[Arnott expounds further on his old 45s]

1. Eddie Cochran, Coutnry Style EP (Rock Star). 1979 rerelease of early C&W sides by The Cochran Brothers in 1954, presaging the twang of Eddie’s impending rock & roll. He’s already yelping, racing the beat and making sure the bass is prominent, even on “Mr. Fiddle.”

2. Doug Allen’s Steven in “Out West (Vital Cog Records). Amazing collectible 7-inch starring the sassy behatted alt-comic character known for his adorable catchphrases “Eat Some Paste,” “I Hate You” and “Give Me All the Beer You Have Or I’ll Kill You.” I own T-shirts emblazoned with all these sayings, plus several collections of the comics. The strip also used to run in the New Haven Advocate. The day I joined the Advocate, I crowed loudly in the editorial room that “I’m proud to write for a paper that runs Steven!” To which I got blank stares and one staffer’s admission that “we all hate Steven.”
Doug Allen didn’t just have a comic strip, he had a band, and they come together on this disk, which is modeled along one of those old “Read-Along Books” which asks you to turn the page when you hear a blooping noise.

3. I Yam What I Yam b/w He Needs Me. Nilsson songs from Robert Altman’s Popeye movie. The picture sleeve shows Robin Williams, Shelley Duvall and the infant who played Swee’pea. Why wasn’t “He’s Large” a single?

4. Willie Loco Alexander, You Got a Hard Time Coming b/w Larry Bird. A different band on each side. The Bird anthem was penned by Erik Lindgren of Arf Arf Records, though this single was released in 1988. Mr. Alexander is in fine form. I saw him live a bunch of times during this phase of his long, astounding career. He was losing some of the punk accouterments and settling into a more fluid rock style, which presaged his brilliant jazz/rock experiments of the 1990s.

5. Deadguy, White Meat EP. Early release (from 1994 on the DaDa label) by the hardcore supergroup, who stunned me senseless every time I saw them. Wonder what it’s worth? Well, you can’t have it. The songs have lost none of their menace: “Druid,” “The Extremist” and “John Dear.”

Frieda Bettany’s class project about the sexual iconography and vocabulary of the local dance scene goes on as scheduled, 5:30 p.m. tomorrow night at D’ollaire’s. But, as you’ll notice from posters and features elsewhere in the local media, the title has been changed to something less academic than “Dance Dance Epistemology.” The show is also being done without the opening oral presentation it had when presented at the college on the hill a few weeks ago. We couldn’t reach Bettany for clarification (that is to say, we haven’t run into her at the Bullfinch lately), so we don’t know what other changes might be afoot for the project originally known as “The Other Foot.” But we know we’ll be there to see it—a big commitment, considering it means standing inside D’ollaire’s on a Saturday night…

Same night: Three (count ‘em, three!) party bands at Hamilton’s: Teaspoonful of Zest, Extra Fluffy Filling and Double Boiler, with no intellectual irony expected…

New house pact to get OUT of the house and do something as a gang at least once a week. “What if we can’t afford it?,” Har asked.

Houdini The Handcuff King by Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi (The Center for Cartoon Studies/Hyperion Paperbacks, 2007)

This one is a few years old, but I just discovered it due to my daughters’ newfound interest in stage magic. (Eerily, as I was writing this very paragraph, I flipped on a news site and learned that Houdini’s final stage assistant, Dorothy Young, died just hours ago at the age of 103.)

We’ve had half a dozen Houdini biographies out of the library in the past few months. Of all of them, the girls have been most taken with the garish, postmodern and often downright grotesque coffee table tome Houdini: Art and Magic wrought by Brooke Kamin Rapaport issued by the Jewish Museum.
Where Art and Magic builds upon fantasy images of Houdini flying and glaring and transforming, Lutes & Bertozzi’s The Handcuff King is purposefully pedestrian. Despite its graphic novel openness and related freedoms of expression, it depicts a relatively low-key time in the unbound life of the erstwhile Erich Weiss, vaudvillean escape artist turned international supernatural superstar.
Indie comics are known for their humanizing elements. This proves true even when dramatizing the daredevil exploits of major celebrities. This is an everyday account of Houdini at the height of his success, unsullied by sensationalism.
Houdini may be jumping off the Harvard Bridge in Cambridge, Mass., handcuffed, before a crowd of thousands. But as we see, in quiet moments in his hotel room minutes before the big splash, Houdini puts on his pants one leg at a time like anyone else.
The Handcuff King gives away a major trick of the escape artist’s trade, but only one which has already been given away numerous times by other Houdini scholars. It’s revealed in sentimental fashion. This is the least freakish Houdini book I’ve seen. What you really come away with from it is how much Houdini loved his wife.

Finally met the drummer of The Illegal Briefs, and recognized him as the drummer for Wet/Dry Shaver, whom we hadn’t seen play in months. That band’s still together, but playing mostly in the towns where co-leaders (and pals since grade school) Whit and Dray (get it?) now go to college. That means their drummer—oh, yeah, his name is Philip Braun—has some time on his stick-filled hands. He’s the young’un of Illegal Briefs. And his day job? Fry cook at The New Egg on Pivot Rd.
That was our line on The Illegal Briefs originally, see—that’s they’d met in the same retail/office building complex and started jamming. Now that we’ve seen them, we declare it unfair to tag them by their non-music-making proclivities. This is a band with a style, an edge even. Flint Genessee’s saxophone mimics the bass lines of Connie Nash, while drummer Braun mindmelds not with Nash but with the sinuous, serpentine melodies of guitarist Hoff Eukis. Songs are about such sordid topics as divorce, flood damage (a metaphor for crying, we suspect) and serial killing. See what we mean by edgy?…

Country and western jamboree at the college on the hill! We’re told this is a major conference of c&w talent, three generations strong: dozens of local, regional, national and even international bands, including Lifestyle Gods, Last of the Breed, Haunted Mesa, Hondo, Trap of Gold and Black Rock Coffin
Makers. That last-named act features a fife!..
Those old West winds blow away all the Eastern nonsense happening elsewhere: Sono-trol at the Bullfinch (breaking away from their tour with The Peytones), Mother Merriman (the Down-with-the-kids mom who pretends to rock) at Hamilton’s, with an acoustic opening set by Wilda… And—god, no!—The Buck
McCrackens at Dollaire’s. Go up the country, truly.

Gar disappears into his room after classes, studies until he’s blind, and then drinks until he’s blinder. This is his new house ritual. Our part in it is finding him passed out in front of the TV at 4 a.m.

Ignatius Donnelly must be flipping out in his non-watery grave. Time to reread his groundbreaking (uh, surfbreaking?) book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, which repopularized the Atlantis myth for the late 19th century.
And who do we thank for perpetuating Atlantean fandom in the 20th century? The Donovan song (with Jeff Beck solo), the John Ashley B-flick Beyond Atlantis, and one of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt books, which is actually called Atlantis Found.

In a strange quirk of fate, Martin Gibson and Eddie Rick are now bandmates. Eddie, you may recall, busted Martin’s brand new state-of-the-art wireless guitar. This led, we’re told, to the disbanding of the RickNBacks, whose other members decided that the ever-impoverished Eddie’s costly mishaps were a liability they could live without. (They are now considering calling themselves the NBacks. Good luck.) Meanwhile, Eddie was keeping up with weekly payments to Martin over the deceased instrument, and the two got to talking. Then to songwriting. Then to Martin leaving his bands Flyvie and The Retailers to start an act he could front. Then to advertising for a rhythm section—that’s a big step for guys who’d only ever been in “friend bands.”
The result, Tin Rick, debuts tonight at D’ollaire’s. Yes, the big room, opening for Honer who’s opening for The Tack-a-meens who’s opening for The Washburns who’s opening for national jam-band headliner Seagull Yamahama Guild. It’s billed as a “guitar explosion,” and since it’s an exploding guitar that brought Martin and Rick together, we’d be inclined to agree…

And don’t regret: Rockabilly, surf and other fringe fun at the Bullfinch with Surf’s Up, Geronimo, Bandit Cats, Red Pizzas for a Blue Count and Fraidy Mouse… Hip hop showcase at Hamilton’s with cheddarface, four deep, fond of my fur and down and out down under…

I found the other mouse today, crushed under the door of the mouse room. We all wanted to bury it properly, so Har borrowed some architectural modeling supplies and built a “mouse”-aleum. Ha.

1. “Shelf,” The Jonas Brothers, Shelf. Best shelf song ever because that’s the whole title, “Shelf,” and it cons a young man warbling “Shelf” in that shouty Disney pop style. So playful. Love as a metaphor for putting away your toys.
2. “Kerouac,” Willie Loco Alexander and the Boom Boom Band. “Oh, Kerouac, you’re on the top of my shelf.” (And what’s he doing there?) A heartfelt punk tribute, and one of the formative records of my teen years in Massachusetts.
3. “Georgy Girl,” The Seekers. Gets middle position because despite its fantastic whistle-riff, and the fact that it was co-written by British comedy legend Jim Dale, it can get annoying after too many listens. Its pop brilliance is summed up in how nonsensically it uses the coda “a little bit”: “So shed those dowdy feathers and fly—a little bit” and “It’s time for jumping down from the shelf—a little bit.” How can you do either of those things a little bit? How about “It’s time to get pregnant—a little bit”?
4. “Old Time Rock & Roll,” Bob Seger. I hate this song—I can actually hewar Georgy Girl again happily every once in a while. But I was completely done with Bob Seger decades ago. Still, this song is terribly devoted to the whole shelf concept—it’s where the old records are kept.
5. “Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf,” The Killers. Gets lowest position because it’s about a man killing his girlfriend. More sick and selfish than shelfish.