E-Mail This Article to a Friend WEB SINGING Every day is, like, song day BY MIKE MILIARD

"I’ve got the itch," reads the cryptic January 9 entry on Marty Allen’s blog (martystuff.blogspot.com). "I’m thinking February." We’re not sure whether to be eager or fearful, but February is almost here. That’s when, for 30 straight days starting the first of the month and continuing right on through to March 2, Allen will commence writing and recording a jokey jingle each day and posting the track on his site. It’s the third installment of his "Song-a-Day" project, an endurance test of quotidian musicianship and enforced prolificacy that blends the never-know-what-yer-gonna-get mentality exemplified by They Might Be Giants’ long-running "Dial-a-Song" service with the newish phenomenon of the MP3 blog.

It all started last year, when JP resident Allen — a musician, artist, and self-confessed "weird dude" who works at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center when he’s not playing in the band Uncle Monsterface — decided to make a sock puppet every day for a month. "I’ve always been drawn to puppets," he says, with an amorous lilt in his voice. "There’s something really formally elegant about a sock puppet."

Then, after splitting from his previous band, Allen shifted his focus to songwriting to maintain his chops. He says he can spend anywhere from one to five hours conceiving and recording the tunes, which are largely improvised. They’re performed entirely by Allen, using computers, synthesizers, drum machines, and toy instruments. "It’s not like I’m absurdly prolific and have reams and reams of ideas all over the place," he says. "I just love writing songs about the quirkiest, weirdest little things in the world. I’m a little bit obsessed right now with writing songs about learning stuff, so I just wrote a song about frogs [‘The Frog’]. Their eyes help them to swallow. And they drink and they breathe through their skin. And ‘plexus’ is what they do when they get it on."

Allen’s musical influences — the Residents, Oingo Boingo, Ween — are manifest in his Dadaist ditties. And titles like "Balogna the Bear," "Don’t Eat the Baby," and "Allen Ginsberg’s Left Leg" give an idea of his warped world-view. Still, songs like "I Ain’t No Train" and "I Ain’t No Vampire" show Allen defining himself, however peculiarly, via his music. " ‘I Ain’t No Vampire’ is just sort of a quirky notion: that, when soda and blood are reversed, I would never buy soda, [so] I’m not a vampire. It’s a strange train of thought," he says with great understatement. " ‘I Ain’t No Train’ is more of a play on words — like, in my own mind I’m thinking about the notion of chewing: that trains go ‘choo-choo-choo’ and the fact that I chew doesn’t make me a train."

There’ll be a whole new batch of as-yet-unheard — indeed, as-yet-undreamed-of — songs as the shortest month rolls on. And even if the 30 newest songs will be "a little more polished, but won’t necessarily be better" than his first five dozen, Allen says he loves ’em all equally. "They’re like my little children. There’s something I love about just about all of them. Which is amazing. I can go back and say, ‘Oh, I love this little song!’ or ‘Oh, I love that little song!’ "

He also loves the discipline the project imposes on his art, and says he’d go crazy if he were somehow forced to miss a day. "When I put a constraint or a rule on myself, I really feel compelled to stick with it. I’m totally and utterly compelled to do it. There has been no emergency yet that has pulled me away. There was one day when I was feverish and trapped somewhere, and one of my favorite songs, ‘Fight the Giant Eye,’ was written then."

The response from the listening public has made it worth it, too. Allen says the past two Song-a-Day installments found devotees logging on regularly, downloading their daily digitized bits with wild-eyed fervor. Even better, shortly after completing the first go-round this past July, Allen was sitting in a bar when "a girl came up to me who I didn’t even know, and was like, ‘When do you start volume two?’ "

Huh! Art-project MP3 blogs help guys meet chicks? "Absolutely. Hey, that’s what rock and roll is all about."

Starting Tuesday, February 1, hear a song a day at martystuff.blogspot.com. If your connection is too slow for downloads, e-mail marty@martystuff.comfor a burned compact disc.