If you’re reading this, you already know about Bradley’s Almanac, right? It’s not just one of the best Boston-centric indie-music blogs, it’s one of the best (and most principled) indie-music blogs on the Internets, full stop. Its proprietor, Brad Searles, is an amazing guy — insanely knowledgeable and supportive of music made hereabouts and elsewhere, and a warm, generous person to boot. I’ve literally lost count of the bands he’s turned me on to. The sort of enthusiasm he displays is what vibrant music scenes are made of.

He and his family have had some life challenges lately, one of the nastiest of which is his wife Amie’s recent breast cancer diagnosis. Sadly this happened before we fixed the US healthcare system. But with the help of some of those talented local musicians, he’s put together a phenomenal benefit show (money raised will be go to the non-profit Breastcancer.org as well as defraying Amie’s medical bills) including Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses/50 Foot Wave), Bill Janovitz (Buffalo Tom), Travels (featuring former members of Victory at Sea and The Metal Hearts), Drew O’Doherty, Colin Clary (The Smittens/Let’s Whisper), and Adam Brilla (The Broken River Prophet).

The all-ages event goes down at noon, Saturday October 17th, at The Middle East in Cambridge MA. Tickets are just $10 and available at the Middle East box office or online from TicketMaster. There’s also a Facebook page for the event.

Hitchcock’s voice is holding up quite well. You can hear a bit more strain at the top of his register, but not much. Rock-solid timing has never been his strong suit, and the one-two punch of “no drummer” and “lots of frantic strumming” led to several noticable gaffes. Hitchcock, who seemed relaxed and in good humor throughout, joked that we were getting the “organic” version of the show, from which the mistakes would subsequently be excised by the professional film crew.

Since there was a professional film crew (one could imagine that there might be some sort of 25th-anniversary hoopla for I Often Dream of Trains in the works for next year…) quite a lot of attention was paid to visual presentation, with Robyn taking the stage as a backlit, top-hatted silhouette, and wearing a black-and-white polka-dotted shirt against which his black-and-white polka-dotted electric guitar almost disappeared.

Highlights for me included the haunting, weird, and beautiful “Flavour of Night,” and “I Used to Say I Love You,” one of Hitchcock’s most straightforward, sad, and incisive songs (I think its lines “But you were reluctant/Although I was so hot/Now I understand it/But back then I did not” is genius). The barbershop trio arrangement of “Uncorrected Personality Traits” was outstanding, as were the three-part harmonies on faux-country “Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus” (with lyrics updated from Cold War anxieties to Global Warmng anxieites). (Hitchcock also revised “This Could Be the Day” to make it slightly less un-PC, or perhaps he just mumbled. Either way, I can’t say I blame him.)

My favorite of Hitchcock’s trademark loopy anecdotes involved the recent colonization of Boston, and the construction of Logan airport after several hundred planes had landed there. The introduction to “This Could Be the Day,” was also memorable, casting the song’s narrator as one of the “Mojave Shrimp,” waking to fornicate (with a passel of synonyms) after the arrival of the once-in-several-decades deluge.

But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in my own unrealistic expectations a bit.

Damn, I’m prescient. Original bassist Steve Michener was missed, especially on “Ron Klaus Wrecked His House,” “Hey! Mr. Liconoln,” and “Faith Healer,” tunes to which generally capable fill-in man Tommie could not quite bring the required subtlety. But on the whole September 2008 Dipper seemed more sure-footed than April 2008 Dipper. Bill Goffrier had a little trouble pacing his voice through the set, but saved plenty of vim and vigor for the encore (”You’re Not Patsy”). And, most promisingly, there was a new tune (”Joke,” according to Bill’s shirt) with the typical Dipper earmark: just when you think you’ve got it pinned down, it takes a sharp left turn without becoming an iota less catchy. As an added bonus, after all these years, I’m finally clear on who is Bill and who is Gary Waliek. Bill is on the left:

Big Dipper seemed to feel constrained by their set time, so we didn’t get to hear two of the songs on Bill’s shirt, “Meet the Witch” and “Guitar Named Desire.”

We did, however, get to hear: Mr. Woods, She’s Fetching, Loch Ness Monster, Wake Up the King, Lunar Module, “Joke,” Edith, Bony Knees of Nothing [Gary: Here's one from our bad album. Bill: He's cute, he's real cute], Hey! Mr. Lincoln, Ron Klaus Wrecked His House, All Going Out Together, Younger Bums, and a rousing earned-encore rendition of You’re Not Patsy:

Bill says “Oh, yeah!!”

I do, too.

Also, Bill said a word to me! It was “Hi.” I was struck dumb.

*

Boston Spaceships were really friggin’ good. It’s a little scary sometimes to watch Pollard: at times, he seemed like the incoherent rambling man you’d want not to sit next to on the bus. But he can still sing. And the band, critically, stayed a little less soused. There was a hellalotta beer on stage, but there was also some vitamin water.

Tommy Keene brought much rock and gave great guitar cord:

Jason Narducy brought much rock. But do not throw a beer at this man! He does not like it when you do that.

Chris Slusarenko and John Moen brought much rock too, but I didn’t manage to photograph them doing it very well. This is maybe a good time to mention that “Rat Trap” rocked so hard and so well I didn’t even recognize it.

Selected bits of Bob Pollard’s wisdom:

“I remember playing the ‘rat back in 1978″ (much laughter).

Much love was expressed for Dipper and Bill Goffrier’s moves, in particular “the circle,” but I didn’t capture it verbatim.

“That was fucking prog rock [mumble] Peter Gabriel. It moved me. I don’t give a shit what it did to you, but it moved me.”

“Drunk and tight — if you can do that, you’ve got it made.” Which is a good point to get heretical: I saw Guided by Voices only twice, and neither was a typical GbV experience; one was an outdoor festival with the classic lineup, and one was the co-headlining tour with Cheap Trick. But Boston Spaceships might be a better band than GbV. Moen’s an awesome drummer, Narducy kept up with him, and the guitar onslaught of Slusarenko and Keene was nigh onstoppable. So I felt a bit bad about this:

People were pretty much going apeshit all night, but the end of the first encore was “Game of Pricks” and everybody went really apeshit. (Incidentally, I do believe the club did not want the band to play a second encore — one of the few times I’ve seen the house lights go back down after coming all the way up.*) From there on out it was all GbV: A Salty Salute, Motor Away, [I think I forgot something here], Cut-Out Witch, and Tractor Rape Chain. And this band and this band’s material deserved better than to get the biggest response of the night for the other band’s songs. But here’s why I was going apeshit, in especial particular: because I could feel just how much Chris Slusarenko had dreamed of playing these very songs and how much he love playing them, and because I know how very much fun most of those songs are to play myself. So there’s that.

* It’s gotta be a bit of a double-edged sword to book Pollard into your club. You know your drink sales are gonna be a New Year’s Eve levels, but so are your cleanup requirements.

You like everything that comes out on SST
You like everything that comes out on 4AD
You like almost everything that comes out on Homestead
I LIKE EVERYTHING THAT I GET IN THE MAIL FOR FREE!
(How ’bout that)

That stanza inspired me to become a reviewer so I could get music in the mail for free. What I didn’t know is that Sturgeon’s Law most definitely applies to what you get in the mail for free; even it’s own mother couldn’t possibly like all of it.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Great Plains’ set. They were a touch sloppy in that kinda good bar band-y way, or maybe that was just the muddiness of the mix. (Whiny aside: I really wish I liked The Middle East better, but all but a handful of shows I’ve seen there have sounded like crap, and downstairs is often uncomfortably like a sweatlodge.) Front man Ron House was in fine voice, and everyone on stage looked like they were having a good time.

It’s been bugging me that I can’t remember if I saw Big Dipper twice or just once back in the day. I know I saw them in Baltimore touring Slam (with a seismograph on stage, and Young’s “Rocking in the Free World” in the set), but I kinda think I also saw them in DC between Craps and Slam. At at least one Dipper show I know I was completely transported into the magical state of pure enjoyment. Maybe it happens to you and maybe it doesn’t, but when a band really connects with me, I stop being aware of things like what’s in (or out) of tune with what, whether the tempos are steady, how good or bad the mix is, and anything else from the analytical side of my brain. My consciousness shuts down and I just love what’s happening.

That’s a very high bar to reach, so it shouldn’t surprise me that the 2008 Dipper failed to reach it. It was great just to see Steve Michener, Jeff Oliphant, Gary Waleik, and Bill Goffrier on stage together again. They looked like they were having a blast revisiting the wondeful songs they crafted, and that’s important. Waleik seemed to be struggling a bit to hit some of the notes, but maybe he just couldn’t hear himself. I was certainly frustrated with the mix, my wonderful girlfriend and I weren’t feeling well, and we didn’t stay through the end of the night.

But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in my own unrealistic expectations a bit.

I appreciated many of I’s songs better live than on record. The stripped-down chamber music arrangements (ukelele, acoustic guitar, cello, and voice) left Merritt’s sparkling melodies and incisive and often very funny lyrics naked rather than masking them with layers of overdubs. (A live album from The Magnetic Fields seems unlikely, but I’d pay a pretty penny for one, for sure.)

I love the latest Magnetic Fields album Distortion, which swathes Merrritt’s compositions with washes of feedback and trebly, compressed drums not-entirely-unlike Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy (given Merritt’s hearing impairment, it seems likely he’s made an album he himself can scarcely stand to hear). But I was definitely eager to hear the soft acoustic cores of Distortion’s tunes . Since my wonderful girlfriend loves The Magnetic Fields at least as much as I do, it was a cinch that we wanted to attend both shows.

I’m glad we did. The Valentine’s Day show was a slightly off night for The Magnetic Fields; Merritt was clearly feeling under the weather, and there was at least one notable timing flub. Still, it was pretty magnificent. The surprise for me was that vocalist Shirley Simms has joined the touring lineup. Her voice has a harsher upper range than Gonson’s (not unpleasantly so; her timbre reminds me a bit of Neko Case) that expanded The Magnetic Fields’ harmonic palette substantially. The setlist ranged through other Merritt projects, like the 6ths, the Future Bilble Heroes, and the Gothic Archies. I was delighted to hear the magnificent, brooding, and funny “Crows,” from the Gothic Archies’ The Vile Village.

The second night Merritt seemed more comfortable and in better humor; the band was tighter. There were only a handful of repeat songs, mostly from the new album. Simms’ showpiece, “Drive On, Driver” was one of them. With the noise stripped away, it’s evident what a sturdily-constructed country song it is. Unlike earlier country efforts like “Papa was a Rodeo,” there’s nothing especially quirky about its lyric; I can easily imagine some Nashville star having a big radio hit with it. On both nights we were treated to Merritt taking the lead vocal on “The Nun’s Litany,” presumably saving Simms’ from potential embarrassment and/or catcalls that might result if she reprised her album performance of the nigh-pornographic lyric.

The Interstellar Radio Company opened both sets with radio-style dramatizations of two short stories, Poe’s classic, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (for Valentine’s Day, natch) and under-appreciated SF writer Robert Sheckly’s “Ghost V.” Actor Adam Green’s high-key, twitchy style was well suited to both stories (I can believe playing Dracula’s Renfield is his long-time ambition) but despite bravura stomp-box work from Green to simulate dialogue with a remote party, it was sound-designer Matthew Beals who really stole the show. He seamlessly melded old-school radio broadcast techniques with the high-tech audio processing power of an onstage laptop to frequently stunning effect. He went basic and traditional for the grisly bits of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” inspiring a ripple of audible revulsion through the audience even though everyone could see how innocuous his actions were. “Ghost V,” with its several fantastic monsters and other worldly setting, gave Beals some room to really go nuts with the computer. Streams are available at the Interstellar Radio Company site, but you’ll miss the fun of seeing the props arrayed and wondering, “what on Earth are they going to use that for?” and you’ll miss being impressed by how much isn’t down to clever digital manipulation.