Hello, Vermont music fans! It's been more than three years since my last Soundbites column, and I'm happy to be back. Current music editor Chris Farnsworth asked me to fill in this week while he delved into the comics world, his unofficial other beat (see "Treasures Told"). I thought it sounded like fun — especially when he told me that Portland, Ore., "little orchestra" Pink Martini were headed toward Vermont this week. The band celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with a massive global tour that includes stops at venues such as Boston Symphony Hall, New York City's Kennedy Center, the Lebanon Opera House on Sunday, October 20, and the Flynn in Burlington on Monday, October 21 — their 77th and 78th shows of 2024. (Browsing the current and past dates on Pink Martini's website, I realized this band basically never stops touring.) Pink Martini and I go way back. The genre-hopping, nostalgia-inducing, old-school-pop band dropped its first album, Sympathique, in 1997 during my first year of high school. I'd wager I was the only 14-year-old boy in my class who preferred the group's luxurious strains of jazz-inflected, midcentury lounge-pop to ... whatever the other boys were listening to. Maybe Guns N' Roses? I'm not sure how the disc made its way into my top-loading CD player. Maybe my music-nut older brother brought it home. However it got there, it fit snugly alongside my compilations of James Bond themes, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Frank Sinatra, and the classic Broadway soundtracks I was listening to at the time. (I didn't discover trip-hop until the following year.) Suffice it to say, it made my inner teenager's day last week when I hopped on a call with Pink Martini's lead vocalist, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist China Forbes. Referring to Pink Martini's evolution over the past 30 years, Forbes said, "It's turned into this thing of its own." Founded by bandleader Thomas Lauderdale, the group arrived during the height of what's sometimes referred to as the '90s cocktail revival, an unofficial reaction to '90s alternative music (i.e., grunge). Bands like Combustible Edison, Squirrel Nut Zippers and Pink Martini reintroduced listeners to a breezy, swingin' style that harked back to a time of sharp edges, big bands and highball glasses. But, Forbes said, "that whole kind of kitschy cocktail thing doesn't really feel part of it anymore, even though it started that way."…