school radio station, and the buttons and stickers which Atlantic records aren’t along made me the envy of, well I don’t really know who. When my friend Hugh Mackay urged me to join him as a camp counselor at agassiz village in rural Maine, we worked up a Blues Brothers duet (me on harmonica. Hugh on vocals and somersaults; that was it) that brought the house down one dinnertime. In the 1990s, I re-experienced the Blues Brothers through the eyes of the besotted leaders of the local ska band revival. Now I’m keen to introduce it to my daughters, who already have some knowledge of vintage soul/R&B, and who don’t mind car crashes.
Addendum: The screening never happened that Friday. No screening at all. The event was a raindate for a cancelled attempt a few weeks earlier, but was listed in at least one online calendar, plus a friend had called City Hall and been told it was on. Very Blues Brother-ish to evade a show like that. I rented the DVD a few days later and my daughter Mabel, initially skeptical, quickly became a convert.

She was the dizzy, daffy lead singer. He was the smooth lead guitarist and main songwriter. He kept fooling around on her, yet they convinced themselves that theirs awas a romance for the ages. So, since every bar in town held a temptress for him (Hamilton’s hosted two), the couple decided to to move west and seek their fortune without distraction.
Whereupon he ran off with a young goddess at the first road stop which let them play. Thus Elly Orb abruptly became a solo act.
The rest is history—or a sitcom, depending on who you hear it from and how you choose to take it. Erstwhile hubby Henry Brown is stuck running a diner in the Midwest. He’s lost several lawsuits (and appeals) where he claimed credit not only for the songs on Elly Orb’s debut album but her entire persona.
Shame on Elly for not copyrighting her style and self sooner. Might have saved her some time at trial. Instead, she had to shlep into court and prove she was real, rather than a figment of her ex-husband’s imagination.
Did we say husband? One of Elly’s clever lawyers discovered that she and Henry were never legally married. A surprise to both of them (long involved story, that) but a welcome one to Elly.
Readers of gossip columns know this all transpired years ago. So why rehash it here?
Because Henry Brown is back in town. Not with a band, but with a brand of muffin, and a threat to upstage his ex-non-wife one more time.

Mar fed up with schemes, went or looking for work.

Yawn, Acid. Use your freedoms wisely. Fans like me, who came of rock & roll age in the ‘70s and ‘80s, remember when a band like Yawn would not have existed without some strictures—song length, number of tangents a tune could take and still be considered a tune. Instead the band is able to throw all caution windward and do as they please. The fine points of this winding, ultimately winning, unpredictable “single” are not hard to pin down. Maybe it’s that title—“Acid”—but I can’t hear it without thinking of it as an album side on a ‘60s blues/prog-rock LP, and wondering what the distilled 45 single version would sound like.

Which one do you prefer? The one without the “the” is actually the second printing; both represent the first paperback edition published in 1956. Even though the “the” is unobtrusively lower-case, it must have rankled somebody—maybe O’Hara himself, since few of the titles of his many short stories and novels have more than three words in them.
One of O’Hara’s other short story collections is called And Other Stories. You could judge that either as a superfluous “And” or as a title so concise that the subtitle has overcome the need for a title.
In any case, this is what I call editing!

People always said they though Joey Joey of Prize Pig Blonde Wig was ripping off “Branston” Bickle of Happy Nephew with his elbows-akimbo stage mannerisms and pause-for-effect vocal delivery.
So when JJ had a fit and ditched on the band before a big outdoor show at Dead Eagles Pier, his fed-up bandmates said “What the Hell” and asked BB—whose initials also currently stand for Between Bands (but for the best reason; Happy Nephew bassist Merko just had a baby)—to sub for him.
“We were feeling lucky,” says guitarist and main songwriter Natty Nat. (This band’s all about alliteration.) Nat neatly corrects himself: “I mean, Joey leaving was NOT lucky. Joey’s great. It’s just that, uh, he DID leave…”
The show was spectacular. Not only did Branston learn a whole set of PPBW songs in record time, the band returned the favor by learning some of his favorite covers and even—with that on-hiatus band’s full approval—a couple of Happy Nephew treats. Several gig offers resulted due to the pier show, and the band suddenly finds itself busy for eight nights this month. One of those, of course, is Wednesday at the Bullfinch.
Joey, who’s dug a hole of furor and denial he’s having trouble crawling out of, was unavailable for comment. Branston is typically tightlipped. Humble and hardworking, he’s insisting this situation is “all about the music.” But we swear we could detect a fresh glee in how the humble, hardworking Bickle belted the Prize Pig Blonde Wig staple “New Man”—one of the band’s first originals, wrought four years ago and now prophetic:
From no man to new man
The showman is superhuman

Hard-Luck Boy and Champion Egg Spinner at the Bullfinch… Scattered Cards and Merko’s Grandson, double dose of dense Eurorawk at Hamilton’s… couple of days on the team at D’ollaire’s: First Day of School and Extra-Good Sunday…

Have no idea how to sell a novel, and need to do it in two weeks, before rent is due again.

The Horrors, Skying (Release date Aug. 9)
The Horrors apparently feel that they have to carry the banner for every British band of the ‘80s or ’90s that was ever any good. I’m hearing bits of Blur, Pop, Human League, Cure and even U2 here. Luckily The Horrors have a shtick of their own to add—that dark bass-bumped swirl of imminent menace which sets its own leisurely lion-in-waiting pace.

So instead of aping all those other bands, it sounds instead like they’re being slowly swallowed into a gaping maw of malevolent modern pop music. Even the higher-pitched, jumpier stuff like “Wild Eyed” is tense and forboding.