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Morning reading: Richard III, Portsmouth Museum, Fenway and George Carlin

Can't imagine why I haven't been to the Portsmouth Museum of Art but after reading this Globe story I'm on my way. ... And here's my Globe theater column, on "Richard III." ... David Weininger gets bonus points for quoting John Updike in the lede of his story on the upcoming Landmarks Orchestra performance at Fenway Park. ... "Boston embraces Passion Pit" is more than it sounds, a good multimedia look at the band and its success in the guise of a concert review at the RSL blog. ... The Addison Gallery is slowly moving toward reopening and blogs about the latest steps here. ... And finally, take a look at our friend James Sullivan in his unintentionally psychedelic shirt talking on Fox25 about his new George Carlin bio:

Cool words and tunes in Newburyport

Saturday night in Newburyport, for free,you can hear the great music writer Peter Guralnick (biographer of Elvis and Sam Cooke, left) and the poet Major Jackson ("Hoops," right) read from their work, plus music from the duo Belle Bousolle. Did I mention free? It's the second event in the new Tannery Series, and it's being held at Jabberwocky Books at 7 p.m. Full disclosure: I fed the duo behind the Tannery Series dinner the other night; they're friends and neighbors. But whoever's in charge, the Tannery Series would be worth a look. The first event, a couple of months ago, was highlighted by my fellow Globe contributor Steve Almond's hilarious and highly filthy reading. (Pix: Major Jackson by Erin Patrice O'Brien, Peter Guralnick by David Gahr.)

Edith Wharton estate debuts Berkshire Wordfest

Edith Wharton's historic estate in Lenox, The Mount, will host what they're calling the first annual Berkshire WordFest literary festival on July 23-25. Susan Orlean, Roy Blount Jr., Tad Friend, Ruth Reichl, Martha McPhee and many more will participate in three days of talk based around the theme "Channeling Edith Wharton." It takes shape in three discussions that use ideas from Wharton's life and work as touchstones: "Old Money, New Money," a look at class dynamics in literature and life; "Writers in Wartime," an exploration of the challenges of "writing war"; and "Well-Behaved Women," an ironic take on women and the literary establishment. The Friday night kick-off party features a talk by Francine Prose, winner of the 2010 Edith Wharton Achievement Award. More participants, including a lineup of Berkshire poets who'll read on the terrace, will be announced in coming weeks. Tix to each event range from $50 for the kick-off to free for some others, but most are in the $25-$40 range. Buy them at (413) 551-5113 or check out the WordFest website.

New Pernice CD and "Sh*t My Rock Star Says"

We'll get to the book in a moment. The new Pernice Brothers CD, "Goodbye, Killer" drops June 15 and it's another gorgeous set of melodic rock and pop. Sunny on the surface, mordant underneath, always erudite: it's impossible to mistake Joe Pernice's voice and lyrics for anyone else's. When was the last time you heard an album that namechecks Ford Madox Ford and Leni Riefenstahl? My favorites are the jaunty title track and chiming rockers "Something For You" and "Fucking and Flowers." The anthemic "The Great Depression" is irresistibly catchy, although it's either about an actual depression or the worst girlfriend ever.

Once in a while Pernice gets too cute by half - a spoiled "Bechamel" as romantic metaphor - but that's kind of a trademark, actually. You have to go too far regularly to get to a classic like, "I'd kiss your ass to kiss your ass again" (in the twangy, broken-hearted "Newport News"). Pernice sings the same way - occasionally there's a falsetto note he can't quite hold, as on the refrains in "The Great Depression," but somehow that too makes it all work.

My previous favorite Pernice disc was "Discover A Lovelier You," which for all its varied sounds seemed to be of a single dreamy mood. "Goodbye, Killer" reminds me more of "Revolver," which I've also been listening to a lot since I got the Beatles box - a collection of disparate songs held together by the voices and guitar sounds. Love the guitar work all over the place by Pernice and  James Walbourne (also of the Pretenders), especially the electrics on the throbbing "Jacqueline Susann" and the slide on the title track, which sounds like it dropped off a Rod Stewart album circa "Gasoline Alley."

(Photo: Pernice, center, with bandmates Ric Menck and Walbourne. Not shown: Bob Pernice, known as "Other Pernice." Pic by Mike Ritter.)

Referencing other artists is a rock critic's crutch of course. But Pernice keeps reminding me of Elvis Costello, and not just because of the glasses and (sometimes) beard, or the way he can go from the new wave of "Jacqueline Susann" to the bucolic country of "We Love The Stage." It's the way he produces pretty sounds that seem to curdle when you hear what he's actually saying. Like Costello, Pernice seems to enjoy coming off as a misanthrope. And like Costello, you get the sense that all the bristly wordplay is a romantic's defense mechanism, and once or twice an album the armor drops. Anyone who protests so eloquently that he's not "The Loving Kind" probably doth protest too much.

But then again.

Let us now consider "Pernice To Me," the paperback released simultaneously with the CD.

The slim volume comes from Ashmont Books, the publishing arm of Dorchester's Ashmont Records, both of which are basically Pernice and the one-woman conglomerate known as Boston publicist Joyce Linehan, who also serves as Pernice's manager. "Pernice To Me" - which I and other Linehan fans have been demanding for many months - recounts the communications between the pair, documented over time by Linehan via the @ashmont twitter account. They share the author credit.

Example:"Pernice to Me: We're touring in YOUR car? All I can say is, that piece-of-shit lezmobile better not break down. And I'm driving." (A footnote in the book explains that Linehan does drive a Subaru, although she is not a lesbian.)

No less an authority than critic Robert Christgau says that the book is a kind of music journalism, offering "little glimpses into the highly unglamorous life of an indie-rock lifer." Christgau seems to think it's the life that's given Pernice the nasty mouth. I don't know Pernice, but I have to figure it's part performance, a way of amusing himself via the caricature of an infantile, egomaniacal, misogynistic, utterly self-centered artist. Because if it was all for real, Linehan would have (justifiably) killed him by now.

"Pernice to me: People keep saying I'm a curmudgeon. It's like you invented this character. Tweet that."

It's a hilarious postmodern Punch and Judy act. And give Linehan credit: the twitter stream preceded @shitmydadsays by months, and that's now going to be a sitcom starring William Shatner as dad. What delicious irony it would be if Pernice's indie-rock life was glammed up by a "Shit My Rock Star Says" sitcom based on "Pernice to Me." Maybe if Costello isn't too busy with his talk show...

Tasty breakfast links!

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis is becoming a rent-a-center, according to a fascinating Edgers p1 piece in the Globe today. ... Louise dug Actors' Shakespeare Project's production of the rarely seen "Timon of Athens," which I wrote about last week. ... JC Lockwood is worth reading on Kristen Miller's new album, "Walk." ... A fascinating, um, real estate brief. Really. ... And oh, yeah, my Friday theater column, about the Stoneham Theatre. ... In Maine, they're hoping the movie about the Wyeth family (Andrew et al) will be made there. ... Big gallery expansion at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. ... phew, enuf.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (Off-topic)

This has nothing to do with the Hub, but it's arts, and I know a lot of folks who are interested...so... Stieg Larsson's thriller "The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" comes out in the U.S. next Tuesday. I'm lucky to know someone who spent the extra Euros to get a copy of the already-released British edition, and I finished reading it at five to midnight last night. It's not a standalone like "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl Who Played With Fire" - you really have to have read the rest of Larsson's Millennium Trilogy to enjoy this one, I think. But if you've read the other two, there's no chance you won't enjoy this.  SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP.

But wait, before you go, please enjoy my contribution to the #lesserbooks thread on Twitter: "The Girl With The Temporary Dragon Tattoo."

Rounder Records, small-press Pulitzer and more

Burlington-based Rounder Records has been sold by its three founders to Beverly Hills-based Concord Music Group. But hold the weeping and gnashing of teeth. They say it's the best way to preserve the labels' independence. Read my story from this morning's Globe. ... Also very much worth reading: Geoff Edgers' profile of  Paul Harding, the Georgetown author who just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, an overnight success that took years. ... Read about the iPhone app that will star this weekend at the Boston International Film Festival. ... A new director for the New England Museum Association. ... A cool photo exhibit in Portland, Me., sort of a 1970s companion piece to the recent Combat Zone exhibit in Boston.

North Shore YA fantasy author signing Sunday

Gloucester author Patrick Doud has penned "The Hunt for the Eye of Ogin," the first of The Winnitok Tales (www.winnitoktales.com) published by North Atlantic Books. It's a the start of a Narnia-esque young adult fantasy series, "with an unusual New England mythos instead of the  European base found in many popular fantasy series."  Boston-area readers will recognize familiar landscapes as the 13-year-old hero, Elwood Pitch, sets off with his dog Slukee on an otherworldly adventure. And Doud will read, answer questions and sign books on Sunday from 3-5 p.m.at The Bookstore of Gloucester, 61 Main Street, Gloucester. Call 978 281-1548 if you need more info.

Bill Janovitz penned a gem. About Prince's solo.

I don't know why "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" keeps coming up. You may remember my long rant back in 2008 about Eric Clapton's autobiography, a book which, to my amazement, scants the one thing I wanted to read about most: the music. His lame passage on "WMGGW," George Harrison's Beatles classic on which Clapton played lead guitar, was the focus of my ire, and that rant was probably the last time I said much about music writing. So here comes the song - and the topic - again. Odd.

Anyway...I must have stopped in at Boston rocker Bill Janovitz's "Cover A Week" project at some point since he started it in late 2008. I'd write more about it, but you should really check it out for yourself, and anyway it's Janovitz the writer I'm here to praise. One of my Facebook or Twitter pals reminded me of the covers project again recently, so I stopped by again to scarf down Janovitz's  versions of a few '70s faves. "Rocket Man" and "The Losing End" for starters.

Harrison's "Isn't It A Pity" was also on offer, as the November 27, 2009, selection, so I clicked to take that too, and WTF ... Janovitz's post about the song starts with a YouTube video of a 2004 memorial Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame performance of "WMGGW," featuring Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and Dhani Harrison and...wait, is that Prince?

I started reading Janovitz's 1,900-WORD DECONSTRUCTION OF THIS SIX MINUTE VIDEO and couldn't stop. (Yes, I pasted the text into Word and did a count.) For those of us who still care about such things, it's a closely observed and loving and caustic examination of the all-star ensemble's perfectly serviceable version of the late Beatle's song, which morphs into something else entirely when Prince steps forward and unleashes a brilliant shitstorm of a guitar solo that goes on and on and clearly delights Dhani while Petty et al remain stonefaced.

I could embed the video here, but screw that. I want you to go read the piece.

I knew Janovitz is a good writer - I asked for his "33 1/3" series book about "Exile on Main Street" a few Christmases ago. There is in fact a ton o' good writing involved in the covers project. And maybe I'm just sick to death of my own prose by this point in the week. But this piece seems to say more about Prince, and about the rock hall, and about what makes good music, that anything else I've read lately. And it does so mainly by listening and looking. I really, really hope someone will have the good sense to nominate this for the Best Music Writing 2009 collection. In fact I just may go see how to do that, as soon as I finish downloading "Isn't It A Pity."

Update: Here's where you can nominate. I'm doing it now. But I may be too late.

Morning reading, week from hell

OK, I haven't been posting much, my apologies. This is day four of a streak of mostly minor heinousness in our life, featuring such phrases as "pit bull" "come in, officer" "shoulder ligaments" "$100 vet bill" "overflowed coffeepot" "water-soaked tax documents" "ripped paycheck" "cat puke in the stereo" and "flip the breaker." None of them as serious as "heart attack" or "shooting spree," and in fact the permanent damage is so far minimal. But still, add in freelance deadlines and I've been a little preoccupied. I've gone from In Box Zero to 114, many of which are press releases that bear reading. But I can't promise any of them will be addressed today.

Other people, damn them, keep writing. If you haven't seen it already, the day's must-read is Geoff's page-one Globe feature on the hanging of the first painting in the MFA's new wing - it's a giant thing. The picture, I mean. (There's video, too.)

In a somewhat related post, Big Red and Shiny offers a peek at construction at the Gardner Museum.

Further inside the Globe, you'll find my theater column, ironically enough on "boom" at the New Rep, which features a timpani-playing docent of the future.

Greg Cook has a typically smart look at the new Golden Books exhibit at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst. Sweet.

Sebastian Smee's take on Roni Horn at the ICA - the opening was something else that got cut from my schedule this week - is worth reading for the lede alone. I think the Shepard Fairey exhibit with its accompanying "bad boy antics" is perhaps the exception that proves Smee's point.

One of the press releases I didn't deal with was the announcement of the Boston Pops' 125th season, embargoed for this morning. The highlight is a Kennedy tribute that was supposed to be narrated by Teddy but will instead honor him as well. The Herald has a rundown.