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. …