It's funny how, if you wait long enough, people who have been seen as cult acts and a marginal mainstream presence begin to take on the patina of classicism. To wit, Dexter Romweber, the singer and guitarist behind Flat Duo Jets, recently signed a deal with Bloodshot Records. There are those who loved FDJ -- I was ambivalent at best -- but the band was largely ignored. Want proof? What was the band's last album? If you said 1998's Lucky Eye, please show your FDJ fan club card. Regardless, Romweber is back (where's drummer Crow?) as a solo artist. First up, the near-requisite comeback vehicle, a duets album, this one featuring Cat power, Neko Case and Exene Cervenka. He also is joined by his sister, Sara, whose more-impressive pedigree includes stints with Let's Active and Snatches of Pink.

Bloodshot also will issue a new project from author Jonathan Lethem and songwriter Walter Salas-Humara is scheduled for September. You Are All My People from I'm Not Jim. According to Bloodshot, the two met at a Silos show. Lethem wanted to give Salas-Humara some of his books as a thank you for two decades of great music. A friendship ensued, as did a songwriting project that led to an album's worth of music. Salas-Humara said Lethem wrote very quickly:

"We would discuss the framework for a tune and he would be writing while we were talking. Then minutes later he would have several verses with internal rhymes, a chorus and a bridge. I was completely on the spot -- I now had to come up with melodies just as fast. We ended up with 11 songs at the end of day two." The production team The Elegant Too --Philip Hernandez and Chris Maxwell -- then rebuilt Salas-Humara's tracks, sometimes replacing everything but his vocal.

Hard Case Crime will celebrate the release of its 50th book with a party July 8 in New York.That milestone publication -- Fifty-to-One by Hard Case editor Charles Ardai (who wrote two previous HCC books under the name Richard Aleas) -- actually won't come until November, but it's worth celebrating. The idea behind the book is a good one: it's split into 50 chapters, each named after one of the 50 books in the series. "The novel tells the story of how Hard Case Crime was founded in 1958 by a scoundrel who (among other things) thought it might be fun to publish a gangster's memoir -- only to find himself in hot water with both the Mob and the police after learning that the memoir was not quite the true story he'd thought..." Ardai writes.

Several of the people behind the now-defunct music magazine Harp have moved operations online with a new product, Blurt. From the looks of things, it hews very closely to the editorial and design style of Harp, which is certainly not a bad thing. The site

It’s an interesting project: The actual digital magazine is exactly that – a magazine-like publication where the pages are flipped with a click of a button. It feels very much like an issue of Harp online. The content is similar is well, with features on Joan As Policewoman, My Morning Jacket, Ray Davies, My Brightest Diamond, and Alejandro Escovedo, among many others. It also includes CD reviews, as well as those of books, DVDs and merchandise.

Publisher Scott Crawford lauds its “green-minded, digital only format.” A cynic, of course, would remind Crawford that Harp wasn’t worried about the non-greenness of paper until the bottom fell out financially. That said, it’s a nice presentation despite the fact that I’ll miss having a paper copy to cart around.

Blurt also will include a daily-updated web site that offers additional features and interactive content.

Labels: books, crime fiction, magazines, music