By the booker

T.T.'s has scored more than its share of coups in recent months: two crowded nights with the Muffs in the spring, three sold-out Robyn Hitchcock shows in one weekend, Son Volt and Southern Culture on the Skids on separate nights last month, a Fleshtones /Prime Movers bash in late summer, Social Distortion's first local gig in three years, and a worshipfully received solo debut by Mike Peters of the Alarm (who returns to T.T.'s next Wednesday). On the Boston front, it's snared the recent album-release gigs by the Dirt Merchants and Smackmelon, plus the best local shows that Come and Kustomized have probably ever played. And the hits just keep coming. In the next 10 days alone, T.T.'s has two plums: the local debut of the Joan Jett/Gits collaboration Evil Stig (this Friday) and a spoken-word performance by Lydia Lunch and Exene Cervenka (next Friday, December 1).

One may well wonder how McDonald landed all these shows without getting outbid or outmaneuvered. And she's not revealing her trade secrets. But she does point out that "I work really, really hard; I still do a 10-hour day. In the beginning I made a lot of outgoing calls, and I listen to the radio constantly and go after something I want as soon as I hear it." She also changed the club's focus somewhat. Its previous incarnations - including a stint being booked by Don Law - did something of an indie/mainstream mix, but McDonald cast her lot almost exclusively with indie rock. "I shoot high, and believe me, I go through a lot of trouble to make it work. The one thing I wanted to do was to use the room to its fullest potential." Meaning that there were some lame bookings there for a while? McDonald lets a smile slip out but keeps her lips sealed.

But she's no stranger to jumping in at the deep end. After graduating from UMass/Amherst she went to work for RCA for a couple of years while doing cocktail waitressing at the Tam in Brookline. After lobbying for months she got the chance to book a band and chose Third Estate (now Slide), who got lines around the block. But her best effort at the Tam was probably the weekly "women in rock" series, which drew an impressive round of rising stars (Jennifer Trynin, Letters to Cleo, Helium, and Talking to Animals, plus established ones like Laurie Sargent and Aimee Mann) and may have marked the last gasp of Boston as a male-dominated scene. The concept of "women in rock" nights has since been scoffed at by some of the players involved, notably Trynin, but McDonald maintains that "it was necessary at the time, to show the people that were coming up. And it hadn't been done around here before." A change of management ultimately got her sacked from the Tam; she linked up with T.T.'s less than 24 hours later.

There's one downside to McDonald's efforts: the more successful T.T.'s gets, the more nights there'll be when the place gets uncomfortably packed. A few of those sweatbox shows have taken place lately, but the all-time champion may be a two-night homecoming stand that Jennifer Trynin did on the hottest weekend of last summer. It was the kind of show where you could lose five pounds just by being there. McDonald offers an explanation: "One of the customers touched the thermostat and turned the heat up to 90 - I swear that's what happened." And she promises that T.T.'s long-rumored remodeling is coming soon, when the stage will be moved to the center of the main room, comfortably reconfiguring space without changing the capacity.

If you run into McDonald at T.T.'s, you might well mistake her for a frontwoman in a band. Her Madonna-esque fashion statements have lately raised some eyebrows - notably in local 'zine the Noise, where a photo that accompanied a profile of her generated an angry letter asking why a competent booking agent should have to be photographed cheesecake-style in Victoria's Secret garb. Little did the writer realize this is what she usually looks like. "I let people think anything they want of me. In the case of the Noise, it was that photographer's version of how she wanted to present me - she took a good number of photos, but they used a certain one for whatever reason."

McDonald is used to being on stage: she's performed as a dancer at various times since she was five and was a member of the Tyler Robbins dance company until recently. She also plays piano and guitar. Surprising, then, that she never took the plunge and got herself a rock band.

"Well, maybe that's my next venture."

SCHNEIDER MEETS SFS.

"Fred was adamant about having the album not sound new-wavy," reports bassist James Apt. "He wanted straight rock, so it's more straight-ahead than we usually are, with hardly any synth. The demos that we got were minimal enough that we could amplify certain aspects of the songs."

You might wonder how SFS's brittle, experimental tendencies will mesh with Schneider's persona, but Apt reports that the songs are less jovial than usual. "There's certainly more aggression on this record than anything I've heard from him. I've heard the tracks he did with Shadowy Men as well, and I think we both approached it the same way. It's got the same feel as the first two PiL albums, so there's some of the warmth of reggae and dub."

One of the songs SFS played on, "Stroke of Genius," was written by ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones; the other two are Schneider's. "There's one called `Bad Dream' where we went for a Stooges sound; it's got that Detroit vibe to it. Mostly Fred said, `Do whatever you want, I trust you guys.' "

The album has a tentative spring release date, though Apt points out that "he hasn't turned it in yet, so there's always a chance that the label could pull the plug." SFS also went into the studio on their own last weekend to record a single, "Man Behind the Glasses"/"Massive Cocaine Seizure," which will be out early in the new year.

WYNN MEETS FELICE.

Q DIVISION DEAL.

"Basically, they give us some funds to make indie records and they get a first look at everything we do," explains Q Division's Jon Lupfer. "It's like a demo deal, except they're funding indie records rather than demos. If they don't want to put something out, we can take it somewhere else." So far, the only thing certain to appear on Q Division/Columbia is Expanding Man's debut album, which will be recorded over the winter. But Q Division is also sitting on completed albums by Gravel Pit and Brian Stevens, which will be submitted to Columbia but indie-released in the meantime. (Copies of Stevens's Prettier Than You CD are now hitting local shops.) Also at Q Division, Talking to Animals have wrapped up work on their second album. The first, a three-year-old effort produced by Kevin Salem, unfortunately appears to be shelved for good.

COMING UP

Birdsongs of the Mesozoic make one of their infrequent club gigs at Mama Kin Sunday; Culture - makers of the reggae classic "Two Sevens Clash" that gave a certain punk band their name - hit the adjacent Music Hall . . . The latest jagged-pop thang from Alias Records, Knapsack, hit the Middle East Sunday . . . And there's an unusually wide range of options on Wednesday: country outlaw Billy Joe Shaver is at Johnny D's, Mike Peters is at T.T.'s, Honkyball are at Axis, Silos leader Walter Salas-Humara is at the Middle East, songwriting trio ALT (the "T" is Crowded House/Split Enz member Tim Finn) play Mama Kin. And major fans of Hootie and Counting Crows might want to check out Ben Arnold, a Philly songwriter who does that sorta thing. He's at the Tam Wednesday.