WHEN SPRING SPRINGS

Rita: I like Heidi’s new name too, but I need something to pick me up. I need to know about the good things that nature will soon bring me. Lolita: Ooo ooo, I know you’re going to have a new natural boyfriend soon! Rita: No. I need something I can count on—like the weather. Lolita: I’m gonna run outside in my Daisy Dukes and ask everyone, “What do you like most about the coming of spring?” JESSE VON KENMORE (The Pug Uglies and Dry County Sorrow): Spring brings out the hot rods, led sleds, muscle cars, and bikes. The air is ripe with the sweet smell of burning petrol and the fine rumble of glass packs and straight pipes. It is Valhalla. *** VALERIE THOMPSON (Fluttr Effect): My favorite thing about the coming of the spring is the Bulgarian tradition of the Martenitsa.  At the beginning of March, you wear your Martenitsa (a red and white string bracelet or red and white tassel) until you see the first signs of spring (a stork/robin, blooming flowers, randy college kids, etc.) Then you hang your Martenitsa on a tree in order to welcome in the spring and kiss winter goodbye.  I am also a fan of spring twitterpation and rakija—the Bulgarian national drink! *** IZZY MAXWELL (Count Zero): I love the sunshine!  It’s so exciting when spring comes and gets sunshine all over my face.  Sometimes it comes so hard I can feel it deep inside me.  Cleaning it all up can be a drag, though.*** JOHN POWHIDA (The Rudds): Springtime for Rudds brings a fresh new guitarist snnniiiifffff mmmmmm he/she smells like freshly mowed grass! Spring also delivers an almost ready third Rudd CD, ssssnnnniiiifffff mmmmmmm certainly no stinker! Lolita: Oh no, they’re gonna make another one! *** SHADY (x-Pure Fiction/ The Noise): Spring brings renewal in many ways: new music, new bands and The Red Sox are winning it all again. I’ll tell myself that until August when they tank—not that I’m a pessimist or anything. *** ROBERTO ROADSTEAMER (Robby Roadsteamer): In winter I find myself locked in my room, playing Nintendo, and taking acid. Just trying to figure out as much as possible. Spring is when I try to get back into society and see if anything I learned makes sense outside my own perspective.... And even if it doesn’t I’m happy with my own re-wiring. *** JOSH BOUGHEY (The Blind King): Spring is like a spirit of forgiveness, infusing everything with a rosy glow, as if winter never happened.  Birds, optimistic, raise their voices in song, warming our chilled hearts as nature once again unfurls her verdant flag of life beneath an azure sky.  Just kidding.  For me spring is all about pretty girls walking around in tube tops and Daisy Dukes. Lolita: And here I thought you were forgiving The Noise for that horrendous review that The Blind King got a while ago. But you’re really just back to check out my micro cut-offs—or are you looking to get inside them? *** EDRIE (Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys): Spring brings furry bunnies bearing gifts of chocolate, crocuses and sunshine and soft cool new grass and legs. Legs, legs, legs! Bare legs, lickable legs, legs in short flirty skirts, legs freshly shorn of winter’s fur. Legs that begin at soft ripe asses and end at pink painted toes shod in new sandals. Yummy smooth creamy white legs. *** RICHIE PARSONS (Unnatural Axe): The anticipation and arrival of the spring songbird migration gets me crazy. I start looking at my bird books and listening to my bird song LPs. April’s early arrivals whet my appetite for the full-on onslaught that May will bring. Up every day at 5:00, off to Mt. Auburn Cemetery. There are some kooks out there, too. I also photograph warblers in my yard during this small window of opportunity and beauty. I get so worked up that the sound of a car that needs steering wheel fluid is much like the song of the chipping sparrow. *** KAREN BARNICLE (Barnicle): Hot shorts and tube socks! Lolita: I guess my Daisy Dukes made you think of that. *** MAX HEINEGG (Max Heinegg): As Beck said, “Things are gonna change/ I can feel it.”  The coming of spring means the school year is winding down, and my students get calm and happy about it; the teachers and administrators know that summer is coming, and people start behaving like humans again.  Winter makes people quiet hibernating bears, meditative stew-cooking stout-drinkers, or royal jerks. Spring gives everyone, even the jerk, something to be happy about. *** AJDA THE TURKISH QUEEN (BLACK FORTRESS OF OPIUM): The crocuses. *** LIZ LINDER (photographer): Bunnies. *** ERIK LINDGREN (Birdsongs of the Mesozoic/ Arf Arf Records): Spring means that I can watch my Irish setter run like a red bullet through the fresh greenery of my 2000 acre backyard swamp. *** SHAUN WOLF WORTIS (Gato Malo): Warmth, sun, baseball, going to New Orleans, sitting on my stoop with martinis, softball, the Polka Show, my birthday, and lobster. *** LINDA VIENS (Angeline/ Bang Chicks): What I like, no what I LOVE, about spring coming is the rush of hope that I feel when the world is about to be reborn. *** MR. CURT (Mr. Curt Ensemble):  Open windows—hungry chirpin’ birds—the meow of restless indoor cats eager for adventure—the little thrust of our flower bulbs peeking through the ground—the tiny buds on the trees—the warm sense that another school year is slowly coming to an end before two months of SUMMER VACATION! And, of course, another loving moment on the planet with Ms. Donna! *** NICOLE CLARKE (Orange Nichole): Easter bonnets and getting the fever. *** KURK REIFLER (Kurt Reifler): Many animals hibernate in the winter.  So do I.  Winter is a time that I grow my hair out, record, spend time writing, and stay IN.  The whole year revolves around the spring.  Summer is too hot, fall is depressing because winter is on the way, and winter sucks, hard.  Also, as the weather warms up in the spring, so do the people.  I am not a people person really, so whatever environment makes them more bearable, I’ll take it.  My album drops the 20th (the day before spring).  Accident?  No!  *** FRANCIS DIMENNO (Wrong Hero/ The Noise): As Miss Johnson, our elderly elementary school music teacher, wrote, in our school anthem: “O Northview Heights that stands upon a hill/ At sight of you I feel quite a thrill/ For these were days of fondest memories/ That helped us sail through life’s stormy se-eas/ The first golden crocuses of early spring/ Are signs of happiness you used to bring/ In times of work and play you saw us through/ O hail to thee our own Northview!” *** DENNY MAFFEO (Plasma Factory): Beside winter being over, all those beautiful women shed those bulky coats they’re wearing! *** ICE PICK (Brookline Collective/ x-Dieselhourse): I love spring because all the hipsters shed their puffy coats, don short shorts, and get new and improved bad haircuts.  But they still wear the same tight black pants regardless of the weather.  It’s a miracle of body chemistry!  Or are they born with those pants on?  I know they stretch... *** SETH COHEN (Buried In Leather/ Mourningside):  Ah, spring!  The time of year when everyone’s so pent-up from the 41-month Boston winter that they just go nuts.  Women dress more provocatively than they will all year and get their flirt on.  That’s my favorite part of spring—the sex in the air.  In more ways than one, too—the pollen turning the sky into a green haze seems to specifically target those who spent the winter telling me to get the hell out of Boston if I don’t like the cold.  Now they’re a sneezy, dripping mess and I’m fully functional for the first time since November. *** KAREN ZANES (The Freeways): I like open windows and the smell of fresh air rushing through my apartment. I also get a kick out of the way otherwise intelligent men lapse into a temporary state of insanity as women begin to discard their full-length wool coats, parkas, and sweaters. By summer they are once again de-sensitized and can handle the sight of a woman in a miniskirt and halter top with discretion. *** MIKE LOCE (The Noise): The thing I like best about the coming of spring is the extra level of horniness that infuses everybody. Though this year’s weather has turned everyone into sexual bipolars, there’s nothing like going into a sweaty club in the spring and smelling the humanity that’s already oversexed from Internet stimulation! *** ELAINE O’ROURKE (Elaine O’Rourke):  Best thing about the coming of spring is knowing that summer time, which for me means beach-bumming time, is just around the corner. *** ELI CP (...And People And Crocodiles...): I can’t wait to take acid and walk around Brookline with a bunch of Clementines and a thermos of peppermint tea. *** BA (Kinnar/ Audrey Can’t Die): Mini eggs.  I eat more mini eggs in one spring, than the number of peanut butter and banana sandwiches Elvis ate in his lifetime—whether he’s still alive or not. *** NICOLE TAMMARO (Nicole Tammaro Photography): Wearing shorts, not having to warm up my car before I leave for work, eating and drinking in outside restaurants, smoking outside at a show with out freezing my ass off, and riding my motorcycle. *** DAMIAN DAVID (4” Stud): I like the spring because warm weather means it’s almost time to chase down the ice cream man.  Yeah, so it might be weird that I’m always the oldest kid in line, but I’m also usually the biggest which makes it easier to push my way to the front... plus my car is faster so I don’t have to rush to catch that big loud cooler on wheels.  “Pull over and give me my bombpop, bitch!” Lolita: Damian, I hope you don’t run into Zortar in his/her ice cream truck. He/she may liquidate you into his/her milk derived products. *** SUSAN SCOTTI (Last Call Agency): If we are lucky enough to get spring in freakin’ New England! I like the spring ales... but mostly I look forward to the cute spring outfits T Max wears. *** SLIMEDOG (The Noise): What I like best about the coming of spring, is the birds chirping, the children singing, the very earth rejoicing in it’s rebirth of life. Also, the frozen dog shit appearing as the ice melts away. Lolita: But it always ends up disappearing. You know—you can’t see it when it fills in the grooves of your hi-tops.