The Bagel Place announced that they can’t afford to replace the timeclock card system. We love our jobs again.

Gold Leaves, “Cruel/Kind.”
Four minutes of leafy love. Why don’t more folk bands use extraneous echo effects? There’s an exquisite alone-in-nature creepiness to the opening of this delicate cut, which picks up the pace mid-song and turns into a model ‘60s AM folk-pop single from the “hey, let’s clean up Dylan” era.

Deadly Duo
She-Go ‘n’ Ego
Is He Ready to Go Steady?
Takes the Cake—Doesn’t That Frost You?
East Feast
Work Smirk
Parole Denied
Queen Scene
Dum-Dum
Two Girls on a Torpedo, or They Went Down to the Sea in Slips
Without a Point
Spellbound
Air Tear
Brain Waves
Unhappy Talk
Cooked Goose

Lips Teeth did this thing Thursday at the Bullfinch where they sang arias, then told jokes, then hit cymbals for a while, then did a showtune, then played a pop song.
All originals. All connected by a weird continuous buzz, like waves crashing and wind blowing.
“You got it,” confirms LT co-founder Jim Smit. “We were the human clock radio ambient noise machine. We just didn’t want to be obvious about it.”
Well, no wonder we fell asleep! Just kidding. But the show was disorienting—especially the nonstop fluidity of the jarring, oddly juxtaposed pop strains. Whoosh!

Very few shows to list this time, but they’re both unmissable, so there: The New World’s First Fashion Victim at the Bullfinch (brand new, but trust us), and Write Hard at Hamilton’s (can’t describe it, but trust us)…

Mar and I offered to clean up the Bagel Place for cheap, and saved our jobs.

Keith Top of the Pops & His Minor UK Indie Celebrity All-Star Backing Band, “Two of the Beatles Are Dead.” Punk-obvious and not particularly well produced—you miss a lot of the jokes in the lyrics—but a noteworthy novelty nonetheless, right up the “Day in the Life” plonk chord at its finish.
The song premiered on PopMatters.com, which shares this embed code:

(Christopher Arnott’s latest stack of old 45s)
1. Buddy Richard, Tu Carino Se Me Va/ Guitarra Toca Otra Vez. I’ve stared at it a lot, and can’t figure out which song is the A-side. (Such things used to be important in the record industry.) But it dates from 1974, on the Dicesa. Whoops, I’ve just looked him up and it turns out not just that “Tu Carina” was a major international Spanish-language pop hit (the other side’s a schmaltzy ballad), but Buddy Richards is still with us. That oomphy trumpet-and-string thing is a fine art.
2. Baby Ray, Sorry/Open Season. A Boston band featuring Nathan Logus from Jules Verdone’s backing band and several other respected indie acts of the late ‘90s. The band’s apparently still out there. I remember commiserating with them about the closing of predominant Kenmore Square punk club The Rat, which dates all of us. So does this very ‘90s single—that whole sped-up wordy repetitive-rhythm-and-riff thing.
3. The Three Suns, “To Think You’ve Chosen Me/It Is No Secret. Instrumental with pumpy accordion, loungey keyboard ambience, and what sounds like way more than three Suns—enough suns (and daughters) and satellites to mmake Saturn feel jealous. It really is a trio—they ruled the charts in the early ‘50s, just pre-rock & roll—but the lead voices get sucked in by the backing choir. The deep-voiced spoken-word interlude on “It Is Not Secret”? One Sun.
4. Lee “Scratch” Perry, City Too Hot/Kentucky Skank. Before MOJO Magazine started regularly sticking free CDs on its covers, it offered this weathered-looking vinyl reissue of two Lee “Scratch” Perry tunes with red/yellow/green reggae-rainbow label and a silkscreen-blurry red sleeve that proclaims “Dub It Up, Blacker Than Dread.” When Perry made a rare (ultimately postponed) trip to the U.S., I remember poring through decades of MOJOs in my basement to find an (equally rare) full-length interview with the guy so that the New Haven Advocate could be well-informed when he played Toad’s Place.
5. Miracle Legion, Little Drummer Boy/Blue Christmas. Released on the Incas label in a wondrous sleeve of childlike drawing printed in blue and green ink on a snowy white background, Drummer Boy is the purported A-side but both tracks are strong. Mark Mulcahy brings his wistful-longing vocals to holiday songs—albeit ones that are already downbeat, but since Miracle Legion was also defined by the slicing guitar work of Ray Neal, this a real ‘90s rock record.

It was so hot, we actually went to a club for beer more than we went for music. We didn’t care who was playing. When the sounds displeased our ears, we didn’t walk out in disgust. When the band tried to strike up a conversation afterwards, we forced ourself to be gracious and polite. We simply didn’t want to leave our barstool and walk out into that hot sun again.
This is what the 33-and-a-third circle of Hell feels like. Trapped in a bar with a shitty band, knowing what you’re missing elsewhere, but not wanting to melt.

Basin Bulletin and The Lure of High Places at The Bullfinch. Both bands travelled here from greener, cooler climes. Try to drag yourselves out to support them… Slow Motion Landslide and Spring Sweetness at Hamilton’s, where the hard lemonade specials are really the main draw… Begrudging gratitude to D’ollaire’s for booking Fossilized Dung, the band that refuses to live up to its name. The last album tanked, so this is a painful rebuilding process for FD, and it’s nice that D’ollaire’s didn’t give them shit about it…

The Bagel Place case has been solved, but Mar and I might lose our jobs anyway because of the expense involved in fixing up the place and changing the locks. We strategize all night about our futures.

Cinema Cinema, “Lady Abortion” and “Pleased to Meet You, Anesthesia”.
Couple of rowdies from Brooklyn who did a radio interview/live performance last night on Western Connecticut State University’s WXCI, and who play The Space in Hamden tonight (Sat., July 23) with Dalliance, White Savages, The Monumentos, Fifties Slang and Modus Operandi.

You’ve got to give Cinema Cinema props for variety. They can move from slow moody inner musings to high squeals of feedback within a single song. Their questionable tastes (apparent in their song titles) are intriguing, and they clearly play better than they let on. They answer to “experimental,” but also to “freak-out, fucked-up,” in the early ‘70s Zappa or ‘90s Oh My God sense. You just know they’ve got to be a singular live experience.