Music Previews

Saucers, Saucerers, Saucerest

The Saucers were one of the platters on which the vibrant New Haven music scene of the ‘70s rested. They return to the city’s Ninth Square tonight, Sept. 3 (at Cafe Nine) for a night which also explains what the members have been up to lately.

By the time I moved to New Haven in the mid-1980s, The Saucers were ancient history. They’d released some singles around the turn of that decade, but then founder Craig Bell formed the Bell System.

Lightning has struck several of Craig Bell’s music projects. He was the bassist for the legendary Cleveland proto-punk band Rocket From the Tombs, which begat both Pere Ubu and The Dead Boys. An even earlier band, Mirrors, from 1971, still maintains a cult following in Ohio and beyond.

A crucial chapter of the Bell chronicles occurred here in New Haven. Moving here for a job with the railroad, the New York-born, Ohio-raised Craig Bell not only kept active in bands; he started a label. Gustav Records was responsible for the most enduring vinyl document of the late-‘70s New Haven local music scene: the compilation album It Happened… But Nobody Noticed.

Bell has regrouped (restacked?) The Saucers, featuring three founding members: himself and two Malcolms (Malcolm Doak and Malcolm Marsden). Other members over the years included later Miracle Legion frontman and singular singer/songwriter Mark Mulcahy (on drums, though he made his debut as a vocalist on the Saucers single A Certain Kind of Shy), Katherine Cormack (aka Katherine Blossom, who booked bands at Toad’s in the 1980s and ‘90s) and Seth Tiven of Dumptruck fame.

According to this bio, The Saucers’ first public gig was opening for The Survivors, the Stratford-based band who’ve also reunited recently and who coincidentally played Café Nine just a couple of weeks ago.

From the photos above, I’m guessing that Kerry Miller, another icon of the ’70s New Haven scene, will be drumming tonight. Kerry’s local band, Peacock Flounders, is also on the bill, along with Craig Bell’s contemporary act The Down-Fi and Malcolm Marsden solo.

Sonic sorcerers all.

Rock Gods

Rock Gods #191: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

By Artie Capshaw

The Glugggs do things with a rainstick that have to seen to be believed. But only if you’re over 18.

The trio, whose name’s an anagram of all their initials, is barely out of high school themselves, and they sure know what the college crowd wants: Funky bass, heavy metal drums, rangy vocals and simulated sex.

We glugged a few drafts with The Glugggs and learned that they’re an honorary local band who may hail from the grander regional circuit but who crash at a friend’s house here in town for weeks at a time. We can only imagine what goes on in that house.

The Gym Wipes and Revolution Bucket at The Bullfinch, upping this month’s punk ratio and assuring that the club will have to mop the floor… Centerpull and Teflon Lubricating at Hamilton’s, but the Glugggs are so much sexier… MegaRoll Bio and The Degradable Band at D’ollaire’s, doing the nostalgia-tour clean-sweep…

Music reviews

Listening to…

Veronica Falls, Bad Feeling.

I wish all ‘60s music could be turned inside out so they sound like this. All the base ingredients of classic pop have been reprioritized for modern minds so that the beats are in your face, the harmonies are somewhere in the middle, and the lead vocals, while prominent, sound like they’re being thought rather than yelped. Bravo, production team! And kudos too to the director of the song’s video, Philippa Bloomfield, who understood that there was an outdoor vibe to be mined from a studio-conscious track which many would stage in more confined spaces.

Veronica Falls’ full-blown debut album is due out three weeks from now, on the Slumberland label. Great things are expected.

Book Reviews

Ardeur Cover Edition

Hit List
By Laurell K. Hamilton (2011, Berkley Books)
Read one Laurell K. Hamilton novel and you might be cowed by all the rules, all the dues, the characters have to contend with. Big supernatural interspecies pecking order here. Instinctive behavior includes not only knowing who to bloodthirstily devour for maximum spiritual fulfillment (as if the victims came with nutritional printed on them like in supermarkets) but also who to revere and protect.
These are fantasy books where one of the fantasies is a balanced, orderly universe. Even the world’s horrors are balanced and orderly. Vile demons and bloodsuckers and werewolves all have counterparts in law enforcement with fine-tuned intuitions and a more-than-professional desire to take these evildoers down.
Once you’ve experienced a few Hamilton tomes, you realize how easy it is to overlook all the laws of conduct if you choose. The books are rich with detail of all kinds. They’re also told in a saucy, cynical first-person voice. You buy in avidly.
If the sci-fi explanations still bog you down, you can always delight in the equally controlled, vivid, soulful and spiritually resuscitating sex scenes.
The ardeur is Laurell K. Hamilton’s greatest invention. It’s sex as the ultimate act of discourse, civilized or otherwise. It’s physical gratification, psychological mindmelding and fuel station stop all at once.
For Hamilton’s heroine Anita Blake, certified maverick Vampire Hunter and multi-powered supernatural misfit, the sex scenes aren’t calm respites between the action scenes, as they are for James Bond. They’re the highest level of action scene.
Wherever the ardeur comes in an Anita Blake adventure, it’s the climax.
And that’s the crux of the latest book:
I hugged my knees to my chest. “I’d gotten used to the extra healing that I get with the metaphysics. I thought the super healing was because of the lycanthropy and the vampire marks. I didn’t realize it was tied this much to the ardeur.”
“And that bothers you?” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I can go days without feeding the ardeur now. I was so happy and it was going to make being a U.S. Marshal so much easier, but now I know the price of not feeding. When I’m hunting bad guys I need the extra healing, so that means I still have to feed regularly. Do you know how hard that is on an active warrant of execution out of state?”

Rock Gods

Rock Gods #190: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

First The She Bows claim they were barred from playing Hamilton’s because they were too black. (The band has one black member, who does the Detroit covers in their sets, which are broken up into decades rather than any single genre. As you can imagine, they do a lot of costume changes.)
Hamilton’s acknowledged the heave-ho, but said it has nothing to do with musical miscegenation and everything to do with two of The She Bows spitting on an old man outside the club. This elderly gent, an accountant and money manager, is critical to Hamilton’s existence.
The band had no idea whom they’d insulted. They’ve lost a key money gig, and it serves them right. They tried to return to Hamilton’s under a different name, using a phony “manager.” Then they tried groveling. Now they’re circulating a petition. Just try not spitting, guys. We know phlegm-covered punk bands who could teach you a thing or two about offstage decorum. Not to mention fashion.

The Linear Blocks and The Parity Codes, complex pop, at the Bullfinch… Subdued show of BCH and Hamming at Hamilton’s… Reed & Solomon, unless it’s become Reed & Muller again in the last week, at D’ollaires. Polly and the Nomials may open…

Music Previews

Listening to…

Sleeping Bags, Pehr.
Sometimes a download of just a single song from a forthcoming album seems inadequate. When it’s a seven and a half minute burst of improv, proudly mastered after one take without any subsequent studio twiddling, you’ve got something hefty to promote the album with. It’s a beautiful burst of noise which could, if you wanted, be shorthanded as “2nd VU album,” but deserves its own 21st century considerations. It’s fluid, democratic, deconstructive and the soundtrack to my life right now as summer becomes fall and stuff gets more rigid.

Uncategorized

Five-letter words

1 Comment

At the cineplex the other night, Mabel & Sally’s movie choice was between the one with the secret agent children who curse like this:
“Shi…take mushrooms!”
and the small blue Belgian creatures who curse like this:
“Don’t smurf with us!”
Since they’d just seen the expletive-repleted cinematic landmark The Blues Brothers on DVD a few days earlier, the girls and I were unfazed by all the blue language in The Smurfs:
“Smurf me!”
“No smurfing way.”
…but it did make more sensitive dialogue like “Smurf you later!” seem casually obscene.

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Rock Gods #189: Adventures in Our Little Music Scene

Five friends from the music scene went out swimming at Point Beach last week.
Only four came back.
The other one was hired to play the Happy Hour at Clammy’s Shell Shack.
He’s Ben Arnold, and he’s back at the shack tonight and just about every weeknight until school starts. His predecessor in this hallowed gig blew town unexpectedly (Girlfriend? College? Skipping a loan? All have been deduced). Poor Clammy was tearing his hair out. Except there really isn’t a Clammy; he’s a corporate logo.
This is a seaside show worth wading for. Ben’s been bringing up guests like Stinglet. That faux-Brit leader of the Bobbie Truncheons, whose parents know him as Steve Ingels, turns out to be a divine duet partner. Our beloved Millie of the Model Marvels has guested as well. Ben’s being given free rein—“as long as I don’t scare the fish,” he says.

The Acharnians at The Bullfinch for two sets, one with the Ecbatana keyboard… Bridesman and Ampi at Hamilton’s… Dice-opolis and Megara at Hamilton’s. Hard hats required…

The "c" word: Criticism