Tom Daly, proprietor of the popular Rollinsford-based album replication business, Crooked Cove, reports that Chicagoan Jerry Short has moved back to the area to work with Daly full time. You may recognize the name; Short has been sojourning locally for more than 20 years, making a name for himself by his talents as a singer-songwriter and guitarist. At Crooked Cove, Short’s work will complement their bulk duplication business (wherein the actual replication is done in large factories off-site). He’ll specialize in managing short runs of hand-crafted CDs, which will be produced on the premises in Rollinsford, arriving in artists’ hands shrink-wrapped and ready for retail.

Though defunct, The Elevator Drops—a Boston-based alt-rock band with a Seacoast connection—has a song appearing a just-released film. Given its subject matter, the independently produced “Hellbent” is all but destined to become a cult classic. It’s being billed as the world’s first gay slasher film, a horror/comedy that follows a serial killer in Los Angeles who preys upon a group of young gay men. The band owes this bit of posthumous success to their ex-manager, who now runs a music placement agency that works to hook up artists and their songs with television, film and advertising opportunities. In the late 1990s, the Drops released a couple of well-regarded albums on the Time Bomb label before splitting up. Co-founder David Goolkasian has since gone on to found the zany rock outfit, The Texas Governor. Incidentally, his collaborator in the Elevator Drops is about to release a project of his own, recorded under the name Garvy J.

Last month, area band Broken Window Theory was featured on the nationally-broadcast satellite radio program Unsigned. Each week, the XM Radio show showcases “the twelve most notable artists in the United States.” The dozen lucky artists designated “The Futures,” are chosen weekly from hundreds of submissions. Bands like Broken Window Theory that receive this distinction are added to Unsigned’s regular rotation for several months.