PLAYBACK St. Louis Pop Culture

june 2004

p ayback st. louis pop culture

DAVID SEDARIS: UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY pete timmermann at cannes twangfest program—marah interview interviews: spoon, dilated peoples, the darkness, the lost trailers reviews: morrissey, velvet revolver, and david foster wallace

www.playbackstl.com

TWANGFEST 8

Be sure to check out these special events at

FREDERICK’S MUSIC LOUNGE (4454 Chippewa)

It’s the most vibrant, diverse, fan-oriented and just plain fun music event around today.

Wednesday, JUNE 9 (at the SCHLAFLY TAP ROOM)

The REDWALLS (Chicago, IL) FROG HOLLER (Virginsville, PA) DANNY BARNES (Seattle, WA) ANNA FERMIN’S TRIGGER GOSPEL (Chicago, IL)

JUNE 9 at the SCHLAFLY TAP ROOM at the ST. LOUIS BREWERY, 2100 Locust St, St Louis. Tickets available at the door only.

JUNE 10-12 at the DUCK ROOM, downstairs at BLUEBERRY HILL, 6504 Delmar, University City. ADVANCE TICKETS available via METROTIX: www.metrotix.com, 800.293.5949 or 314.534.1111 and at the DUCK ROOM Box Office.

SATURDAY, JUNE 5 MIKE IRELAND & HOLLER and TOMMY WOMACK

Come early and enjoy the EXTENDED HAPPY HOUR! 5pm–10pm $1.00 draft beer and $1.50 longnecks

Free Entry If You Show Your Twangfest 8 Three-Day Pass at the Door!

SATURDAY, JUNE 12 • 1pm to 5pm • FREE TWANGCLIPS: GREAT COUNTRY & ALT.COUNTRY VIDEO

Thursday, JUNE 10 (at the DUCK ROOM)

MARAH (Philadelphia, PA) The HANDSOME FAMILY (Albuquerque, NM) CARY HUDSON (Oxford, MS) ADRIENNE YOUNG & LITTLE SADIE (Nashville, TN) Friday, JUNE 11 (at the DUCK ROOM)

ROBBIE FULKS (Chicago, IL) PAUL BURCH & the WPA BALLCLUB (Nashville, TN) SUSANNA VAN TASSEL & JIM STRINGER & the AUSTIN MUSIC BAND (Austin, TX) GREY DELISLE (Los Angeles, CA)

Sponsors:

Saturday, JUNE 12 (at the DUCK ROOM)

GRAND CHAMPEEN (Austin, TX) The BIGGER LOVERS (Philadelphia, PA) TWO COW GARAGE (Columbus, OH) The WHILERS (Columbus, OH)

MORE INFO: www.twangfest.com info@twangfest.com

June 2004

PLAYBACK– TALK

TORCH AND TWANG I don’t know how to say this humbly, so I will just come right out and say it: this is the best issue of Playback St. Louis ever to hit the streets. In your hands at this moment is all you need to read; there is nothing better for you to borrow, beg, or buy. The June issue contains a number of interviews that truly excite us: bestselling author David Sedaris, considered by many the top humorist in the world today; Britt Daniels of Spoon, whose CDs are the ideal soundtrack for cool; and The Darkness, who bring glam back to the Pageant this month. Pete Timmermann, a stalwart of Playback, sacrificed himself for two weeks with the hard labor that movie critics just hate: he covered the Cannes Film Festival in France. Pete saw a whopping 47 films while there (and apparently had to climb a fence or two).

Finally, Twangfest 8 hits town this month. We are pleased to have an eight-page pullout in the center of Playback that gives you all the details, along with an interview with Dave Bielanko of Marah, the Philly band on everyone’s lips these days. T8’s fantastic lineup also includes Grand Champeen, Robbie Fulks, and the Redwalls.

June is a very full month in St. Louis, and there is no better place to read about it but here in Playback St. Louis. So join us, whether to Twang, glam, or shimmy down the red carpet of film.

Playback St. Louis: Get used to it.

Hotter Than a House in Summer

The magazine looks great, reads great. Best in town. I always knew it was, though. I pick it up every month and got a stack of ’em that would prolly impress even you guys. Start charging money for it!

I’ve been traveling this past year, and writing, and meeting new people, trying to evolve. I was wondering if you guys might, in the months ahead, consider a small feature on my new band, Banging Bride. You’ve been so kind to this project in the past, and finally I think I have assembled a group of players who can truly show you what this is really about.

Hope all is well and you’re not working too hard! Lemme know if anything cool is happenin’ around town that I should see or hear.

I need to get out more.

—Phil Valencia Banging Bride (ex-Summerhouse)

South by Midwest

Thanks so much for being a part of making SXSW 2004 a grand success. Enclosed is a copy of the SXSW program book which contains your ad. May you enjoy a healthy, peaceful, and prosperous year.

—Ron Suman SXSW Marketing Executive Staff

A Plea of Appreciation

Thanks so much for the great feature on Mike Park and the Plea for Peace tour. Hope you enjoyed the show.

—Miya Asian Man Records

cosponsored events in June:

and BALLWIN

CREVE COEUR

6/18: Mark Biehl 6/26: Keith Sherman

6/12: Mitch Byrd 6/16: Vince Madison (7 pm) 6/18: Lilia Griffin 6/19: Precho

15355A Manchester Rd. 636-230-2992

Brentwood

1519 S. Brentwood Blvd.

314-918-8189

6/5: Mitsu Saito 6/12: James Klueh 6/19: Wydown 5/22: 2 am

11745 Olive Blvd.

314-432-3575

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS 6611 N. Illinois 618-397-6097

6/4: Freeze the Hopper 6/11: Hardly Portland 6/18: Mark Byrd 6/19: The Harpers

6/20: Andi & I (2-4 pm) ST. PETERS

1320 Mid Rivers Mall Dr. 636-278-5000

SUNSET HILLS

10990 Sunset Hills Plaza 314-909-0300

6/18: Philip Wesley

6/10: The Barnacles SOUTH County

25 South County Centerway 314-892-1700

6/5: Freeze the Hopper 6/18: The Barnacles 6/19: Brian McClelland of Maxtone 4 *All shows 8-10 pm unless noted

A Great Big Wet Kiss

Just want to offer a hearty thank you for your May issue—both for the “Sampling of Local Theaters” but also the feature on Hydeware, one of my favorite local companies and one definitely deserving of some attention.

What a great big wet kiss for the local theatre community! We all owe you big thanks.

—Scott Miller Artistic Director, New Line Theatre

And Another

I love the magazine; it’s the best source of music information I’ve ever read.

—Bill Forness Watercast (ex–Fragile Porcelain Mice)

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

Patrice Pike at her April 30 Off Broadway show (photo courtesy Women in Rock, Inc.):

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Playback St. Louis Pop Culture

Contents Profile

Spoon......................................................... 3 The Lost Trailers........................................ 4 The Darkness............................................. 5 Dilated Peoples.......................................... 6

Play by Play................... 9

Morrissey, Bad Religion, Louise Huffsten, Loretta Lynn, Murs, onelinedrawing, Pedro the Lion, Seachange, Shalini, Waterloo

Backstage Pass

Festival: Coachella.................................... 7 Concerts.................................................. 16 Velvet Revolver, Clinic, Destroyer

Curmudgeon................. 26 Take Five....................... 28 Red Eyed Driver

Elliot Goes................... 28 Local Scenery.............. 29 Page by Page................. 30 David Foster Wallace

Delirious Nomad.......... 33 What’s Going on Here?

Yo La Tengo, Richard Thompson Band, Pridefest, Shellac..................................... 34

Three to See................. 17 Cover Story.................. 20 David Sedaris

Now Playing

Cinema: Saved!, On the Run, Valentin.22 Festival: Cannes...................................... 25

You Are Here................ 24

Publisher Two Weasels Press LLC Managing Editor Laura Hamlett Associate Editor/Art Director Jim Dunn Contributing Editor Bryan A. Hollerbach Book Editor Stephen Schenkenberg Film Editor Bobby Kirk Live Music Editor Brian McClelland Creative Consultant Christopher Gustave

Special Twangfest Program Insert

With Twangfest 8 Schedule–June 9-12 Pieces of Eight........................................... T-1 Marah........................................................ T-2 Grand Champeen..................................... T-3

Public Art

Read Pete Timmermann’s Report from the Cannes Film Festival Page 25

Contributing Writers J. Church, Joshua Cox, Thomas Crone, Andrew Friedman, Jessica Gluckman, Laura Hamlett, Dan Heaton, Cory Hoehn, Bryan A. Hollerbach, Byron Kerman, Bobby Kirk, John Kujawski, Rob Levy, Rachel McCalla, Brian McClelland, Sean Moeller, Larry O’Neal, Wade Paschall, Kevin Renick, Andrew Scavatto, Stephen Schenkenberg, Emiily Spreng Lowery, Pete Timmerman, Ross Todd, Anne Valente, Steven Vance Interns Jesy Jones, Anne Valente Advertising Sales Color Rates Now Available!

Jim Dunn • 314-630-6404 or Advert@playbackstl.com Distribution Two Weasels Press LLC Playback St. Louis is published Monthly. Current circulation is 14,000. ©All content copyright Playback St. Louis 2004. No material may be reproduced without permission.

For advertising rates, submissions, band listings, or any other information, please check our Web site at www.playbackstl.com or send e-mail correspondence to Contact@Playbackstl.com.

The Tivoli Theatre and the RFT present the always amazing midnight film series — Friday and Saturday nights through the summer. You can win free pairs of tickets to the showings every week from Playback St. Louis. Just sign up for our weekly Events Page mailings at EVENTS@PLAYBACKSTL.COM or check out the Events Page at www.playbackstl.com/Events.

5/28, 29, 30 – Reservoir Dogs 5/28, 29, 30 & 6/4, 5 – A Clockwork Orange 6/4, 5, 11, 12 – Blazing Saddles 6/11, 12, 18, 19 –Forbidden Zone 6/18, 19, 25, 26 – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 6/25, 26 & 7/2, 3 – The Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy 7/2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17 – Moulin Rouge!

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June 2004

PBSTL PROFILE SPOON

SPOON

LITTLE ACCIDENTS

By Brian McClelland

by Brian McClelland

I

f you’ve heard “Everything Hits at Once,” the first track on Spoon’s 2001 breakthrough Girls Can Tell, you’ve heard the most sublime opening track ever put to tape.

It’s a perfect pop song, with the most unusually beautiful, slightly broken voice slurring “Don’t say a word/The last one’s still stingin’” over a melancholy bounce of electric piano and hollow-body guitar. You immediately want to replay it. Unless you happen to catch a bit of the next track. Or the one after that.

It’s then you realize: they’re all that good. The Austin, Texas, four-piece managed to follow that masterpiece with an even more highly acclaimed effort, 2002’s adventurous Kill the Moonlight, which incorporated self-created samples and loops into their already unique mix, often leaving out the rock altogether.

Singer/songwriter Britt Daniel called from Austin, where the band is midway through recording their fifth release, tentatively titled The Beast and Dragon Are Adored. Daniel was preparing for Spoon’s summer tour—a chance to preview new material and simply take a break from the studio—bringing them through St. Louis for the first time since 1998.

I think there’s an air of mystery to the band. Not a lot of info gettin’ out.

The mystery is unintentional.

Not like Jandek.

Right.

[After a prolonged moment of silence, I’m about to give him a pass.]

Um, I grew up in Texas. Would you have guessed that?

Yeah, we knew that.

Oh. Although when I’ve played the Girls Can Tell record for people, they invariably think you’re British, because of this unusual accent in your singing voice.

You know, I never mean to do that. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m remembering

BRITT DANIEL photo by LAURA HAMLETT

when I was a kid I was in choir, in elementary school, the way they taught us to sing was to sing like you’re British. Instead of “ar,” you say “ah.” You don’t sing “car,” you sing “cahhh.”

That was the proper way to sing on stage when you were ten years old, so you didn’t sound like a Texan. And maybe that stuck with me.

Do you think it had anything to do with your early influences, the first bands you fell in love with?

The first band I was really into, that I took it upon myself to be into, was the Bee Gees, when I was eight. They’re Australian, right?

What era of the Bee Gees would this be?

It was around the time of Saturday Night Fever and Spirits Having Flown, which was the record after that. I was…a mega fan. It was the first concert I ever saw. In Austin, at the Frank Erwin Center. I was eight.

I have a question about Girls Can Tell.

Listening to the record, it sounds like the first half of the vocals were recorded differently than the second half. Like the first half was recorded in a bathroom and the second half wasn’t. They’re both great sounds, but was it intentional?

I don’t know; I hadn’t thought about that before. Um, what’s on the first half? There’s “Everything Hits at Once”; I think that there’s sort of a slap-back on that. Probably it was just some unintentional thing.

Recorded in the same studio?

Yeah, we didn’t record it in a bathroom. The most lo-fi one on the record is “Lines in the Suit.” We recorded it ourselves, in 1999, on a borrowed eight-track. It was the most do-it-yourself. I mean, all of our records are pretty do-ityourself, but at that time we didn’t know what we were doing. We had just rented someone’s eight-track, which was uncalibrated, and it sounds pretty crappy, fidelity-

wise, but we didn’t feel we could improve on the take.

The lo-fi-ness comes off as intentional.

It just didn’t sound as if we could improve on it. It was just too good a version of the song.

So we didn’t, even when we did rerecord a bunch of songs for Girls Can Tell that we had done during that session, we chose not to redo that one.

On Kill the Moonlight’s “Jonathan Fisk,” am I hearing temp vocal tracks shouted in the background?

Yeah, we recorded that one live in the studio. The studio is one room, really, but we were all in that room. And so, yeah, I was singing the songs as we were recording it live and then later went in and did vocal overdubs, but, still, because it was such a live room, you can hear that original vocal take.

Once again, it sounds intentional. It’s a lot of fun.

I think the best things about recording are those little accidents. You do intentionally decide to leave them on there, but a lot of people get freaked out by accidents. They think, well, we didn’t intend to do it that way, so it’s not right. But, if you think about it, anything goes.

Does the band have any long-term plans, besides just finishing the record?

Long-term plans? You know, just making my fortune. I’m looking forward to getting done with [the record], you know, to have enough time to move somewhere, in Austin, or somewhere else. I’m sick of living here in this apartment.

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PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

PBSTL PROFILE THE LOST TRAILERS

THE LOST TRAILERS

by Andrew Scavatto

T

he Lost Trailers are constantly touring in support of their major label debut, Welcome to the Woods (Universal), and they’re bringing their unique brand of heartland rock to the Duck Room on June 26. Fans can expect a heavy dosage of material from Welcome to the Woods, but don’t be surprised to hear some “underground” favorites from the band’s independent releases thrown in as well, such as “Horse,” “Redneck Girl,” and “Fairweather Queen.” I got the chance to talk to singer/guitarist/songwriter Stokes Nielsen in anticipation of the show, and here’s what he had to say about the album, the heavy touring, and the upcoming show in St. Louis…

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You’re always on the road. Why do you place so much emphasis on the live show?

I think it’s just very important to get your message directly to the people, and we feel like there’s no better way to do that than by getting out and exploring the country. Music is so different than anything else—you get such a palpable response and you really make a connection with the audience—and to us that’s the most important part of this, that connection between band and audience. If you look at who our big influences are—you know, Springsteen, Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson—these are acts that all tour incessantly, especially in the beginning of their careers.

We did

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shows in 26 days last month, and instead of feeling tired when we got back to Atlanta, we were really energized, because you realize how many people you’re able to get your music to.

So you’re looking forward to 6/26 in St. Louis?

St. Louis has a special place in our hearts, because not only is it a great place to play a show, but if you look at the history of rock ’n’ roll, St. Louis plays a big part of it…and where else can you go to Sauget, Illinois after the show? This will be our first weekend show in St. Louis, and that’s something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time.

Your favorite St. Louis moment so far?

After the last Duck Room show, [drummer] Jeff Potter stage-diving at Pop’s, into a crowd of three people at 4 a.m…and getting kicked out.

You present a wide range of issues, topics, and stories on Welcome To the Woods.

Is there a common theme that runs throughout this album?

The album is bound by this idea of love and struggle, which is something I felt when I was experiencing both the passion of playing music and also the struggle that it takes to do something that you love. The album shows these stories of real people struggling for what they love. Some critics have described the music as “over earnest,” or too serious, and

the reason for that is because it was a serious times for us. I was waking up in D.C. on a couch with negative $100 in my banking account, just thinking to myself, hell, this has to work. But at the same time, I was enjoying playing music more than ever, because music is such an important thing to me.

Your songwriting definitely has a literary, storytelling aspect to it.

I do read a lot, and I love good writing. I know that it’s not the hippest thing to write like that, and you don’t have a lot of storybased songs on the radio… The thing I’ve always liked about Springsteen is that he made stories into pop music format—which is really the genius of him, Dylan, Johnny Cash—so I just always loved the idea of being able to tell a story through a song.

How did the band get its name?

Ryder Lee [keyboards/vocals] and I were playing in this band in Nashville and our trailer full of equipment got stolen from outside of the apartment, and Ryder was just driving around the parking lot; he couldn’t really believe that it was stolen. I came up to him, and he said, “I lost the trailer,” and I just always thought that was a good name.

And the album?

Welcome to the Woods came after meeting with Willie Nelson. I asked what the secret was to making it in music, and he said, “If you build a house of quality in the woods, the world will beat a path to your doorstep.” That

June 2004

PBSTL PBSTLPROFILE PROFILE

THE DARKNESS: THY NAME IS RELEASE

THE OMAR DARKNESS EPPS

by Sean Moeller

A

m I wrong, or are people scared to have a good time? Everyone wants to be sophisticated and acting their age for hours and lives on end. Let your balls hang low and your boobs hang out, I say. There should be no judging in the name of release.

Do you have to have a logical reason for sliding headfirst down three flights of stairs for a free slice of pizza? Can’t anything simply be for the spontaneity that “the hell of it” used to bring? Is it too much to ask that such behavior not be cedar-chested past the age of 23? My answer, for all of us, is: No, it is not too much to ask.

Begrudge me, if you will, for wanting all rock stars to feel that, should the wind blow the right way, they could make a go of slipping into a Valentine-ishly pink catsuit with a semicircular belly cutout that reveals most of the pectorals, all of the chest hair, and a flaming orange tattoo that budges right down into the nether regions where all of the unspoken business culminates and quakes. Does it seem ridiculous to respect someone who was once quoted as saying that his particular band was an “improvement on sliced bread?”

The Darkness are a little like that feeling

“It’s about time for rock ’n’ roll to be fun again,” Darkness guitarist Dan Hawkins said.

“The last few years, I rarely went to gigs,” “Some of these bands take themselves so fucking seriously these days.”

The band’s recent, 19-date spring tour of the U.S. was completely sold out—but I wonder how much of that comes from actual appreciation and how much from the desire to witness the funny little man (lead singer Justin Hawkins, of the widow’s peak and the jewel-straight grin) with the voice that can sky past the timber tops and the saggy, shiny get-ups. Their debut album, Permission to Land, with songs as amusingly catchy as anything an American band’s done in decades, has reached quadruple platinum (1,200,000 copies) status in the U.K. We seem to still be testing the waters, taking only 500,000 records from U.S. shelves. For whatever reason, much of the this country is happier blowing their bills on Usher and Evanescence, one an annoying pretty boy and the other one of the saddest bunch of mopes who probably get depressed when tickled.

ist Frankie Poullain. “So far, it’s going well.

But we keep banging our heads on the ceiling.

[These] things weren’t meant for tall people.”

Poullain said they’ve got some outrageous ideas to try to take rock even further than they already have. They’ve got Outkast’s blessing.

“Andre 3000 came up to me at the MTV Europe Awards and said, ‘“Friday Night,” that kills me. That’s the greatest song on the record,’” Poullain said. “I think we have more in common with [Outkast and Black Eyed Peas] than we do with bands like Jet. And we get along better with them. They look back at the past and add some color to it. We don’t think it’s sacred. Rock history tells us you can be playful with it.”

The life Poullain’s lived is described by Hawkins as a “web of deceit,” and the man with affinities for power napping and flowing, leopard-printed scarves is proud of the fact that he’s never paid taxes in his life.

Before the band took off, “I’d been struggling, doing all kinds of dingy jobs,” he said.

“My life’s kind of like Crime and Punishment

by Dostoyevsky.”

you would get if someone drove a brand new car direct from the assembly line, then handed you a nice, fire-tempered Louisville Slugger and said, “Hey, how would you like to beat the shit out of this car for me?” Because, really, what warm-blooded person wouldn’t be up for doing something so blatantly destructive if no one got hurt and there were no repercussions?

Still, these four men have been given over to the hounds on the perception that they are nothing more than a joke band, something in the way of a Weird-Al-Yankovic-sings-Thin Lizzy-doing-Queen.

“We had to fight fucking hard to get where we are now. We just kept plugging away at it.

We were playing to 20 people in pubs a year ago,” Hawkins said. “We’re not a statement or a reaction. We’re just doing our thing.”

Before heading to Japan and back to the U.S., the band was writing material for their sophomore album—which Hawkins vows will be “the best second record ever”—holed up in a country retreat in England.

“It’s a 16th century estate. We’re just trying to recapture the feeling of the first record,” said mysterious, handlebar-mustachioed bass-

It’s gotten considerably better. The difficulties now are in balancing the hours and the demands. And that’s about all. The exiled Scot said that the success of a couple hit songs about love in twisted varieties has given the four chums more good times than hassle.

“It’s probably harder for Justin, walking into a pub and having a lot of twats come up to him. To be honest, there’s a lot more you can do than you can’t do when you get to this point,” Poullain said. “It opens up a lot of freedom.”

Freedom to live and black shuck the

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PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

PBSTL PROFILE DILATED PEOPLES

ME ’N’ BABU

by Andrew Friedman

I

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got into underground rap through my brother, who was all up in it. He used to furiously trade badly dubbed tapes of independent rap singles from around the country on the Internet. This was before indie rap was welldistributed, and way before MP3 culture; these tapes were practically the only way to hear what was hot and local across the country. I used to steal some of these tapes, and they blew my mind. I was really amazed that someone hid this shit under the gangsta rap for so long.

A tape I literally wore out had Blacklicious’s debut EP, Melodica on one side, and selected Dilated Peoples tracks on the flip. Many years have passed and both groups have signed major-label contracts without those pesky creative control clauses, allowing them to keep it 100 percent real. I spoke with DJ Babu of Dilated, who just released their third album on Capitol, Neighborhood Watch.

How does Neighborhood Watch differ from the other two Dilated Peoples albums?

I think, as far as the group goes, the first two albums pretty much showed everyone we’re a rap group: we can make beats, we can scratch and all that. But I think on this one we’re really showing the world we can really craft songs and craft an entire album. I think the vision on this one is a lot more focused; the chemistry of the group is that much stronger and I think it reflects on the music.

The first singles off Neighborhood Watch feature artists like Kanye West and Devin the Dude, who definitely aren’t the same flavor as older Dilated work. Any other surprises coming up?

Those are the most surprising to anyone who’s been familiar with Dilated. There are other guest producers on there.

We got a cat by the name Reef who did “Try to Breathe.”

But really, Evidence and Rakaa, when they started this group, before I even came into the group, neither of them produced. They were very much from the school of going to producers and getting beat tapes

and trying to achieve a sound by working with outside producers. If you look at all our albums, we’ve always gone out of our way to collaborate, whether it was with T-Ray or Primo or the Beatnuts…now with this album, it’s Devin and Kanye. To us it’s nothing new; just some people we’re big fans of and we thought we could collaborate to achieve a new level with our sound.

Which Dilated album is your favorite?

It’s hard to say right now. I’d like to see how I feel about Neighborhood Watch in a year or so, or two years; let it stand the test of time. But right now, I’m really into Neighborhood Watch; I think it’s our best work so far. Actually, we had this album done at the top of summer, so I became sick of it and stopped listening to it for the majority of last year. Now that the video’s coming out and the label’s all into it and everyone’s getting ready for the big push, it definitely rekindled my flame toward the album again. It’s exciting to have it finally hit the streets. I’m also fond of Expansion Team. Expansion Team was really nice for me because that was the first one where I really spread my wings as one of the internal producers for the group.

The group originally started as just the emcees. How did you get involved?

About the same time these guys started putting out independent 12 inches on ABB Records—this must have been ’96 or ’97—I was a manager at Fat Beats, a record store in L.A. I still remember Ev and Raaka literally bringing records from the Rainbow Pressing Plant over to the store to sell to me. At the same time, I was DJing on the radio, and I was really trying to do a lot to break their music; I was a big fan. When I moved to L.A., we all geographically started being in the same kind of circles. It started like, “Why don’t you come down to the studio and do some cuts?” “We got a show down at the Wilshire. Why don’t

you come down? We’ll put a show together.”

Before you knew it, I was flying all over the world, doing shows with them, getting courted by record labels, and the guys hit me up about making a full-time commitment.

The rest is history.

I guess it’s turned out well?

Very much. When I think about it now, what really drew me to hip-hop as a youngster, was DJs and rap groups, whether it was EPMD or UTFO or Run DMC. That’s what it was about to me, and I’m really honored and proud to be Dilated’s DJ. It’s a dream job to me.

How do you feel about the position of the DJ in American culture?

I think it’s great, man, I think there’s a little bit of oversaturation. It was just the other day I turned on the TV and saw Tony the Tiger cuttin’ it up. It’s a double-edged sword.

DJing’s definitely penetrated pop culture in more ways than a few, but I think the identity of the DJ is great. You see a lot of DJs who can go out there without having to be held up by a rap group or anything else; they can just go out and DJ themselves. You look at a DJ like Tony Touch or DJ Skribble or even in other genres, house and techno DJs—those guys are making hundreds of thousands off just being a DJ. I think the standard of being a DJ is great.

Does it ever bother you to think that, in some way, the idea of the DJ is being exploited?

As much as some purists will knock it— “Aww man, they’re playin shit out”—it’s a beautiful thing, it really is, to think that DJs have moved to this point where [they] can be self-sufficient and create careers and jobs out of this. It’s a beautiful thing. I understand, there’s always the hardcore cats like, “Fuck that shit, fuck Tony the Tiger scratching.

Why’s Ronald McDonald got headphones and turntables?” But I think that’s what pop culture does: they take advantage and bastardize anything they can make a quick buck off of, so it’s inevitable. If you expect something to elevate, you’re going to see positive and negative ripples throughout the pond.

Dilated Peoples’ third album, Neighborhood

June 2004

BACKSTAGE PASS

COACHELLA FESTIVAL

INDIE ROCKIN’ IN INDIO:

One Woman’s Experience at Coachella 2004

by Rachel McCalla

E

ach year, I travel to Indio, California, to stand for two days in stifling heat in a valley called Coachella. Coachella is a two-day music and art extravaganza that hosts up to 70 bands, an independent film festival, an art and sculpture garden, and a handful of exhibitors. Considered the premier outdoor music event in the U.S., Coachella is by far the finest concert I have ever experienced. All of the packing, flying, driving, standing, walking, running, waiting, spending, backaches, dirty feet, sweaty pits, and sunburns is completely worth it.

Coachella has made a name for itself by booking the hottest, coolest, hippest bands.

2004 was a record-breaking year, with attendance reaching 100,000. With so many bands, I’ve decided to compare performances, give a few highlights, and complain only once.

The Pixies vs. Radiohead

It felt as if everyone came to see The Pixies. Even Thom Yorke noted that when he was a young man, The Pixies changed his life. And in a way, The Pixies did not disappoint.

They sounded better than any band I have ever seen. They were playing in a freckin’ desert and sounded exactly like their records. They played all the oldies, too: “Debaser,” “Gigantic,” “Wave of Mutilation,” and “Caribou.” Yet they didn’t embellish any songs. They didn’t react or even look at one another, and forget about talking to the crowd—they played straightforward for 60 minutes with no flair. Yes, they were tight— but shouldn’t they be? They’ve been playing the same songs for over 15 years. I hate to say it, but The Pixies were stale.

It was rumored that Radiohead might not play, having canceled a show in Australia a week before due to illness. Yet Radiohead indeed took the stage and, once again, their

performance was flawless, confirming that they are one of the best rock ’n’ roll bands of their time. Sticking mostly to songs from Hail to the Thief, the band played only a few from The Bends and Ok Computer. “Fade In” was especially beautiful. The band ended the set with “Creep,” on which Yorke unexpectedly shined on this song. He left us all feeling he was really cool and completely misunderstood.

The Rapture vs. The (Int’l.)

Noise Conspiracy

In 2003, before the release of Echoes, The Rapture played on a smaller stage and were one of the most talked-about bands of the festival.

Due to heavy touring and ever-increasing fame, this year the band was on the second outdoor stage. It doesn’t matter how many times you listen to their album or see them live, The Rapture are going to get you to jump, twist, dance, and move. They played a majority of songs from Echoes, with “Sister Savior” being especially delightful. However, “The Coming of Spring” sent the crowd into a dancing frenzy.

Typically, The (International) Noise Conspiracy can get a crowd moving too.

Unfortunately, they decided to play only unreleased songs. While Coachella is a great venue to introduce a large audience to new work, playing only new songs is disastrous.

Even worse, lead singer Dennis Lyxzen accused the crowd of not moving enough. Complaining about the crowd’s performance in 105-degree heat is never a good thing.

Way to Go, Coachella: Including Women Who Rock

Last year, Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore openly questioned why there weren’t more female performers in the lineup.

This year, with bands such as Pretty Girls

Make Graves, Ash, Stereolab, Sahara Hotnights, and Erase Errata on the bill, Goldenvoice made an effort to be more diverse. They even put Le Tigre as the headliner on the second outdoor stage against The Cure Sunday night. Of course, I watched some of The Cure, but I couldn’t miss the chance to see Kathleen Hannah’s synth-meets-punkrock feminist band. Despite being the last band on that stage, they had the sunburned, sweaty, exhausted crowd jumpin’. They had a number of screens with some really absurd slideshows that went along with their songs, so audience participation was required. At one point, they asked the crowd to sing along to “FYR”: “Feminists are calling you! Please report to the front desk!” During the middle of their set, a very Legend of Billie Jean–looking woman actually slipped by security and scaled the side of the stage, positioned herself in the middle of the structure, and threw out flyers, T-shirts, and feminist propaganda. It was exactly what you would expect from a Le Tigre show.

Quick Highlights and Only One Complaint

Erase Errata: Finally, an all-female band that puts gender aside to play legitimate punk rock.

Danger Mouse: Incredibly shy Brian Burton tore it up in a mouse costume. At one point, he layered Outkast’s “Happy Valentine’s Day” with the guitar riff from “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes, and then sprinkled in a little KRS One. Hell, yeah!

Hieroglyphics: The whole crew was on the main stage, including Souls of Mischief and Del the Funky Homosapien. This was a much-needed change from all the rock. The gang even backed up Del when he played “Clint Eastwood” from the Gorillaz LP. The crowd was dancin’, sweatin’, smokin’, and

PHOTOS: Top: PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES; Center, clockwise from top left: THE PIXIES, RADIOHEAD, THE (INTERNATIONAL) NOISE CONSPIRACY, THE RAPTURE

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MUSIC REVIEWS

Morrissey:

You Are

On his first studio release in seven years, Morrissey ponders “How Can Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel?” and while we listen to him harshly assert and contemplate private opinions throughout, we may assume that the possibility is real. Considering lyrical content, this is arguably the most personal album for the former Smiths frontman, a man whose reputation relies heavily on his ability to abash everything—including himself.

Within the first three tracks of You Are the Quarry, his objective is apparently to place everyone in check as he attacks his adopted home (“America Is not the World”), his former home (“Irish Blood, English Heart”), and his maker (“I Have Forgiven Jesus”).

Unfamiliar listeners will undoubtedly scoff at Morrissey’s arrogance as he sings in the second track, “There is no one on earth/I’m afraid of,” while during “Jesus” his most ardent fans will weep when he entreats, “Why did you give me/so much love/in a loveless world/ when there is no one I can turn to.” Those familiar with the unconfirmed representations of Morrissey’s “lifestyle” will know how he feels when he berates Jesus and they will secretly applaud.

Aside from lashing such deities, our charming man later takes on societal norms in “All the Lazy Dykes” who live “just as somebody‘s wife,” self-serving hypocrites—“policewomen, policemen, silly women/taxmen—uniformed whores” as well as “lock-jawed pop stars” (“The World Is Full of Crashing Bores”). He continues to throw punches as he takes on the “evil legal eagles” (“You Know I Couldn’t Last”). But Morrissey’s heart is not fully consumed with hate: “but my heart is open/my

the

Quarry

(Sanctuary/Attack)

heart is open to you” (“Let Me Kiss You”).

And that is why his self-deprecations and pensive manner have been welcomed and admired for decades.

Structurally the twelve tracks are definitively Morrissey. He sneaks up on words and leaves phrases hanging like he has to be aware of eavesdroppers before he lets you in on a big secret. He continues to sing in a free verse style with synchronized rhythms and inner rhymes: “Something in you caused me to/take a new tact with you” (“I Like You”).

With its structured verses and rhyme pattern, “I’m Not Sorry” appears to be a nod to the Elizabethan sonnet poets. Musically, the Morrissey/Whyte tradition continues with sharp, spiraling guitars, rising choruses, and an occasional howling rhythmic crunch.

The recording of Quarry marks new territory for the artist. With the direction of producer Jerry Finn (Blink-182, Green Day, AFI), the songs were written as a band instead of around Morrissey’s vocals. Morrissey even brought in a new rhythm section consisting of rockabilly bassist Gary Day and former Ben Harper drummer Dean Butterworth, but rekindled his longtime collaborative relationship with Boz Boorer and Alain Whyte.

Sanctuary did some restructuring of their own by allowing Morrissey to re-launch Attack Records as his own imprint. Clearly, we may not have not wait another seven years for the Pope of Mope give us his blessing.

—J. Church Bad Religion: The Empire Strikes First (Epitaph) In the wake of three solid but unspec-

tacular records, punk veterans Bad Religion regained some viability with 2002’s scorching The Process of Belief, an album that provided some of the group’s most convincing lyrics and effective guitar hooks.

This energy remains on The Empire Strikes First, a searing indictment of American foreign policy during the Bush administration.

The comments from singer Greg Graffin could easily apply to numerous world events, continued on next page

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from previous page

but the influence of the current Iraq situation is obvious. Co-written with guitarist and Epitaph founder Brett Gurewitz, this release may fall a bit short musically, but the lyrics remain as hard-hitting as anything Bad Religion has released in its 24-year career.

The album begins with a brief overture and quickly leaps into “Sinister Rouge,” a harmony-filled tale of revenge that depicts the “eye-for-an-eye” mentality leading toward war. This thought process also pervades “Let Them Eat War,” a blatant play on words exemplifying the administration’s treatment of the masses. While its use is a bit silly, this phrase does effectively present the desired message. Another straightforward attack occurs on the single-friendly title track, which utilizes a slower guitar melody resembling hits from the past, such as “21st Century Digital Boy” and “Infected.” Lines such as “But even 10 million souls marching in February couldn’t stop the worst, couldn’t reverse” explain the point clearly in front of the melodic refrain.

Empire harkens back to classic Bad Religion albums from the late ’80s, such as No Control and Against the Grain. The tracks appear less designed as punk anthems, aimed more toward presenting topical issues. This is especially true with the songs inspecting the influence of religion on society: “God’s Love” and “Atheist Peace.” The former incorporates fast-paced guitars to explore the role of pain and injustice in the religious world. This type

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of examination is rare even in the punk genre, and Bad Religion continues to play this role in unique fashion.

—Dan Heaton Louise Hoffsten: Knäckebröd Blues (Memphis International Records) Most people would associate Sweden less with blues music than with high-octane garage rock and psychedelic art rock, so it’s understandable if skepticism greets Louise Hoffsten’s Knäckebröd Blues. Never underestimate a Scandinavian, though: Hoffsten has made one of the finest blues albums in recent years.

A little background suggests her achievement. A well-known artist in her native land, Hoffsten’s dabbled in folk, pop, and jazz and earned numerous awards. In the late ’90s, when multiple sclerosis and divorce simultaneously disrupted her life, Hoffsten decided to document her pain and struggle in a book titled Blues, whose 12 chapters followed the 12-bar structure of traditional blues music. To accompany it, she recorded a CD featuring 12 tunes by blues legends like Willie Dixon, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and John Lee Hooker, with a few of her own compositions. Memphis International persuaded Hoffsten to make the CD, once remastered and spruced up, her U.S. debut—and the resulting Knäckebröd Blues is a tour de force.

What separates the sublime from the merely excellent? Partly it’s emotional conviction: Hoffsten is so thoroughly invested in her songs that you feel every ounce of her pain and passion. Upbeat tracks here include the delightful roadhouse sass of Frankie Miller’s “The Seduction of Sweet Louise” (on which Staffan Astner’s guitar, Hans Eriksson’s bass, and Christer Jansson’s drumming thrillingly match Hoffsten’s powerhouse vocal), the outrageously sexy “Love to Love You” (Hoffsten’s flawless, seductive phrasing will have you wondering what oaf would leave such a fine lady), and the rollicking “Slow Down,” a Larry Williams song covered by the Beatles on an early B-side. To “Belly Up Blues”—a Hoffsten original that sounds like a traditional—the slightly distorted vocal plus her turn on harmonica gives an eerily authentic American sound. Three other songs deserve

special mention. On the slow shuffle “I Guess I’m a Fool,” Hoffsten’s softly yearning vocal is heartbreaking, especially given the CD’s backstory. “You told me that the kind of love you had/Would live for a million years/I believed everything you said/You fill my heart with tears,” she sighs, and it’s easy to imagine her literally fighting tears during the take.

Into “I Just Wanna Make Love to You”—a song variously covered, notably by Foghat in a horribly macho (and overplayed) version in the ’70s—Hoffsten breathes sexy new life with a whispery, sensual arrangement that’s unforgettable. Then there’s Dixon’s “Weak Brain, Narrow Mind,” hauntingly rendered with heartbeat percussion that sounds as if it was recorded in the next room, with spooked, ambient electric guitar from some David Lynch soundtrack and yet another flawless, emotive vocal. Tune after tune here amazes.

Those at all inclined to listen to a new blues album should spin this disc. An exceptionally vibrant, sensual CD, Hoffsten’s Knäckebröd Blues seethes with passion and yearning and features ass-kicking riffs and sonorous brilliance. It proves you don’t have to be American to play the blues—you just have to feel it, baby.

—Kevin Renick Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose (Interscope Records) She left Butcher Holler, Kentucky, all those years ago to become one of the most successful, captivating ladies of country music, her career spanning over four decades.

Moguls in the business of musical twang picked their jaws up from the floor when they heard Loretta Lynn was not only returning to recording music, but allowing a young, rocking whipper-snapper called Jack White to produce and arrange the record. Tarnation!

Van Lear Rose has edginess in all the right places with warmth and adornment from the arms, lungs, and heart of Loretta. She has been the master of strength and vulnerability since the ’50s—for every ounce of vulnerability, she’s got a pound of strength.

Whether Lynn sings or speaks, she’s soothing and proudly maternal. In “Little Red Shoes,” she tells the bittersweet tale about her childhood pride for new footwear coupled

June 2004 with the care and protection of her parents.

She is so expressive in her imperfection that the anecdote renovates itself into perfection.

Many with a comparable account would have too much pride or embarrassment to repeat it, let alone put it to music. I felt fortunate listening to her tell this story and laugh at herself at the end.

I hold deep admiration for early (pre1980) country music from many artists, and it’s uplifting to see that Lynn hasn’t lost her badass lyrical frankness. She’ll still take your leg off. “No I didn’t come to fight/If he was a better I might/But I wouldn’t dirty my hands on trash like you,” she tosses at the woman who deceptively crosses her in “Family Tree.”

There’s something oddly comforting about songs like this.

During the ’90s, Lynn mostly kept to herself and her family after her husband passed away. As she is the mother of a nurturing spirit and might, it’s humbling and heartbreaking to hear her sing in a desolate state, “I took off my wedding band/And put it on my right hand/I miss being Mrs. Tonight.” It’s a melancholy condition, but Loretta’s vigor pulls her through those moments with grace and dignity. You can’t keep a good woman down.

Van Lear Rose is not only Lynn’s most personal work to date, but quite possibly her best.

The roads and avenues traveled on this record span her family, her faith, and herself. At this point in her career, she doesn’t stand a chance of losing her famed charisma and charm, while saluting the men and women who lead normal lives every day.

A legend has made a legendary recording through empathy, dignity, and the ownership of her own experiences.

—Cory Hoehn Murs: Murs 3:16, the 9th Edition (Definitive Juxtaposition) Murs told Spin magazine that he once toured the country with no money and a box of his tapes. In order to eat, he had to sell his music; in order to sell, he had to talk or muscle his way on stage to do opening spots for local shows. But his powers of persuasion go well beyond hand-to-hand sales. He essentially schmoozed his way out of the weird, self-perpetuating Los Angeles rap scene, first cutting a bizarre full-length

collaboration with indie rap superstar Slug of Atmosphere, then signing with heavyweight label Definitive Juxtaposition. Now, out of nowhere, Murs has teamed up with 9th Wonder, a producer so hot that Jay-Z had to have him for The Black Album.

This is great for Murs, who has never struggled with lyrics, but whose Def Jux debut, The End of the Beginning, was plagued by inconsistent production; Murs’ varied alliances resulted in a different style on basically every song. 9th Wonder steps up, sounding like the heir to Gangstarr’s DJ Premier’s throne. Biting Primo is nothing new, but 9th takes the percussive chopping and gives it a new, smoother texture. Only on “And This Is for…” is the influence too overt. Also, 9th Wonder honors Primo’s other, more subtle trademarks: slow, single-sample intros and the use of multiple beats per song. Only Gangstarr’s classic “I’m the Man” switches up better than the wrenching “Walk Like a Man.” Also, like Premier, 9th Wonder has a tendency to make excessively sparse or simplistic drum tracks, but given the overall quality of Murs 3:16, 9th Edition, that can be easily excused.

Murs, as previously stated, is no lyrical slouch. The ladies are the subject for three tracks and Murs handles all angles, expertly complaining for two tracks, then dropping the names of all his past female conquests. The latter, “Freak These Tales,” is an always appreciated homage to Too $hort, but could have done without the details of Murs losing his virginity. “Walk Like a Man” follows the emcee through a revenge tale, but the dark crime angle is balanced by the quick and funny failed robbery jam “Trevor an’ Them.” Murs’ rhymes are quality straight through, even staying on point for the two battle jams, usually the low point of any underground rap album. “The Animal” somehow manages to be the best track here, despite being typical dick-waving in an album full of Slick Rick–worthy stories.

For an album this good, it’s a damn shame that “And This Is for…,” whose second and third verses flip race issues, has hogged much of the press. Everything Murs says in those verses needed to be said a decade ago, when many white people started thinking of rap appreciation as making them impervious to racism. But, as completely on point as lines such as “We ain’t the same color when police show up” may be, one would hope that quality would trump the controversy of a continued on next page

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black rapper calling out his mostly white fanbase. Murs 3:16, 9th Edition bangs for all races.

—Andrew Friedman onelinedrawing: The Volunteers (Jade Tree) Music writing, done well, can open a world of appreciation for music you might otherwise overlook or ignore. Such is the case with the back cover notes for The Volunteers, in which Geoff Rickly extols the virtues of singer/songwriter/producer Jonah Matranga (aka, onelinedrawing). Based on Rickly’s essay, Matranga’s a songwriting genius ahead of his time.

This is important because onelinedrawing can best be described as “emo,” a term which has been overused and disparaged. Matranga writes honest and heartfelt lyrics, and sings

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them in a voice that’s imperfect and ambitious. Were he merely strumming an acoustic guitar, this approach might get tedious; he throws enough instruments and sounds into the mix, though, that the music has its own legs, lending further credence to Matranga’s voice.

And what about the words he sings?

They’re personal and they’re political; they’re folk songs and rebel songs. Matranga writes in reaction to the world in which he lives—specifically, the time beginning post–9/11 and culminating with the suicide of Elliott Smith.

He writes about things that matter; he’s intelligent and introspective, and his downto-earth delivery and honest liner notes make you want to listen and react.

The heartbreaking “A Ghost” tells of a man who chooses to leave this life, only to regret his decision and want it all back: “I scream and I shake and I sound like the wind/ and I miss the pain of our blood and our skin.”

“Stay” begins with a guitar line that insinu-

ates itself into your subconscious; during the refrain, the song swells into full orchestration and the backing chorus adds depth.

On “We Had a Deal,” Matranga shows off his rockier side as he reacts to the pervasive fear that’s filled this country of late. His voice rises above the guitars as he pleads, “Forget what’s coming, forget what’s went/ Let’s make some laws that make some sense.”

The strength of Matranga’s voice rises with the notes; vocally, this is one of the strongest tracks on the disc.

The synth-driven “Oh, Boys” is a girl’s lament to boys who promise the world but can’t even fix a carburetor; the refrain, “Boys keep fucking up my car,” says it all. On “Livin’ Small,” a song about the musician’s life, Matranga confides, “Some kids wanna be rockstars, and some kids wanna be firemen/ But those dreams’ll mess you up/If you’re in it for the bright lights and the battle scars.”

Later in the song, he takes a swipe at the corporate music monopoly: “This channel

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June 2004 isn’t clear at all/And if that’s what passes these days for livin’ large/Then I’m happy livin’ small.”

Strings make the achingly raw “Believer” feel more like a nightclub classic than an emo heartbreaker. “Portland” is a long, meandering song, largely instrumental—a term used loosely here, as Matranga’s fond of recording odd sounds (such as, say, pumping gasoline) and building songs around them—before yielding to the understated and scratchy (he’s also fond of four-track recording) “As Much to Myself as to You.” And so the album ends quietly, without a bang, as Matranga wanted it. But the messages and the words remain, inciting something (passion?) in you for having listened.

—Laura Hamlett Pedro the Lion: Achilles Heel (Jade Tree) If the angry, disillusioned politics of Minor Threat and the hushed lyricism of the Red House Painters had a lovechild, it would be Pedro the Lion. I am hard-pressed to think of a comparable musician who so deftly combines the bitterest of sentiments with such beautiful, calming music. It is a strange dichotomy, but it has nonetheless worked seamlessly on every recording Pedro the Lion has released. The latest Achilles Heel is no exception. As the fourth full-length album produced by David Bazan, the mastermind behind this one-man band, it is every bit as bittersweet as its forerunners.

In rebound from last year’s heavy-handed concept album Control, which detailed the violent collapse of a failed marriage, Bazan has resolved to create a lighter album of topical songs not centered on a theme. He has said that this time around he wants people to hear how much fun he had recording. Maybe I’m missing something, but this album seems anything but light and fun. On the contrary, it may be even bleaker than his previous recordings, if that is possible. How Bazan found fun in writing songs about paralysis, alcoholism and familial dysfunction is beyond me.

These heavy themes and more are the topics that Bazan deals with on Achilles Heel, comprising an album that is as gorgeous as it is devastating. Bazan again finds that inexplicable balance between beauty and

horror, lulling us with heartbreakingly tender melodies as he stabs us to the core. His words float on such gentle waves that it’s easy to lose yourself in the music, but cloud nine evaporates abruptly when you realize what he’s singing about, and you’re dropped from a cushy heaven into hard reality. Bazan’s lyrics are understated, their simplicity making them poignant; the ideas that novelists spend hundreds of pages trying to put across, Bazan can say in one sentence. And he’ll break your heart doing it.

The lyrics detail a number of hard pills to swallow, and none of them are by any means light; listening to them, it’s hard to imagine why Bazan could have possibly thought that the fun of writing them would shine through.

The track “I Do” paints in just a few lines the vivid portrait of a marriage deadened by responsibility. The lines “And when his tiny head emerged from blood and folds of skin/I thought to myself if he only knew he would climb right back in” are unsettling enough to knock you from any false impressions that the accompanying sweet music might have given. In “The Poison,” Bazan takes the position of an alcoholic mourning the end of a relationship, a requiem expressed in lines like “My old man always swore that hell would have no flame/Just a front row seat to watch your true love pack her things and drive away.” Easy listening this is not. Perhaps the most sobering song on the album, and one that made me physically wince despite the deceptively soothing sound of the music, is “Transcontinental,” about a man rendered paralyzed in a vehicle crash and what he thinks as he lies in the aftermath. The imagery of twitching limbs and bodies laid waste, along with the lines “The luxury of having been spared the hard part/You’d think would be enough for me to pull this off/But I’m left to bleed to death” make up one of the most disturbing songs I’ve heard in recent memory.

It is in this way that Pedro the Lion puts selfproclaimed hardcore bands to shame, without even raising the decibel level above an appropriate volume.

Yet somehow Pedro the Lion’s music is always so nice to listen to, despite the pain mixed into this pleasure. The lushness of the music

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PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS Play by Play may make the message all the more poignant, no matter how cynical or brutally ironic it might be. Achilles Heel is both heaven and hell in one, both good and evil, both beauty and sorrow. David Bazan has figured out that these dichotomies are not always mutually exclusive, that in real life there is sometimes disorder concealed within what seems beautiful.

—Anne Valente

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Seachange: Lay of the Land (Matador Records) Nottingham’s Seachange are ferocious buggers. The sextet’s debut album, Lay of the Land, doesn’t hold anything back. It’s a deep record; an amalgam of dense songs that adeptly juggles jangly pop melodies, subtle string arrangements, and the rolling, cascading pop sounds typical of today’s best British bands.

From start to finish, Seachange exhibits 14 examples of their musical versatility.

“Anglokana,” the first song on the disc, takes a simple James Vyner bass line intro and quietly expands it into a freefalling, agitated tempo that, without warning, bursts into something more frantic. Next, a gorgeous violin solo comes along, intertwining texture and beauty before suddenly stopping into a jarring melee for the last two minutes. The lead single, “Glitterball,” begins as a straightforward Britpop song, but merges slowly with a crescendo of feedback that winds and twists, becoming something entirely complex. Near

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the end, a spot of brilliant spontaneity occurs as violinist Johanna Woodnutt joins in, adding gorgeous, calm layers underneath the swirling guitars.

These days, most albums languish by the fourth or fifth song. It is here where the dreaded “tonal rehash” happens, inevitably causing things to fall apart. This does not happen with Lay of the Land. Shrewdly, Seachange picked the midway point to become marathon runners. Dead center is where Lay of the Land gets its sonic legs, waging war on the distortion pedal. The influences of Iggy Pop and Sonic Youth resonate throughout these songs, especially on “AvsCO10,” a short, raw song with jagged guitars highlighted by Simon Aldcroft’s urgent drumming. “The Nightwatch” has massive walls of sound, similar to Ride or early Dinosaur Jr. Next comes “SF,” a bashing, screaming rocker loaded with frenetic guitar work and glossed over SHALINI (courtesy Dalloway Records)

by Dan Eastop’s unnerving yelling.

Although “SF” packs quite a wallop, its unexpected crash landing into “Forty Nights” is brilliant.

“Forty Nights” is a flat out feedback monster that resembles early My Bloody Valentine with its capillary expanding stream of earsplitting harmony.

As a singer, Eastop bares more than a casual resemblance to Blur’s Damon Albarn.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the last quarter of Lay of the Land. Despite remaining noisy, the proceedings settle into more traditional alternative rock fare on “Do It All Again,” “Carousel,” and “No Questions.”

“Come on Sister” is a tune that draws upon Blur’s more ruffian moments before colliding out of control into an astounding manic clatter of guitars and percussion. “Fog” closes the album by quietly showing our sweaty carcasses to the exit, numb, ears ringing, and entirely captivated.

Despite auditory similarities to early Psychedelic Furs, Joy Division, and Blur, Seachange has made a scintillating, texturally intricate debut album. Seachange ensnares two distinct sounds—the guitar and the violin— then wraps their syncopation with an innova-

tive eddy of crunchy percussion, intense guitar work, and enigmatic vocals.

On the surface, Seachange appear to be another British band of the moment trying to cross the Atlantic. However, upon further listening, Lay of the Land reveals itself as something more.

Buried beneath the surface layers of lyrically smart, densely delicate songs is an album of sonorous, gloriously spontaneous exuberance.

Seachange have raised their voices above the din and made themselves a band to hear.

—Rob Levy Shalini: Metal Corner (Dalloway Records) Sometimes, you know that your love for a record is coming. It’s just going to take a half-dozen listens before the magic happens.

Such is the state of affairs with Metal Corner, the longdelayed sophomore release from Shalini, a trio with some interesting roots in alternative pop. Shalini is Shalini Chatterlee on vocals, guitar, and bass, Eric Marshall on drums, and a fellow named Mitch Easter playing the other guitar and bass, along with some background and harmony vocals. For those canny fans who remember an overlooked ’80s band called Let’s Active, Easter’s always a welcome touch to a band or record. And his definite recording style and signature voice are all over this 12-pack of well-heeled pop songs.

While Easter contributes to the writing of a handful of cuts here, Chatterlee deserves the lion’s share of songwriting credit. And over the course of two records, her style is becoming pretty definitive, too, featuring spare tunes that feature simple, driving beats and short, choppy lines. At times, the space opens up a touch and Easter fires off a perfectly timed and executed solo, rife with flangers and distortion pedals. But be warned. As soon as his fuzzed-out leads appear, they disappear,

June 2004

fading back into the austere verse-chorus-verses of the song.

As with the group’s first album—2000’s We Want Jelly Donuts on Parasol—not all Shalini songs are created equally. If there’s a criticism of the Shalini aesthetic, it’s that Easter’s production and Chatterlee’s song structures tend toward sameness on a few cuts. But those mild lows are more than accounted for by the album’s high points, of which there are several.

On Metal Corner, the contenders for “song of the album” vie between three cuts. “Heartbreaking Machine” features the band’s trademark, sing-songy choruses and a series of impossibly catchy Easter fills. “Light of Falling Objects” kicks off with a solid, mid-tempo beat, courtesy of Marshall, before being joined by guitar tones that would fit neatly into “Dazed and Confused” territory, wonderfully dated and chunky; then Chatterlee knocks off the album’s best vocals, with a beautiful, overdubbed chorus. (It’s easily the track that boasts the most Easter-ish production.) And “Invisible Hills,” an Easter cut, accomplishes everything a pop song should in a lean 2:39.

Throughout, there’s a sense that AC/DC records are prominently featured in Shalini’s collective record collection; there’s a constant sense of Marshalls being turned up and a battery of guitars sitting at the ready. At the core, though, Shalini’s still a pop band, with catchy verses the rule.

Hopefully, Shalini’s involvement with the new-ish Dalloway label means that the next album is out in less than four years. If not, content yourself with the two already released. And, yeah, those well-worn Let’s Active LPs. —Thomas Crone Waterloo: In the Light of Day (Undertow) Some albums need to be heard a few times before they truly reveal themselves. Waterloo’s In the Light of Day is like that; it’s not a flashy recording, and it has no big statement to make. But there are distinctively Midwestern pacing and atmosphere on this disc, which slowly lure you in the more you listen. The band, consisting of John Baldus (drums), Marc Chechik (keyboards), Chris Grabau (guitar, keyboards), Dave Melson (bass), and Mark Ray (guitar, piano, vocals)—the latter of whom co-produced with Matt Pence—released their well-received debut back in 2001, and have taken their time creating this sophomore effort. In fact, on almost every song here, they sound like they’re in no hurry; the goal seems to be to get the feel just right, and ensure that each player is in synch with the others. There’s little doubt that was the case, as there’s a tangible vibe of unity here, the band laying down every musical detail with grace and a sense of purpose.

“In the Reeds” is the first memorable song, appearing like a cool breeze wafting through the bedroom window on a summer day. Ray’s soft, unforced vocal is charming, and the loping rhythm and restrained orchestration recall other great bands such as Mojave 3 and The Court and Spark. The title track and “Migration” are both sturdy, mid-tempo rockers with enough little details to keep your attention. The latter tune is bookended by evocative snatches of feedback and features smooth harmonies, buzzing guitar chords, and a crisp arrangement. There’s more than a little influence from latter-day Wilco on this and a few other tracks, and that kind of “pastoral psychedelia” is unquestionably one of the band’s predilections.

“All That You Know” sounds like, well, a lot of other bands that

15

8

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PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

BACKSTAGE PASS CONCERT REVIEWS

Velvet Revolver w/Silvertide

16

The Pageant, May 13 Many would argue that mainstream rock is dead, and that a void in the rock scene was created when bands such as The Black Crowes, Pearl Jam, and STP moved in new directions during the ’90s. It’s safe to say that the trends of the past 10 to 15 years have left many fans hungry for straightforward, no-label, “this guitar is an extension of my cock” rock ’n’ roll, and diehard fans yearn to proclaim that “rock is back.”

Buckcherry made an effort to fill the void, but they failed to break into the mainstream.

I guess Kid Rock nailed the “rock star” image (by nailing Pam), but he tried too hard and most people have realized there’s nothing “rock ’n’ roll” about rapping nonsense over Metallica riffs and jumpstarting the career of Uncle Kracker.

Audioslave probably belongs in the “alternative” rock category, but Tom Morello is

VELVET REVOLVER photos by ANDREW SCAVATTO

better known for his ability to sound like Terminator X on a guitar than for power chords and rock solos. When it comes to lead guitar, Henry Garza (Los Lonely Boys) and Robert Randolph are rock prodigies, but the rock star image isn’t there, and they get grouped with the jam bands. The Drive-By Truckers and My Morning Jacket certainly know how to rock, but the average KSHE listener has no idea who they are, and wouldn’t have much patience with the songwriting anyway.

This perceived “rock void” explains the enormous buzz surrounding the recent Velvet Revolver appearance in St. Louis, which sold out in about 10 minutes and had people crowding the outside of the Pageant hours before the doors opened. The anticipation was palpable, and it caused just about everyone (including the sound guys) to overlook Silvertide, who opened with a solid set of classic guitar rock. Unfortunately, although the band made a valiant effort to engage the audience and put on an energetic show, they had no shot at winning over a crowd that couldn’t wait for them to get out of the way.

When the Velvet Revolver supergroup (Dave Kushner; Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum of Guns N’Roses; and Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots) finally hit the stage, the crowd erupted, and the band could’ve played just about anything without killing the buzz. They opened with three loud,

hard-driving rock songs from their upcoming release Contraband, and although they were tight, the songs took a backseat to the band’s phenomenal energy and stage presence.

In a group of spotlight-craving rock stars, Weiland stood out. A consummate entertainer, he had the crowd mesmerized throughout the set with his energetic vocal delivery and slithering dance moves. Weiland was all over the stage: posing, gyrating, singing into his trademark megaphone, and diving into the crowd on at least two occasions.

The band filled the set with its original material, mixing in STP’s “Crackerman” and GNR’s “It’s so Easy,” which sent the crowd into a frenzy. Velvet Revolver will always be in a position where the old favorites outshine the original material, so the band deserves some credit for making “Slither” (their current single) one of the highlights of the night.

Sandwiched in the first encore between GNR’s “I Used to Love Her” and STP’s “Sex Type Thing,” “Slither” held its own with the classics, and the song’s chorus provided the perfect showcase for Weiland’s soaring vocals.

A second encore was demanded, and Slash’s solo chops finally took center stage as the band emerged with “Mr. Brownstone” and Nirvana’s “Negative Creep,” one of the loudest things I’d ever heard.

Rock fans were desperate to embrace this band, and the crowd relished the opportunity to go nuts over some guys who have spent years dominating the charts and personifying the rock star cliché. Weiland identified this phenomenon during a mini-rant, hailing the return of “fucking American…blues-based rock ’n’ roll.” Straightforward, hard rock ’n’ roll (the kind that follows “sex, drugs, and…”) was finally back, and the crowd loved every minute of it.

June 2004

17

Three to See Here are just three of the great original St. Louis bands that play around town on a regular basis. Check them out as soon as you get a chance.

Nothing Still—Nothing Still is a band with something to offer people who enjoy great live shows. This group of creative locals has come up with its own unique sound, drawing from new wave and glam rock influences, and has a high-energy stage show to go with it. Singer/guitarist Emilo makes full use of the stage and never stands still. He seems to be able to win over the crowd’s attention the minute he jumps on stage and the band’s unusual, atmospheric guitar sound is literally addictive. The band’s guitar sounds create a mood much like the moment before a serious summertime rainstorm. The sound is somewhat somber and

Clinic

—Andrew Scavatto

w/Ratatat and Oh*Yeah 18 The Blue Note, Columbia, May 15 To tease the August 23 release of their third LP, Winchester Cathedral, Clinic has launched a British reinvasion of sorts. They have taken to the road in the U.S. in hopes of exposing the American concert-going public to their infectiously dark sound. Columbia got a bittersweet treat as the Liverpool quartet graced the stage of the Blue Note—bitter as the lads’ post-post punk angst was in full effect, and sweet because their fare is swayable, if not danceable. The crowd wriggled with delight to the band’s straightforward Brit-rock set—at least as much delight as a roomful of hipsters can muster. All the while, Clinic stuck to their

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dark, but it’s exciting nonetheless. Though the members don’t say much during the show, curious fans can have fun reading the band’s online journal.

The Hail Marys—This local punk band has a charismatic female singer, a strong guitar sound, and exceptionally catchy lyrics. This band has only been playing gigs around town for about a year, but they have already managed to come up with songs that are so memorable, audience members are able to have fun singing along to the group’s catchy hooks. Songs such as “Magnolia” and “My City” leave such a strong impression that it’s hard to forget about them, even after only hearing the tunes once. There is no shortage of energy in the band’s live show, as they manage to keep people on their feet throughout the whole set. Their electric guitar sound has the feel of late ’70s punk bands, catching the attention of Dead

Celebrities guitarist Elvis Kennedy, who has taken the time to record the group. No doubt, the Hail Marys are an exciting new addition to the St. Louis music scene.

Reigning Heir—Reigning Heir is a band made up of four St. Louis natives who seem to receive warm responses from audiences who like to “rock out.” Paul, the band’s lead guitarist, creates a heavy wall of distortion onstage, which is literally a rush of electric guitar power. Though the heavy distortion is always present, he manages to slip all sorts of guitar riffs and burning leads into the mix with singer Nicole’s smooth and melodic vocals on top. Nicole keeps all eyes on her, moving around the stage and, at times, using the microphone as a prop. Reigning Heir may be a bit too high-volume for some, but for people who demand good St. Louis rock ’n’ roll with relentless electric guitars, seeing this band is a good way to get your fill.

frightening stage shtick, sporting scrubs and surgical masks.

Clinic’s eerily sterile attire combined with death knells ringing out as they took the stage. The headliners sprinkled their set with new material, which on this night sounded pretty much like their debut, 2000’s Internal Wrangler, and the 2002 follow-up Walking With Thee. A lack of hands on deck and the sheer volume of the show tended to overtake multilayered sound of the band’s recordings.

Sonic breadth was replaced with Clash-style vroom, but, the crowd seemed pleased with rocked-up arrangements.

“Harmony,” from Walking With Thee, was a crowd favorite early in the set with its hypnotic keyboard line and flourish of melodica.

“I believe in harmony/I believe in Christmas Eve,” singer Ade Blackburn groaned unconvincingly. The stop-and-start of “Walking With Thee” also proved to be a hit, especially with a six-foot-eight Beatle Bob act-alike rocking out in front of the stage. The band pounded out new material such as “Forever England” with unironic Oasis fervor. The newer songs packed more of a psychedelic punch, but the vocal levels were cranked up too high for the lyrics to be discernable.

Overall, the band seems as if they’re coping well with their label as the umpteenth “next Radiohead.” Of course, any Kid A–like excess that might haunt Clinic’s recordings soon disappears, as the amps are turned up to 11 during their live shows.

Clearly, drummer Carl Turney is among the fresh breed of indie rock drummers who knows job security is threatened by the technological improvements to the drum machine. That’s why the man was playing his bum off, providing the propulsive groundwork for the band’s four-on-the floor set.

The bare-bones, hour-long show and brief encore call to question whether Winchester Cathedral will be built on the same foundation as Clinic’s previous atmospheric efforts.

Best bets are that this album will stand on the same sonic ground as its stellar predecessors.

The tripartite bill commenced with local band Oh*Yeah, the standby opening act for indie rockers who make the trek down I-70.

The quartet of multi-instrumentalists fought through some technical problems on newer material. Still, they treated the friendly hometown early birds to Beach Boys–tinged mainstays such as “Speed Down.”

The pace picked up a bit as instrumental dance-prog duo Ratatat took the stage. The pair brought a seriously funky multimedia presence to the bill. While sipping a beer on stage between guitar licks, even frontman Mike Stroud took time to marvel at the psychedelic screensaver projected behind him. The pair struck rock-god poses during “Seventeen Years,” the first track off their self-titled debut. Their blend of tone-perfect axework and computer programmed beats and blips sounded like a Daft Punk/Steve Vai continued on page 19

marah a special program insert from

Twangfest 2004 June 9–12

p ayback st. louis pop culture

TWANGFEST 2004

SCHEDULE

PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

Saturday, June 5: Twangfest Tune Up

Friday, June 11: Twangfest Day 3

Mike Ireland and Holler Tommy Womack

Robbie Fulks (Chicago, IL) Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub (Nashville, TN) Susanna Van Tassel and Jim Stringer and

the Austin Music Band (Austin, TX) Grey DeLisle (Los Angeles, CA)

Frederick’s Music Lounge (4454 Chippewa)

Wednesday, June 9: Twangfest Day 1

Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust St. at 21st) The Redwalls (Chicago, IL) Frog Holler (Virginsville, PA) Danny Barnes (Seattle, WA) Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel (Chicago, IL)

Thursday, June 10: Twangfest Day 2

Duck Room at Blueberry Hill (6504 Delmar) Marah (Philadelphia, PA) The Handsome Family (Albuquerque, NM) Cary Hudson (Oxford, MS) Adrienne Young and Little Sadie (Nashville, TN)

Friday, June 11: Twangpin

Saratoga Lanes (2725 Sutton Avenue) Noon to 4:00 p.m.

Duck Room at Blueberry Hill

Saturday June 12: Twangclips

Frederick’s Music Lounge (4454 Chippewa) 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

No Depression video columnist Barry Mazor presents Twangclips, offering rare video performances from great acts in the spirit and tradition of Twangfest—some from as far back as the 1930s and others so new they’ve not yet been seen in public.

Saturday, June 12: Twangfest Day 4 Duck Room at Blueberry Hill

Grand Champeen (Austin, TX) The Bigger Lovers (Philadelphia, PA) Two Cow Garage (Columbus, OH) The Whilers (Columbus, OH)

TWANGFEST 2004

A Dispatch From the Sports Desk

PIECES of O EIGHT nly part of the pleasure of a gala like Twangfest 8—St. Louis’s annual celebration of roots music, this year held from Wednesday to Saturday, June 9 to 12—comes from anticipating performances by old favorites on the bill or even intriguing newcomers.

Pleasure otherwise derives from the synergy of the

By Bryan A. Hollerbach event, its overarching “whole is greater than the sum of the parts”-ness.

In that regard, consider the 2004 edition of Twangfest, which will play the St. Louis Brewery Tap Room on opening night before shifting to the Duck Room at Blueberry Hill. Its bill comprises 16 acts (one of them technically a double) scheduled symmetrically, and that four-by-four lineup looks positively five-by-five.

The lineup also invites reflection on the festival’s sonic gestalt. By way of example, one can’t help but speculate about the transition (both on the stage and off) between Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel and Danny Barnes on Wednesday or between the Handsome Family and Marah on Thursday. Friday night, meanwhile, perhaps only a card-carrying clairvoyant could predict how the mellow melodies of Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub will segue into the music of Robbie Fulks, who sometimes displays all the mellowness of a coyote in a henhouse. Finally, regarding the wild-eyed boys who form Saturday’s lineup from start to finish, an observation from British writer Alan Moore comes to mind: “If there is not actual solidarity amongst the deliberately dysfunctional, neither is there any coherent disagreement.” In short, the Twang Gang, the volunteer board of directors of the nonprofit event, has again pieced together a musical mosaic of considerable appeal.

As ever, the festival remains remarkably affordable. Individually, tickets for opening night cost $8 at the door; those for subsequent nights run $18 each at the Duck Room box office or through MetroTix. A pass for Thursday through Saturday, meanwhile, costs just $45—less than the bill for dinner and drinks for two at any restaurant worthy of the name.

Also as ever, festival attendees can enjoy two ancillary events. Twangpin occurs Friday from noon to 4 p.m. at Maplewood’s Saratoga Lanes; a trifling five-spot will gain admittance to the bowlingand-billiards tournament, which includes complimentary pizza and music by the Patsy Declines, a Twangfest pickup band. Twangclips unreels the next afternoon at Frederick’s Music Lounge; from 1 to 5 p.m., No Depression contributing editor Barry

Mazor will emcee a free—and gloriously freewheeling—video presentation devoted to Americana music.

Beyond that, the following paragraphs sketch details on the individual pieces of the Twangfest 8 mosaic, with performers listed by night in order of appearance. The festival starts each evening at 7 p.m., and performances will last roughly an hour apiece, with time this year unofficially allotted for setups and breakdowns.

Wednesday, June 9, Tap Room Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel * The folks at 3rd Coast Music, San Antonio’s crotchety monthly devoted to Americana, don’t like Anna Fermin— they bloody well love her. In a recent overview of the annual NotSXSW festival, two commentators for the periodical independently wrote that she “continues to walk on water,” and three others named her as a highlight. They join a growing list of music writers hailing the talents of the Philippineborn singer-songwriter and her band, which generally comprises Paul Bivans on percussion, Michael Krayniak on bass, and Frank Kvinge on guitars of all sorts. (The band name Trigger Gospel, by the by, derives from the title of a pulp adventure penned

by Harry Sinclair Drago for Real Western in 1949.

Remember that for the special Twangfest Edition of Trivial Pursuit.) Of course, Fermin likely wouldn’t have earned such good notices in the Chicago Tribune, No Depression, and other publications if she hadn’t first attracted the attention of a pair of

first-rank producers for her two full-length studio CDs: pedal-steel legend Lloyd Maines—yeah, the little Commie symp’s pop—shepherded the first, Things to Come (Sighlow Music, 1999), ex-Wilco wizard Jay Bennett the second, Oh, the Stories We Hold (Undertow Records, 2003). The soundscapes of those discs contrast intriguingly; the Maines CD, for instance, admits an engaging vocal rasp not nearly so noticeable, for whatever reason, on the Bennett. In the final analysis, of course, in the best of circumstances, the importance of the producer pales before that of the performer, and whether guided by Maines or Bennett, Fermin has shown she can swing and smolder with equal ease.

Danny Barnes * Honestly, no delicate way to phrase this comes to mind: Danny Barnes is one scary old bastard. How else to describe a man whose Web site trumpets his love of Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the most soporific authors in American literature? (“I like the way that Hawthorne writes, in that every word has meaning,” notes Barnes. “If you took out one word, the whole thing would collapse.” Not the one word potentially extracted, of course, but all of the others in Hawthorne typically send the chin of even the most constant reader collapsing onto his or her sternum.) For the nonce, though, let’s table such considerations for the New York Review of Books profile of Barnes and ponder what will most interest Twangfest attendees: his music.

In Austin more than a decade ago, he co-founded continued on next page

THE REDWALLS

T1

ADRIENNE YOUNG & LITTLE SADIE

the Bad Livers, a band sufficiently innovative (read: “perplexing”) that David Goodman’s Modern Twang labels it “Punkgrass?; Thrashgrass?” After a number of releases that fused bluegrass and punk and something like 2,000 live performances with the band, Barnes, in the late ’90s, relocated to Port Hadlock, Washington (pop. 3,476). There, besides reading Hawthorne, he has devoted himself to “trying to develop a modern lexicon for the banjo,” an instrument to whose theory and practice he’s devoted a daunting amount of thought and effort, as on his latest release, the 15-track Dirt on the Angel (Terminus Records, 2003). T8 attendees should expect a twang-intensive fine time from a man who can make music as spare and riveting as “Funtime” and “Things I Done Wrong” from his 2001 Terminus CD, which shares a title with the latter song.

T2

Frog Holler * Tough-love time has arrived for multi-instrumentalist Todd Bartolo, percussionist Daniel Bower, guitarist John Kilgore, multi-instrumentalist Mike Lavdanski, bassist Josh Sceurman, and vocalist/acoustic guitarist Darren Schlappich.

The Pennsylvania sextet performs as Frog Holler— and FrogHoller and frog holler and frogholler, according to their press material. Perplexing. Who do they think they are, Third/3rd Eye Blind? The Marketing Department has kvetched; the sextet’s treatment of nominal matters as…well…nominal has jeopardized a number of branding initiatives.

Admittedly, Marketing doesn’t understand Frog Holler’s music all that well, as on their fourth release, Railings (Record Cellar, 2003). The predecessor to that 12-track disc earned acclaim from such sources as The Washington Post, which, unfortunately, characterized the sextet as a folkrock band. (Rock being dead, according to several studies, and folk being way dead, Mermelstein in Marketing almost plotzed.) The department doesn’t want to slight the band for such lush, introspective, mid-tempo numbers as “Virginia” and “Idiots” and the up-tempo “What Went Down” from Railings.

Still, several studies have established that lush introspection just doesn’t load the Walkman or the cash register nowadays; as a result, efforts are under way to hire some of Toby Keith’s former handlers to tutor Schlappich, the band’s lyricist, in how to be jingoistic and ballsy. (Mermelstein also keeps pushing to replace Schlappich with a zaftig blonde girl singer—but then, she would, wouldn’t she?) Let’s talk about all of this once Frog Holler returns from this thing in St. Louis—what’s it called? Tangfest?

The Redwalls * To listeners of a certain age— surely one of the more idiotic idioms littering the language—the Redwalls will provoke either deepest disdain or delight precisely to the extent

that they recall another band. To wit, the music of the quartet from Chicago (apparently, anyway—the press kit leaves something to be desired) echoes in an almost dumbfounding way that of an earlier quartet, four mop-topped lads from Liverpool. Yeah, them. Readers who would automatically discount the band for that fact should skip to the next Twangfest 8 capsule bio. Everyone else should attend T8 and (shall we say) meet the Redwalls: bassist/vocalist Justin Baren, guitarist/vocalist Logan Baren, drummer Ben Greeno (Ringo-ing Jordan Kozer), and guitarist/vocalist Andrew Langer. Reportedly, the four of them just recently graduated from high school—an astonishing notion, given the delicious surety of their 11-track debut, Universal Blues, released late last year by St. Louis’s Undertow Records. With the disc’s opener, “Colorful Revolution,” the Redwalls hit hard and hit true—and thereafter, they don’t for an instant falter. Praising them to the extent that they deserve, frankly, poses a problem. Universal Blues sounds uncannily like a lost mid-period Beatles album, not solely because whichever of the brothers Baren handles lead vocals (vide prior parenthetical re press kit) approximates John Lennon at the top of his game so eerily that even Julian and Sean might freak. The Redwalls achieve that feat, though, without ever feeling like just another bunch of bloody Beatles wannabes—they’re too, too sharp for that. Fab? Oh, yes—emphatically.

And they’re just getting started. That’s exciting.

Thursday, June 10, Duck Room Adrienne Young * In this age of too-easy cynicism, innocence (especially in the music industry) can steal one’s breath away. In that wise, Adrienne Young qualifies as a delightfully breathtaking thief.

At a certain level, in fact, she may well rank as the most disconcerting performer on the Twangfest 8 bill: even among devotees of roots music, many Americans, knowingly or otherwise, pride themselves on their embrace of everything nouveau, and in contravention both of her surname and her appearance—she looks to be in her twenties—Young, in her work, exhibits an old soul. On her Web site, she celebrates the tomatoes growing in her garden, drops the phrase by the grace of God into a meditation on her musical career in Florida, and mentions the Mayan calendar, and with her first CD, she includes a small manila packet of wildflower seeds noting “best planted by the signs” and directing recipients to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. In her music, meanwhile, she mesmerizes on the aforesaid CD, Plow to the End of the Row (AddieBelle Music, 2004), a 14-track affair with the band Little Sadie—Clayton Campbell on fiddle and mandolin, Tyler Grant on guitar “and all things stringed, for that matter,” Amanda Kowalski on standup bass, and Steven Sandifer on percussion. In addition to five traditionals—among them the exquisite “Leather Britches” and “Satan, Yer Kingdom Must Come Down”—the disc features romps like “Nippers’ Corner” and “Poison” and opens with perhaps the strongest of the originals, all of which Young either wrote or co-wrote: the title track, a duet with Will Kimbrough, would qualify as an instant country anthem in a better world than this.

Cary Hudson * Talk about timing—Cool Breeze, continued on page T-4

DAVE BIELANKO

By Steven Vance

“W

e don’t do anything else except play music and write songs, and we take it as seriously as I think you can possibly take your job. It’s my brother and I so there’s a huge bond between us and our attention is always on it. My brother and I can be very exhausting as people, and our work ethic is very high.”

In that, Dave Bielanko touches on Marah’s seemingly constant transformation.

From a revolving-door rhythm section to their relationships with labels, little—save the brothers—has remained constant. That’s because Serge and Dave Bielanko seem to have a hard time with constants.

“I think we’re very reactionary kind of people, and all along we controlled everything, and then at times we give up everything, and you just sort of learn as you go.

This time it was so much so that we broke all of our bonds…everything that we could to make ourselves independent and make this particular record completely on our own. In a lot of ways, we’re best under that pressure.”

The Bielanko brothers believe in what they are doing, and what they are doing is searching. There is a restlessness of experimentation and discovery that runs throughout their music. It is a restlessness that is a central tenet of what rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be. It also puts them ever out of place and time. If there are moments when they draw comparisons to the Rolling Stones, it may well be because they are rolling stones.

“I think that we fear being pigeonholed as anything very much so and we’ll panic. Early on, we had a banjo, and in my head it was a Mummer’s parade thing to me, and it would be confused as country music on some level, so then we would panic and backpedal and run away from that. It was half nuts.”

Bielanko says this with a laugh, but it is also clear that he knows he’d probably do the same thing again. Marah’s journey is toward

Marah cover photo and above right by Cassandra Tomei Concert shot above: Raymond Goodman

WANTS YOU TO LOVE HIS BABY a dirty perfection.

Their songs hearken to Motown, Phil Spector, Springsteen, the Clash, Lou Reed, various more or less obscure literary works, and just about anything else that has left an imprint on them. There are so many influences that the end result is urban mosaic rather than derivative. At moments when it feels like you’re listening to the Bielankos’ music collection, it is clear that you are listening to it through the Bielankos.

“I think it’s a lot more about your personality. It comes out the way it comes out. As we are hopefully getting a little bit better at this, thebecomes meantime, forward[such] to seeing it moreI’m andlooking more unified, that one hell of awhat livewe show at like.”

Twangfest 8 on it is actually sound Saturday, 12.holds it all together is a Part ofJune what remarkably vivid sense of place, in which universal metaphor comes to rest in the tiny stories of an instant in the life of an individual character. In the past, this has been oversimplified as part of the brothers’ deep connection to their native Philadelphia, in part because those specific locales have been so concretely rendered in their music. Such oversimplification tends to misrepresent them as a regional phenomenon, rather than recognizing that Philadelphia is their grounding point that allows them to live and explore elsewhere.

“I think on a base level we write folk songs about our lives or the people that happen to be spinning around our lives, and therefore sense of place is very important. All of my favorite music has an amazing sense of place to it.”

Thus far, Marah have remained primarily an underground band in an age in which a diverse and vibrant underground seems little more than a ghost of a pre–alternative rock landscape. Their restlessness has left them uneasy to continue to trust anyone else to deliver them to more ears.

“There have been people [in the music

business] who have passionately, truly loved our band and critiqued it closely, and loved what we were doing and loved what we were saying and had amazing times at our shows, but they couldn’t help us. Their hands were completely tied. There’s very little you can do. I understand that and I understand the bigger picture. I don’t like it, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

“The only thing that has eluded us to this point has been a certain amount of reaching people. All we really want to do is to have the music find people that the music would speak to. We’ll play gigs out in the West and there will be 15 people there that really like us but it’s like, ‘God I know there’s more people in this town.’ People are people. They’re the same people that live in New York. They just

Aaand in This Corner: Grand Champeen!

By Wade Paschall

The two things I’ve heard most about Grand Champeen are that the band sounds like punk/pop legends like the Replacements and (early) Soul Asylum and that they put on one hell of a live show. Regarding the latter, Grand Champeen is closing Twangfest 8, and I’m looking forward to seeing that for myself. Regarding the former, I tend to approach assessments like these with a certain amount of trepidation, for a couple of reasons: they’re usually either totally wrong—or painfully right. Said comparisons are thrown around a little too loosely, glomming onto a credible forebear just to get you to part with your cash (see “Muse is like Radiohead”), while others involve bands sounding so much like the original that you might as well listen to the real thing (see “Oasis is like the Beatles”).

In this case, my interest (or perhaps skepticism) was particularly strong because one of the influences in question was my beloved Replacements. But three minutes and 30 seconds into Grand Champeen’s 2003 release, The One That Brought You, I was sure the associations were justified.

That was enough time to get through all of “The Good Slot” and a verse and chorus of “The Rest of the Night”—two songs that do have the same raw, unbridled energy of

songs found on Hootenanny or Let It Be, but not without enough elements unique to Grand Champeen to make them their own.

Perhaps it’s singer Channing Lewis’s voice, but there is something about Grand Champeen that makes it seem as though the common ground they cover with the Replacements is from opposite sides of the fence. Whereas the ’Mats always seemed to be punks giving glimpses of their tender side, Grand Champeen seems to capture the pop aspect a bit more naturally, with the rawness coming more from their unabashed love of that sound and those influences. Or to further the influence analogy a generation deeper, if Westerberg equates to Alex Chilton, then maybe Lewis is more like Chris Bell.

Listening to The One That Brought You, the one thing I wasn’t sure I heard was the level of depth and meaning that permeates Westerberg’s songs. But I’m not sure that’s a fair statement, because the meaning we find in songs comes over time and our relationship with that music, that album, that artist, and how it fits into what’s going on in our lives as a whole, although I did catch promises of it in songs like “Step Into My Heart.” I guess I’ll just have to keep this album around for a long time to find out. In

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PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

THE HANDSOME FAMILY

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Cary Hudson’s latest solo CD, “streets” on June 1, only slightly more than a week before Twangfest 8. To be sure, if the new disc stank, no fortuities of timing could redeem it, especially after the accolades that greeted his 2002 debut, The Phoenix (like the new disc, a Black Dog Records release).

Happily enough, Cool Breeze does anything but stink; in fact, to briefly extend the olfactory notion, it wafts the intoxicating scents of chicken battered and sizzling in the skillet, the suspiciously understated perfume of the new barmaid at the pool hall that the local ladies’ club has been trying to close for decades, and the ozone promise of a coming storm. Less metaphorically, Hudson, with drummer Ted Gainey and bassist Justin Showah, plays delectably blues-inflected rock or rockin’ country or what-have-you on such songs as “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” “8 Ball Blues,” and (dear Lord!) “Jellyroll.” (The twelfth and final track on Cool Breeze, “Some Things Never Change,” comprises the tentative howl of some dogs, the squawk of a harmonica playing “Oh! Susanna,” the crunch of gravel under someone’s boots, and a final “Ha!” Definitely heavy-rotation material at WIL.) Previously a co-founder of such bands as the Hilltops and Blue Mountain, Hudson has the mellow accent of a born Mississippian on vocals.

On guitar, though, the man can make his instrument yowl like a tomcat prowling for tabbies in heat. Several other T8 performers look younger and hunkier than Hudson, but that don’t mean a thing: of all the acts on the bill, he’s the one that those with impressionable daughters and kid sisters should most beware.

The Handsome Family * The Handsome Family, one suspects, lives just down the block or around the corner from the Addams family; in all likelihood, Gomez and Morticia (from the latter) periodically take tea with Brett and Rennie Sparks (who mostly constitute the former). On a half-dozen or so compact discs—the latest of them Singing Bones (Carrot Top Records, 2003)—the Sparkses have consistently made lo-fi music which initially sounds innocuous enough but subsequently echoes with the dread timbre of whatever soundtrack’s playing in David Lynch’s head from day to day. These are not normal people; The Blair Witch Project probably reminded them of a home movie. That said, the Handsome Family may well enthrall the openminded. Brett Sparks, the composer here, has a grand, resonant voice; Rennie Sparks, meanwhile, writes lyrics that work despite scanning like the free verse of a high school goth whose black nail polish ran dry one finger (pick a finger!) shy of a full complement. Further, he generally plays the guitar, washboard, and computerized percussion; she, the autoharp, bass, and melodica. The catalog of the couple—who recently moved from Chicago to Albuquerque but mostly seems to reside in the Twilight Zone—includes such exemplary offerings as “So Much Wine” and, from the 13-track new disc, “If the World Should End in Fire/Ice.” For Twangfest attendees, the Handsome Family’s Web site promises that “their live performances will

strive to be as beautiful and creepy as a thorny rose twisting around the bleached jawbone of a dead horse,” as on the duo’s often hilarious Live at Schuba’s Tavern (DCN, 2002).

Marah * Three days after crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites camped at a place called Marah (“often identified with the modern Ain Hawarah, c. 75 km SSE of Suez,” Volume 2 of The Illustrated Bible Dictionary notes). Precisely what this has to do with a rock ’n’ roll quintet from Philadelphia remains uncertain, but the band Marah invites such uncertainty by citing Exodus 13:23 (if not Numbers 33:8–9) on their Web site. Be that as it may, although their collective handle’s pronounced like mirage without the final consonant, absolutely nothing about them feels like a trick of the light. Marah currently comprises vocalist/multi-instrumentalists David and Serge Bielanko, lap steel player Mike Brennan, bassist Kurt Henderson, and drummer Jon Wurster and features in their catalog such E-Squared releases as Kids in Philly (2000) and Float Away With the Friday Night Gods (2002), which have earned them almost nonstop comparisons to the early Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Reportedly, such comparisons finally freaked the brothers Bielanko enough that they decamped to Ireland to regain their musical perspective; the late June release of 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (Yep Roc Records) should define to what extent they’ve redefined themselves. Ironically, the aforesaid comparisons don’t err: especially on Kids in Philly, Marah does recall the Boss and his puissant posse. Marah does so, however, not through jam-band mimicry. Rather, like the sage of Freehold, New Jersey—and before him, that odd Zimmerman boy—the Bielankos & Co. have mulled the sometimes excruciating, sometimes ecstatic poetry of city living, and they have well and truly rocked.

Friday, June 11, Duck Room Grey De Lisle * As Shakespeare showed more than four centuries ago in Hamlet, opening with a ghost can enthrall an audience, and Gray De Lisle has done just that with her first name-label release: The Graceful Ghost, which Sugar Hill Records issued in March, has been earning accolades in the press, including a favorable review in Playback St. Louis and a sevenpage profile in No Depression. De Lisle scarcely qualifies as a tyro, of course; from 2000 to 2003, she self-released three CDs, and in SUSANNA VAN her day job, she’s done enough voiceover work in animation (for Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network, for instance) to rank as a distaff Mel Blanc. The Los Angeleno recorded the dozen tracks on The Graceful Ghost in her living room using only analog equipment. (De Lisle doesn’t do digital; to No Depression, she joked, “No computers will ever be harmed in the making of a

Grey De Lisle album.”) Abetting her were multiinstrumentalist Marvin Etzioni, standup bassist Sheldon Gomberg, and guitarist/vocalist Murry Hammond; it bears noting that Etzioni, who played bass with Lone Justice, also produced the CD and that Hammond’s both a member of the Old 97s and De Lisle’s husband. The Graceful Ghost opens in fine fashion with “The Jewel of Abilene,” a kicky sketch of a Texan femme fatale, and continues in that fashion with such offerings as “Sharecroppin’ Man,” an exquisite tribute to Johnny and June Carter Cash, and “This White Circle on My Finger,” a song identified with Kitty Wells and the only one here that De Lisle didn’t write. An impressive performance, The Graceful Ghost. One suspects De Lisle’s performance at Twangfest 8 will be equally impressive.

Susanna Van Tassel and Jim Stringer and the Austin Music Band * On the Twangfest 8 bill, the pairing of Susanna Van Tassel with T3 vets Jim Stringer and the Austin Music Band itself constitutes something of a bonus double bill. Although Stringer produced Van Tassel’s sophomore release, the two of them haven’t teamed to record a CD of duets or anything of the sort, after all; this year, for whatever reason, they merely appear to be accompanying each other on the jaunt to St. Louis from the capital of the Lone Star State. Still, T8 attendees likely won’t complain because the talent tells the tale. Beyond laying claim to a vast repertoire of covers, Stringer and the AM Band (a small army of Texas troubadours lately including pianist T Jarrod Bonta, pedal-steel players Ricky Davis and Tommy Detamore, drummer Jon Hahn, and bassist Carl Keesee) have released three well-regarded CDs, the latest of them, In My Hand (The Music Room), on May 11. Van Tassel, meanwhile, has recorded two studio CDs, The Heart I Wear (SVT Records, 2000) and My Little Star (The Music Room, 2002), and in The Journal of Country Music earned praise from no less an authority than Nolan Porterfield, writer of the definitive biography of Jimmie Rodgers.

Van Tassel has an almost reedy voice that, on her 12-track 2002 disc, charms most on two up-tempo numbers: “Unmitigated Gall,” a kissoff, and “A Love That’s True,” a come-on. The dozen tracks on In My Hand, meanwhile, position Stringer at alt-country ground zero, “wherever that is.” The title song alone would make the CD a must-have, and for fans of traditional country, his T8 appearance should be a must-see.

Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub * Paul Burch has received the musical kiss of death so often that his lips have TASSEL likely grown accustomed to the touch and the taste of it. More specifically, during his six-year career as a headliner, countless reviewers have likened him to Bob Dylan.

Now, disregard that such a comparison means almost nothing—Dylan ranks as our preeminent musical enigma, a man whose manifold masks quiver and quirk so convincingly that only Robert Allen Zimmerman, whoever he is, may “know the

TWANGFEST 2004 dancer from the dance,” in Yeats’ phrase. Disregard also that on the cover of Blue Notes, Burch’s 2000 Merge Records release, the Nashville resident, who otherwise eerily resembles the young Narvel Felts, looks somehow Dylanesque. Disregard even that transcending comparisons to Dylan has traditionally demanded a Springsteen-level talent, itself something to occasion fright. Disregard all of that.

Instead, spin Burch’s latest release, the 12-track Fool for Love (Bloodshot Records, 2003), and boggle at his talents as a crooner. Yes, you read aright: Burch croons. He croons, in fact, like a lifer. No one croons nowadays! Roy Orbison crooned; Del Shannon crooned. Vocalists today growl or snarl or rely on the mixing board magi to make them sound more euphonious than a toad squashed by an urchin with a brick. Obviously, Burch missed a memo—and thank the stars that he did, because on such tracks as “Lovesick Blues Boy” and “Life of a Fool” from the new CD, Burch and his WPA Ballclub (guitarist Richard Bennett, multiinstrumentalist George Bradfute, upright bassist Dennis Crouch, and multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin) make irresistible music.

site’s content—doesn’t that sound ever so cyber?— and visitors could at least and at last I.D. the members of the Ohio band: guitarist Matt Benz, drummer Gene Brodeur, lead vocalist/guitarist Justin Lute, and vocalist/bassist Alan Rothrock. Benz and Brodeur previously played in the Sovines; Lute formerly fronted the Southern Diplomats and just last year self-released a solo CD titled Adventures of Lori Lou; and Rothrock currently serves as a resident at Ohio State University Hospital, but nobody’s perfect. By e-mail, Benz characterized the Whilers as “a band that really wants to bring back the wonderful collision of pop, rock, and country that seems to have been swept aside in the roots rock genre.” Although the foursome in concert performs a few selections from Adventures of Lori Lou—a splendidly swinging example of neo-rockabilly, by the way—the Whilers have lately focused on developing a group dynamic sonically. As a cognate, Benz named the V-Roys: “They were a band that had a lot of the same influences Justin and I have, from Nick Lowe to the Kinks. And Roger Miller. That’s the feeling that we want to capture, just a loose rock ’n’ roll band with classic influences and good snappy ROBBIE FULKS Robbie Fulks * “Nashville’ll do just songs that get people looking up fine,” run the lyrics to one of Robbie Fulks’ bestfrom the floor.” He also modestly downplayed the known songs, “[a]s long as there’s a moron market/ band’s potential. Regarding the Whilers, though, And a faggot in a hat to sign.” Small wonder, then, in light of individual members’ musical legacies, that the man will be playing Twangfest 8 instead of think sleeper. the mostly concurrent CMA Music Festival (formerly Fan Fair) held yearly in Tennessee’s capital— Two Cow Garage * The best rock ’n’ roll often no one will ever mistake him for Kenny Chesney. approximates a midnight bar brawl: it’s all shattered To be sure, he knows his stuff; “In Bristol Town One glass and spattered blood, with shrieks echoing Bright Day,” which opens his latest release, Couples toward the past, sirens screeching from the future, in Trouble (Boondoggle Records, 2001), sounds so and that infamous clock on the wall ticking away much like “old-time mountain music” one could the present. A scream of love or hate in one guise almost believe Ralph Stanley’s been performing or another, it embraces rawness. Two Cow Garage it for five or six decades. Beyond peerless, protean plays just that sort of raw roots rock (something musicianship, though, Fulks approaches his mateof an oxymoron, incidentally, in that the best rial with a ferocity and intelligence that recalls rock also often involves deracination). The band not so much classic country as pure punk—aptly hails from Ohio—a state so otherwise unassuming enough, inasmuch as Elvis Costello’s 1981 Almost one might be tempted to consider its exclamatory Blue reportedly inspired him to do what he does. postal abbreviation What he does, moreover, won’t please everyone. a breach of truth GRAND CHAMPEEN On such Bloodshot Records CDs as Country Love in advertising—and Songs (1996) and South Mouth (1997) and such comprises Dustin tracks as “I Told Her Lies” and “The Scrapple Harigle, Micah Song,” he’s consistently crafted music that likely Schnabel, and would’ve given someone like Roy Acuff a coronary.

Shane Sweeney.

(Just lucky Acuff’s already dead, huh?) Tellingly, On their 11-track the cover to his 1996 disc shows a cigarette- debut, the splensmoking man swinging an ax at a barefoot woman didly titled Please on the porch of a clapboard hovel, suggesting that Turn the Gas Back Fulks (heaven help us) might descend to burlesque, On (Shelterhouse parody, and even satire. As a result, the smart Records, 2002), all money says the former Pennsylvania native, who three contribute previously played Twangfest 2 in 1998, will number vocals to whatever among the highlights of this year’s festival. extent; otherwise, i n s t r u m e n t a l l y, Saturday, June 12, Duck Room Harigle plays the The Whilers * Till mid-April, Cosa Nostra turn- drums, Schnabel the guitar, banjo, and mandolin, coats in the Witness Relocation Program publicized and Sweeney the bass and acoustic guitar. Various themselves more than the Whilers, whose Web site commentators have compared them to Uncle boasted a bio all of three sentences long. Just after Tupelo, which could provoke a terminal case of Easter, happily enough, a new upload refreshed the flop sweat in most acts but doesn’t seem inapt: like

Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy before their McCartneyLennon meltdown, the Ohio trio, on such songs as “Farmtown” and “All Sins Forgiven,” suggests they well know that dismal yet lovely place where butts overflow the ashtray, the dawn’s light slashes like a straight razor, and life still inexplicably seems preferable to the alternative. Two Cow Garage (which is reportedly preparing to record a second full-length CD) has previously rocked Frederick’s Music Lounge; odds are they’ll do the same to the Duck Room.

The Bigger Lovers * The praying mantis, that H.R. Giger remake of the grasshopper, belongs to an entomological order that nearly defies orderliness; notes The Handy Bug Answer Book, “These insects are so varied in structure that it is difficult to characterize the Orthoptera as a whole.” It’s perhaps apropos that photos of praying mantises adorn the 11-track third CD from Philadelphia’s Bigger Lovers, This Affair Never Happened…and Here Are Eleven Songs About It (Yep Roc Records, 2004). To be sure, the quartet—drummer Patrick Berkery, lead guitarist Ed Hogarty, bassist/vocalist Scott Jefferson, and guitarist/vocalist Bret Tobias— doesn’t go all rock ’n’ roll John Cage on the new disc. (They’re not quite that buggy, but then, who is?) Still, pigeonholing the music on that disc (“the Bigger Lovers sound like [Artist A] with more than a little of [Artist B]”) doesn’t come easy. One should likely expect such elusiveness from a band who titled their new disc what they did; aporia and similar linguistic devices always entrance Joe Sixpack, who undoubtedly sent a Molly Hatchet best-of shurikening across the record store on finding This Affair Never Happened. At a constituent level, moreover, consider something like the fifth track here, “Slice of Life,” which shamelessly mentions the “bionic man,” an allusion to a ’70s TV show only slightly less cretinous than the spin-off with which the lyrics conflate it. Beside such cosmic wrongness, the fuzzed-out psychedelic attack of “You Don’t Feel Anything at All,” two tracks later, comes almost as a comfort. And something like Track 3, “Blowtorch”? Oh, my. Truth in advertising, inarguably: keep an eye peeled for the fire marshal.

Grand Champeen * In collages decorating the latest CD from Grand Champeen, brown bears appear in space suits and a white wedding gown with an offthe-shoulder bodice and what looks suspiciously like an empire waist, hinting not only that the Austin quartet marches to the beat of a different drummer, but also that they groove to the growl of a different bassist and boogie to the riff of a different guitarist. (Musicians, weird? Who’d have guessed it?) The liner notes of the CD in question, The One That Brought You (Glurp, 2003), also unfortunately favor a florid script unreadable enough to tempt one to fabricate details about the foursome. That

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VINTAGE VINYL your Twangfest Headquarters marah

live at Duck Room June 10th!

amy farris

20,000 STREETS UNDER THE SKY

ANYWAY Though this Austin, TX native's enviable career has encompassed violin duties for everyone from Ray Price to Brian Wilson, Amy Farris truly shines on her solo debut, Anyway. With nods to Brill Building pop, Patsy Cline-era torch songs, western swing and Southern California cosmic country, Anyway presents a unique new voice with a profound sense of history.

The fourth album from Philadelphia's Marah and their first for Yep Roc, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky is, by their own estimation, the album Dave & Serge Bielanko have always wanted to make.

Streets follows the Bielanko brothers' triumphant return to the road, energized by a dynamic new lineup!

YEP ROC [YEP-2073]waking up everyday hoping to turn it all around...."

YEP ROC [YEP-2071]

anna fermin’s trigger gospel

the bigger lovers

OH THE STORIES WE HOLD

THIS AFFAIR NEVER HAPPENED...

Oh The Stories we Hold is the follow-up to Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel's extremely popular and criticallyacclaimed 1999 debut, Things To Come. Former Wilco member Jay Bennett not only performs on "Oh, The Stories We Hold", but also gives his keen ear and creative talents as producer.

live at

Schlafly Taproom

June 9th!

live at

UNDERTOW [UMC-0020]

Schlafly Taproom

June 9th!

live at Duck Room June 12th!

Not content to tread water stylistically,The Bigger Lovers’ This Affair Never Happened... features everything you've come to expect and then some: soaring vocals overlaid with tight harmonies, explosive power chords and choruses that make you reach for the "repeat" button.

YEP ROC [YEP-2061]

redwalls

two dollar pistols

UNIVERSAL BLUES

HANDS UP!

Calling to mind The White Album and Let It Be era Beatles, mid' 60s Dylan, and the soulful swagger of Stax R&B, The Redwalls’ Universal Blues is the sound of young songwriters learning from the past at the precise moment that they begin to find their voices.

UNDERTOW [UMC-0021]

The evocative, world-weary baritone of John Howie Jr. tells you you're listening to a new TWO DOLLAR PISTOLS record -- but Hands Up! is about anything but treading the same old ground. The Pistols' 3rd studio album matches up their trademark Bakersfield honky-tonk and tear-in-my-beer ballads with a distinctive pop sensibility and hooks to spare.

YEP ROC [YEP-2056]

6610 delmar boulevard • st louis 314.721.8115

June 2004 Backstage Pass mash-up—a combo that sounds much better in reality than in the imagination, I promise.

—Ross Todd

Destroyer

w/Frog Eyes and Ghost in Light

The Rocket Bar, May 19 Walking into my first less-than-capacity show at the Rocket Bar, I thought, “What a charming bar!” I could never actually see it before, having waded through oceans of hipster humanity on previous visits. Did you know there’s a jukebox in there? No shit.

A local three-piece, Ghost in Light, opened the show with a mostly instrumental mix of echo-y Pink Floyd guitars and lengthy, stuttering, locked-in-tight arrangements.

If Lawrence Kasdan makes Grand Canyon 2 (please, no), these propulsive, multi-layered reverberations would make the ideal soundtrack.

Next up was the noisy, skewed indie rock of Victoria, B.C.’s Frog Eyes. Madmanchanneling-who-knows-what Carey Mercer fronts the band, looking every bit like Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the part of that guy in Office Space (you know, the “you stole my stapler” guy). The only words he spoke to the audience were in that crazy office guy’s voice, saying, “Thanks for rocking. Very kind.”

Stumbling into amps and mic stands, drunk or maybe just naturally altered, he comes across as one of those fractured rock geniuses, as likely to astound you with an incredibly original screamy-pop gem as he is to play an entire song on an unplugged instrument. Late in the set, he visibly panicked: his keyboard didn’t work. Fortunately, a young lady in the audience pointed out that Mercer had recently turned off the keyboard’s power switch. Good save, Random Rock Chick! Frog Eyes are almost Pixies-ish (and I mean Surfer Rosa Pixies) in their soft-to-scream arrangements, but still manage to sound completely original.

Urgent and excitable, the band resembles overly medicated inmates putting on a cabaret show at the asylum. The last song ended with such a whimper, nobody realized the set was over—that is, until the band members started wandering from the stage.

Talking to Destroyer’s Dan Bejar (Destroyer is Dan Bejar; he records and writes everything) before his set, he was very friendly, mentioning that Frog Eyes was also his backing group on this tour, and that their packed touring schedule had left them exhausted. Not feeling their

from page 17

best didn’t keep this version of Destroyer from fleshing out the synthesizer strings and brass extravaganza of the new record, Your Blues (Merge), into a loud but fragile ramshackle train wreck of strangled yelps and hearts you can hear breaking right in front of you. A beautiful mess.

Destroyer unfortunately continued with the no-talking-between-songs rule, which kept the band from really connecting with

the tiny but attentive audience. In those awkward silences, while waiting for Mercer to change instruments or tune, Bejar swayed slowly, eyes closed, looking like the guy who drank too much at the party and just now figured it out. But then he’d start belting out the next song, in a howl exposing so many raw nerves that you can’t help feeling embarrassed watching him, like you’re about to get caught eavesdropping. Destroyer followed

19

“ The most anticipated event for indie rockers, Pop Montreal has become Canada’s equivalent to CMJ and SXSW, delivering the hottest taste-making artists as well as many new bands you should know about ” EXCLAIM!

taste-making labels and groundbreaking artists. Each and every show is a combination of hard work and vision combined with the tastes and talents of the participating bands and promoters.

You are encouraged, whether you’re a band, promoter or artist, to get involved and approach us with your ideas. We’re dedicated to becoming a faithful reflection of our community and hopefully a springboard Pop Montreal is a 4 day independent music festival, running from Sept. 29th to Oct. 3rd. In our third edition, for your artistry. In the last two years, we’ve had the honour of hosting performances by Blonde Redhead, we endeavour to bring you a festival that goes well beyond the generic music industry standard. With support Arthur H, Broken Social Scene, Interpol, Queens of The from the Marbelus Arts Foundation, Pop Montreal reflects Stone Age, Les Ogres de Barback, Metric, The Unicorns, The Dears, Arcade Fire, Malajube, The Constantines, the diverse cultural and bilingual setting of Montreal Melon Galia, Montag, Stars, The Walkmen, Julie Doiron, (Quebec, Canada), mixing French and English bands, Martina Sorbara and Hot Hot Heat, showcasing the unknown artists, international superstars and the rising tenured forces of new music side by side with the rising gems of independent music. Pop Montreal is a curated festival, focused on showcasing iconic pop performances, stars of tomorrow’s independent sound.

This year will be the best Pop Montreal to date. And with your help, we will continue our mission to bring something fresh and spectacular to the people.

For more information and to apply visit our website at www.popmontreal.com

PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

DAVID SEDARIS’S

UNSENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

by Stephen Schenkenberg Playback St. Louis Book Editor

20

F

or a writer of nonfiction—yes, apparently, the stories he tells actually happened—David Sedaris is uniquely celebrated for his characters. Novelists would lean back in pride, having created any one the characters inhabiting Sedaris’ previous books. Mister Mancini, the “perfectly formed midget” jazz-guitar teacher who advised the young Sedaris that yes, he could name his guitar “Oliver,” but traditionally a guitarist chose the name of a heartbreaking woman. Or Dinah, “the Christmas whore.”

Or The Walrus, Sedaris’ peer in elfing who acted “as though SantaLand were a singles bar.” Or of course the author’s own family—his salty, chain-smoking mother; his grandmother Ya Ya, saddened by the suicide of her goldfish (“Is pretty, the fish. Why he want to take he life away?”); the legendary Rooster, Sedaris’s black-sheep brother whose

response to financial counsel from his father was this gem: “Quit the stock talk, hoss, I ain’t investing in shit.” Even the minor characters in the author’s stories are richly drawn.

Clarence Poole, the “plum-colored” orderly whose “nose lay practically flat against his cheek, causing him to look like someone from a Picasso painting”; the two Polish Annas from his French-language class; the “jittery, bug-eyed typesetter” from whom he scored his bohemian-phase drugs.

These characters now have company. This month, after four years of some major recollecting, Sedaris unloads 22 new stories in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Little, Brown). (To promote the new book, Sedaris will give a live reading at Powell Hall June 11.) For we readers and listeners, this new book means a new round of characters: great aunt Monie—“a cross between moaning and money”—“who was great because she was rich and childless.” Brandi, a little-girl neighbor who adopts Sedaris as her playmate then savages his artwork (greatly improving it, he admits—“this girl was the real thing”).

And nervous, sweating Martin, who mistakes the author for an erotic housekeeper. (You’ll have to read it.)

Speaking from London, where he and his boyfriend Hugh have been living for a year and a half, Sedaris said that the arrival of a new book usually make him “gloomy,” wanting to talk the publisher out of going through with it. But he feels differently about Corduroy and Denim. “I’m not so much that way this time,” he said, “which means it will probably flop.”

Don’t count on it. The new stories are again funny and at once both outlandish and Sedaris-familiar—they make sense only because they’re coming from him. And while the author’s delivery has a non-urgent, aslong-as-you’re-listening tone, what one learns when speaking with him is how much of a

June 2004

craftsman he is with each of his stories before it finds its place in a book.

Or not. Sedaris pulled six stories from Corduroy and Denim—three of which had already been deemed fit for publishing in magazines—because he couldn’t get them right for himself. One of these stories, “Working Stiffs,” had appeared in Esquire, whose editors had assigned Sedaris to visit a medical examiner’s office in Phoenix and report back on the macabre hilarity that would no doubt ensue. While the story may have pleased that magazine’s editors and readers, the author himself felt so uneasy about it that he yanked it from the new collection. “It was hard because I was sent there almost as a reporter, and I don’t do very well under those situations,” he said. Talking of the friendly employees at the facility, Sedaris said. “I was very conscious of making them look good, and it was sort of at the expense of the story.

It was like being commissioned to paint a portrait—to honor your subject.”

Sedaris said he prefers to “stumble” on his subjects himself, and while that verb may give off a cavalier air, the author’s approach to the writing is anything but. He’ll work the stories over line by line—adjusting a phrase in a hotel room after he’s read it aloud to an audience—then go through the process again with a few editors he trusts.

Take “Monie Changes Everything,” about whose oddly sad ending I asked Sedaris; on the last page, the story moves from a comic tale of the author lying naked on a bequeathed bearskin rug to that rug being passed along to his sister’s roommate, who soon after died in a car accident. “On hearing the news,” Sedaris writes in the story, “I imagined her parents, this couple in their mindboggling grief, coming upon the bear in the trunk of their daughter’s car and wondering what it had to do with her, or anybody’s life.”

“That was one of three endings for the story,” Sedaris said, sounding like a novelist discussing his craft. As he explained, he wrote one ending that followed how his parents spent their share of the great aunt’s bequest;

a second ended with Sedaris stretched out on the rug in the buck. “It was just one of those stories where I thought, ‘You’ve come all this way, and you don’t really have an ending,’” he said. “All I can say is that when I wrote that ending”—the one with the young girl’s car crash—“I thought, ‘I don’t know why, but that’s the end of the story.’ Sometimes it just feels right.”

The more I’ve read Sedaris’s stories, the more I notice how well he treads the line between the off-the-wall humor and almost pleasant mockery he’s famous for, and the tenderness and sadness that sometime surface.

While Sedaris’s book Naked was certainly fueled by humor, one of the most memorable moments was when his sister—attempting to play some old videotapes the late Mrs. Sedaris had left her—presses “play” and learns her father had taped over Double Indemnity with professional golf. Sedaris’s new book has its share of these moving moments—the author, in the rain with his mother, realizing that his father had kicked him out of the house not for being lazy but for being gay—and I asked him if he approaches the comic/sad juxtaposition in any particular way.

“Usually it just happens by surprise,” he said. “It happens by surprise writing it. I think there usually comes a point when I’m working on a story and I write something, and I think, ‘Oh, that’s not really how I felt.’ Or, ‘That’s

So I think, ‘Well, why don’t we just skip the laugh there and go into a little bit more detail.’

I think that’s where most of those moments come from. I don’t ever want to be formulaic about it. And I don’t want to be sentimental. But I worry about that.”

not really what happened.’

I think one of the reasons Sedaris skillfully

avoids the formulaic or sentimental is that he reads hard, and he reads well. Flannery O’Conner, Raymond Carver, Alice Munroe, David Foster Wallace, Richard Yates… It’s hard to be sentimental if one of your favorite writers is the late tortured novelist Richard Yates, who’s near the top of Sedaris’s list. “I love Richard Yates,” he told me, and he wasn’t kidding; he rereads Yates’ The Easter Parade (“God, that book sinks me every time”) every year, and had done so again since turning in the stories for Corduroy and Denim.

As for his own book, Sedaris, in the second half of our interview, returned to his almost resigned happiness about it. “If I’m positive about it for any reason, then it’s because a majority of the stories appeared in The New Yorker,” he said. “And it’s always been my feeling that if you don’t like something in The New Yorker, there’s nothing wrong with the story, there’s something wrong with you.”

Of these growing magazine readers, I’ve wondered if they, like me, have wrongfully assumed that Sedaris was making his stories—or at least part of them—up. They’re too wacky, the characters too colorful, etc.

When I asked Sedaris about this, he admitted that, yes, he hears the plausibility question quite often.

He went into a long response that began with a nod toward his most recent writing, saying, “I think what I’ve tried to do is hold myself…back…” He took a moment to think.

Then he continued with a writing-decision story that seemed to say he understands the plausibility question—‘Did your brother really say that?’ his readers might ask—but hey, he’s filling these characters in with each new story, with each new book.

“In Naked, say, whenever my mother spoke, it was like a smart-ass kind of a line.

And there’s this story in the new book about buying a beach house. We’re looking for a name for the beach house, and my mother says, ‘What about something with the word “sandpiper” in it? Everybody likes sandpipers, right?’ It’s just such a naked thing to say. And it’s not funny. It doesn’t get a laugh. But it

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Saved

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(MGM, Rated PG-13)

Religious fundamentalism is a subject ripe for satire, but I can’t recall a teen movie that has tackled it. Saved! is a fairly ambitious film with more on its mind than simply skewering the insufferably righteous. Saved! is equal parts comedy and contemplation, and director Brian Dannelly bears more than a little John Hughes influence.

Set in a Southern Baptist high school, the film is the story of Mary (Jena Malone), who is properly “God-fearing” until her boyfriend Dean (Chad Faust) tells her he is gay. In a misguided effort to “bring him back,” Mary gets Dean to sleep with her. She becomes pregnant from the encounter, and Dean’s parents ship him off to a special “rehab” center after finding gay porn under his bed.

Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore) praises the Lord and casts aspersions on those who stray.

She condescends to her wheelchair-bound brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin) and the school’s lone Jew, the feisty and sexually self-aware Cassandra (Eva Amurri). Hilary thinks all problems can be solved if you simply “let Christ’s love into your heart,” and Skip (Martin Donovan), the school’s pastor principal, also drums this message home with assemblies where he uses rap lingo to invite the students to “get our Christ on.”

Mary fearfully wonders what to do about her pregnancy, begins to question God, and finds her herself increasingly turning against Hilary’s narrow-mindedness. Cassandra and Roland enjoy a growing flirtation since they are the two real loners. The whole movie is about the conflict between unyielding dogma and the real circumstances and emotions of human beings getting on with their lives. Matters come to a head when word of Mary’s pregnancy gets out, and she and Hilary engage in a battle of wills. In a great scene, Mary tells the hypocritical Hilary that

she knows nothing about love. The offended Hilary angrily throws a Bible at Mary, yelling, “I am filled with Christ’s love!” In its comical way, this scene illustrates something disturbingly true about religious zealots throughout the world.

The acting in Saved! is impressive. Mandy Moore scores with her convincing portrayal of a self-righteous Bible thumper who is nowhere near as enlightened as she thinks.

Jena Malone is so dead-on in her focused performance, with its controlled nervousness, that she hardly seems to be acting at all. And it’s good to see Macaulay Culkin finally growing up; his relationship with Eva Amurri adds some nice diversity to the film.

The film makes the case that morality is a gray area, and that the extreme pronouncements of fundamentalists lead only to divisiveness.

“Why would God make everyone different if he wanted us all ON THE RUN to be the same?” Mary wisely asks. Though filled with laughs and irreverence, ultimately it is such questions that inform Saved!, and elevate it to a compelling level. Stay to hear Michael Stipe’s duet with Mandy Moore; it’s simply beautiful, and shows that Moore’s career isn’t in need of being “saved” at all— it’s blessed with more soul and spirit than Britney and Jessica combined.

—Kevin Renick On the Run (Magnolia Pictures, Unrated) On the Run is the first installment of The Trilogy by director Lucas Belvaux. The three

films are billed as three separate genres using the same characters to expand the story. On the Run is a basic action movie with a French sensibility. The film jumps right into the action with a daring prison escape. Bruno (Belvaux) has lingered in jail for 15 years for unspecified political crimes. Upon his escape, he returns to his old habits of terrorizing the government in an attempt to topple society.

Bruno is prepared. He has left himself several safe houses containing everything a good terrorist needs: guns, explosives, and the layouts of several government buildings. What Bruno does not have are the friends and network with which he once worked.

His former conspirator, Jeanne (Catherine Frot), has moved on.

No longer a revolutionary, she spends her time raising her son (Elie Blvaux) and building a life with her husband (Olivier Darimont). When Bruno re-enters her life, she must chose between loyalties old and new.

The action in On the Run is well executed, but it is only used to punctuate long periods of brooding. Bruno is on two crusades to free his fellow comrades and wreak vengeance on the man who originally turned them in. Neither backstory is completely fleshed out and both plot lines are essentially used to propel Bruno from one violent encounter to the next. The final resolution to the action is anti-climactic, but in a deliberate manner. Belvaux makes the final showdown a bit underwhelming, because the real story is Bruno’s seething rage and his continued insistence that he is waging a war and on the side of right, even

June 2004

as he becomes more brutal and thuggish. His struggle to maintain his values in a world completely changed, and his denial of the changes are the crux of his character. Belvaux makes watching Bruno simmer to the boiling point riveting.

Less interesting is Jeanne’s struggle with her loyalties. Frot never embodies the struggle; she plays a one-note protective mother. This mother happens to have a shaded past, but Jeanne is so far from that past she is never really VALENTIN tempted by Bruno to return. She is intimidated by Bruno and struggles against being pulled into his schemes, but there is little evidence of an inner struggle.

Frot’s inability to portray the internal struggle marginalizes her character.

On the Run is interesting, and Belvaux’s smoldering performance and deft directing are wonderful, but there are gaps in the drama. As this is part of a larger work, it will be interesting to see if those gaps are filled in as characters reappear and are fleshed out in further installments. As an individual work, On the Run is worthy, but it has a higher purpose—to whet the appetite for the future pieces—and on that level it works as an excellent introduction to The Trilogy.

—Bobby Kirk Valentin (Miramax, Rated PG-13) Valentin is the story of an optimistic little boy (Rodrigo Noya) growing up in Argentina during the late 1960s. Sent to live with his grandmother (Carmen Maura) after his parents’ separation, Valentin wishes he had a regular family like those of his friends, who “have it all and don’t enjoy it.”

Director and screenwriter Alejandro Agresti based the script on his own childhood experiences, which don’t amount to a compelling onscreen story. Despite the cast’s strong performances—especially from the endearing Noya (who’s oddly reminiscent of Jonathan Lipnicki with his thick glasses and cartoon-like cuteness)—the result is no more

than a string of loosely-connected vignettes brought together in a contrived final scene.

On their own, some of the vignettes work, especially the ones featuring Noya and Maura. The pair has a delightful chemistry, successfully portraying the complicated relationship between a boy and his dying grandmother. In fact, the funniest part of the film occurs when Valentin convinces a curmudgeonly old physician (Carlos Roffé) to simply “run in” to his stubborn grandmother at the market and demand to examine her.

Other nice moments include those between Valentin and his father’s kindhearted girlfriend Leticia (Julieta Cardinali). In this role, Cardinali nails the emotions of a 22-year-old woman who learns the truth about the man she loves from the innocent musings of a child. Meanwhile, as an aspiring astronaut, Valentin continues to charm us throughout by constructing his own spacesuit and attaching gravity-enhancing weights to his feet.

The problem is that Agresti tosses all this good stuff together with the not-so-good, including an uncle who disappears halfway through the movie, an unexplored relationship with a short-tempered father (portrayed

by Agresti himself), and a stranger who magically appears out of nowhere to relay information about Valentin’s absent mother. Even worse, many of the early events have no bearing on the end, and so it’s hard to know where the plot is going and which characters are important.

Agresti unsuccessfully attempts to tie up some of these loose ends during the final minutes, when Valentin introduces Leticia to his lonely piano teacher. (This one instant of matchmaking is apparently where the movie’s misleading tagline “Cupid just turned eight,” comes from). Although the ending is a happy moment for the two adults, it’s certainly not an answer for Valentin, who believes the pair will somehow transform into his own madeto-order parents. Regrettably—especially for

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YOU ARE HERE ART

The Best (and Worst) of St. Louis’s Public Art

By Joshua Cox

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The shadow of the Arch looms large over St. Louis and tends to crowd out the rest of the city’s surprisingly plentiful public art. It doesn’t help that most of the good stuff is either tucked away in a small corner or subtly goes unnoticed, like the stalwart hippo keeping vigil over Washington and 16th or the painted traffic boxes scattered throughout Clayton and the CWE. You might have your favorite piece (I understand that aesthetic tastes can vary), but bad location is invariably detrimental for the work (sorry, Ernest Trova, but anything in an office plaza inevitably gets saddled with the negative descriptor “corporate”). Ditch the guidebooks; here’s a list of the best (and worst) public artwork in greater St. Louis, all of which can be seen without special permission or pesky admission fees.

The Best

Meeting of the Waters, Carl Milles – Aloe Plaza, in front of Union Station—Often mentioned in tourist brochures but generally ignored in town, Meeting of the Waters is a gloriously updated version of an old-world Renaissance fountain. In a livelier downtown, it would be the star attraction and site of many a wedding proposal. But here it’s isolated in traffic and overshadowed by Union Station, where tourist crowds and Hooters patrons have no interest in turning their attention from the gourmet jelly bean shop to the coolly mellow sprites, mermaids, and river gods who never frolic but wait patiently for their overdue admiration.

January, December, November, Gerhard Richter – St. Louis Art Museum—Upstairs in the modern galleries of SLAM, you’ll find some great Chuck Close and Ellsworth Kelly paintings and plenty of Max Beckman, but none of them can match the in-yourface beautiful ugliness of Gerhard Richter’s three giant paintings January, December, and November. Unfortunately for now, they’re

enjoying a sabbatical in deep storage, but if they were hanging, you’d be able to marvel at the layers of color that seem to melt away from you under thick layers of black and gray. Step back and rest on the benches in front of them and you’ll suddenly find you’ve been there 20 minutes and still haven’t figured out which one’s your favorite.

Pool Complex: Orchard Valley, Mary Miss – Laumeier Sculpture Park— Alexander Lieberman’s big red colossus The Way may be the crowd favorite here, but take a break from the scorching sun and picnicking West County families and head into the trees to check out Mary Miss’s Pool Complex.

There you’ll find an installation that’s just as visually stunning as The Way, but ultimately more intimate and devotional. Having converted an old swimming pool into a subtly elaborate hanging garden, Miss has given us a wooded pastoral meditation center that’ll make you forget you’re only 20 minutes away from the city and 10 from the nearest WalMart.

Folke Filbyter, Carl Milles – Forsyth and Bemiston—Another piece by St. Louis fave Carl Milles, Folke Filbyter is an oddly grotesque horse and rider that relies not on coolness or beauty for effect, but rather on its startling presence and barely veiled threats.

I’m not sure what I enjoy more about this sculpture: the rider’s freakishly impassioned contortions or the uncomfortable stares of stuffy Clayton suits as they’re forced to cautiously conduct business under his nose.

Runner-Up

The gate at Kingsbury Place (Awakening Spring) – Kingsbury and Union Blvd.— Capable of producing an odd mix of grandeur and serenity as well as forcing an immediate resentment toward the privileged few living MEETING OF THE WATERS

just beyond it, the beautifully neo-classical Awakening Spring is a somewhat frivolous yet still inspiring remnant of St. Louis’s golden age.

The Worst

Anything on Laclede’s Landing—With artwork that’s either extremely ugly (Footnote, Fun Ride) or poorly placed to the point of insult (Mystic Vessel Ascending, an otherwise exciting piece); Laclede’s Landing is the perfect example of a development plan gone wrong. Too many bureaucrats and businessmen trying to spruce up a tourist destination look for “hot” artists and then find a corner to stick them in (does anybody really think that Charles Houska is a good painter?). Laclede’s Landing is a mess all around.

Primogenesis, William Severson and Saunders Schultz – Oak Knoll Park (currently MIA)—A rusty-looking, outdated sculpture that favors cleverness and technical showmanship over aesthetics; Primogenesis may have been “neat” in the ’80s, but now looks like a clunky garage sale item. And has anybody ever actually seen it “moving?”

Pageant Walkway Icon Poles, Ron Fondaw – Delmar Loop —The Delmar Loop is dangerously close to being overdeveloped as it is, and corny art like this is only going to push it over the edge. The artist was apparently trying to echo the tradition of an important classical promenade while at the same time pathetically trying to force some sort of Gen-Y playfulness and approachability. Were these things supposed to be hip or something?

Competition, J. Seward Johnson – St. Louis Center Plaza—If you consider how much of a success downtown’s St. Louis Center wasn’t, you can probably guess how successful the art they commissioned for it is.

Not only is Competition extremely crude and ugly, it’s also overly sentimental and artistically stale. Read the artist’s statement and you’ll realize how absolutely pointless and nonsensical it is.

Worst Treatment of a Great Piece

Twain, Richard Serra – Gateway Mall Plaza—St. Louis’s mistreatment of this piece is embarrassing. Twain has been the brunt of a lot of controversy and criticism, but most of that is due to its poorly maintained location.

With a little bit of TLC, Twain could finally realize its potential. It’s an exciting sculpture

June 2004

Burning Bush at Cannes

By Pete Timmermann I won’t keep you waiting.

Yes, I saw the new Michael Moore movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. An extremely long standing ovation followed the World Premiere, and the audience’s response during the film was borderline orgasmic. This, however, is an overreaction. Fahrenheit is by no means bad, but it needs some work. At 115 minutes in length, a substantial portion of it drags terribly. Moore has really made more or less a crib sheet of the past two decades of Bush family interests in Saudi oil. Moore does not uncover anything that the informed doesn’t already know; rather, he seems to stick to facts and prove his arguments more than in the past. Hopefully by the time Fahrenheit 9/11 finds its way to American theaters, Moore will have ironed out the lumps.

The second-hottest ticket this year was Wong Kar-Wai’s five-years-in-the-making 2046, which picks up where 2000’s Cannes entry In the Mood for Love left off. I’ll let you in on a secret: I had to sneak into this screening.

I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say that it involved climbing along a ledge and skirting dozens of security guards. I’m happy to report that 2046 was a bigger success in living up to its potential. The story follows Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung, a WKW regular) who has become a writer of science fiction erotica.

The sci-fi erotica thing, for the most part, is downplayed in favor of a more typical WKW obsession: the relationships that Chow begins with his neighbors and visitors—most notably, Ziyi Zhang’s Bai Ling.

The new Emir Kusturica, Life Is a Miracle, shows him returning to the excessive nature of his recent films, such as Underground (winner of the Palme d’Or in 1995) and Black Cat, White Cat. The new film by Kore-Eda Hirokazu (who directed 1999’s After Life), Daremo Shiranai, based on a true story of four pre-teens forced to live on their own when their flaky mom leaves for weeks on end, was good with its slow rhythms and optimistic, almost humorous tone. I was one of few who enjoyed Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators, involving three young, soft-core anarchists in Germany who break into rich people’s houses, rearrange everything, and leave notes on the wall, such as “Your days of plenty are numbered.” Similarly, I may have been the

only fan of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Thai oddity Tropical Malady, which begins as a sweet tale of two young boys in love and weirdly switches gears to examine the relationship between man and beast: about a third of the audience walked out, and the rest booed it when it ended.

More deserving of boos was Jonathan Nossiter’s documentary on wine politics, Mondovino, which moved into competition the day before it screened.

Terribly boring, and also interminable, it clocked in at 158 minutes, long enough to make every ass in the theater squirm. I found Agnes Jaoui’s Look at Me, which has gotten the most consistently good reviews of the films in competition, to be a formulaic, idiotic examination of a fat girl unhappy with her appearance.

Ugh. For the most part, out-of-competition and Un Certain Regard films were less exciting than those in competition, with Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education not living up to his last three films, Jean-Luc Godard’s Our Music not living up to his name, and the two new Abbas Kiarostami films, 10 on Ten and Five, being among his least interesting work.

The single most enjoyable film was Xan Cassavetes’ out-of-competition Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, a documentary about Los Angeles’s Z Channel, an early pay cable network, which gained a huge cult following for its programming of forgotten classics, soon-to-be cult films, and directors’ cuts of important films before the advent of VCRs. Perennial Z Channel favorites were shown in clip form throughout the movie; as a result, I spent a great deal of time jotting down movies I wanted to see instead of taking notes on the film.

Two politically oriented films selected for Un Certain Regard stirred people up quite a bit: Moolaade, about female genital mutilation in Senegal, and Cronicas, about a serial killer and the TV crew trying to catch him in Ecuador. I didn’t go for the focus on politics

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CANNES FILM FESTIVAL in Senegal in Moolaade as many people did, but I found it amusing that Cronicas, apparently the first Ecuadorian film ever, was a well-executed genre piece with a little bit of politics snuck in.

In close affiliation with the festival and its films are the Director’s Fortnight and International Critic’s Week sidebars, as well as the Cannes Market, where films screen for potential buyers. I always gave preference to films selected by Cannes, but there are a few worth mentioning. One of the biggest all-around breakouts this year was in the Fortnight (and also screened at Sundance); it was made on an iMovie system with a budget of $218 and resembled a Power Point presentation. Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation examines Caouette’s life in a manner reminiscent of both Crumb and Capturing the Friedmans.

All of the film’s hype was deserved: I saw the film late at night, my sixth film of the day, and it still left me thinking about it for days to come. Less worthy of the attention was Asia Argento’s The Heart Is Deceitful…

Above All Things, which is a badly acted and directed story of a young boy whose childhood involves living on the road with his irresponsible druggie mother. And finally, aside from my gambit to gain admittance to 2046, my happiest moment of the festival was discovering a screening of David Gordon Green’s Undertow, his first film since last year’s All the Real Girls. Alas, Undertow does not compare to Girls or to his debut feature George Washington, although it was not a bad film.

It is a thriller that very noticeably emulates Night of the Hunter, but it left me feeling as I had after seeing the Martin Scorsese version of Cape Fear; it just isn’t as good as the sum of its parts. As a whole, however, the Cannes Film Festival was better than the sum of its parts, thanks to consistently great programming (and a lack of truly bad films).

Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 went on to win the

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CURMUDGEON

BY ROB LEVY

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While local and national media has been fawning over St. Louis’s rappers, crews, and MCs, they have forgotten to notice the movers of the beat of the Mound City underground, the breakdancers. Yes, I said breakdancers. Before you dismiss this as some sort of kitsch throwback to Krush Groove or Electric Boogaloo, think again. I first noticed the phenomenon a few months ago, while lunching at the People’s Coffeehouse. The North Grand java joint hosts a monthly freeform open house of sorts for area poppers and spinners. The gathering is a small, jovial lot. These days, the beats are more trance than tribe, but that does not concern these kids. There is no hostility or tension, no one-upmanship. Instead, there is a sense of community, support, and admiration among the dancers. It defies class, race, or status.

Check it out.

Speaking of stuff around town, I wasn’t expecting the 9th Washington Avenue Beat Festival to be as cool as it was. The lineup for this go ’round was off the hook. Every venue had something to check out. Velvet had Dave Aude and, although I am not a fan, I must give him mad props because when he spins here, he packs Velvet. His sets are always tight and the floor is always jumpin’. I expect more big things from Sexual Vietnam (great moniker), the tandem of the alwayssolid Doug Surreal and Joe Beukman. DJ Dazee’s set at Lo was also an event, as was Rue 13 getting Kaskade to spin. With each and every WABF, the vibe of St. Louis’s electronic club culture becomes stronger and better organized. All the wrong reasons for clubbing in the STL are all the right reasons for checking out the WABF. Maybe, if we are all lucky, Great White PAUL WELLER won’t burn down too much as they come through town for their gigs at Generations.

Lola Ray’s album I Don’t Know You should be called I Don’t Want to Know You; they are really bad.

Those attending Rufus Wainwright’s

June 23 concert will not have to sweat getting a nap in beforehand. That’s because Ben Folds and Guster are on the bill. If the soothing sounds of their combined mediocrity cannot relax you, then all hope is lost.

Paul Weller’s new single, “The Bottle,” is a cover of a Gil Scott Heron song. It is from his forthcoming album of covers, arriving near the end of the year.

Ladytron are hard at work on their third album, tentatively called Antimusic. The album is rumored to have a noisier, heavier sound.

While taping a TV appearance for German television, Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos was involved in a tussle with one of Eminem’s bodyguards.

Belle & Sebastian have recorded new material for their Books EP due out later this month.

Don’t you hate having to see lots of crap bands at festivals in order to see two or three good ones? If you do, then pause and pray for a few moments for those poor souls who are going to Pointlessfest just to see the Von Bondies or Auf Der Mar. They are in for a long day of sheer suck. Besides the humidity, overpriced food, and parking hassles, these nice people will suffer the indignancies of annoying frat dudes and really awful headlining bands. But wait: they listen to commercial radio, so damn them for their lack of creativity!

Elvis Costello is writing two books. One will be a collection of stories and essays about his music and lyrics; the other will be a more straightforward autobiography. Both will be released by spring of 2005.

The Sheldon has pulled out the big guns and booked some outstanding shows for the fall. Emmylou Harris is there September 9. She always puts on a great show; her last show at the Pageant sold out and was simply astounding. She is one of the country’s best songwriters, always entertaining and worth the money. Also worth seeing is David Byrne with the Tosca Strings September 16. Although the tickets cost way more than they should, this show will be amazing. And if that weren’t enough, Angelique Kidjo is the very next night. Her powerful voice is amazing.

The Farm has reformed to re-record “All Together Now” for the 2004 Euro Tournament.

Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood has been named Composer in Residence for the BBC. Mick Jones has formed Carbon/Silicon, a

LADYTRON

new band with Generation X’s Tony James.

Those who attended last month’s concert by the Fall knew beforehand, somewhere deep inside, that it was going to be a trainwreck.

Fortunately, those brave and true souls who stayed until the bitter end saw glimpses of what was once a brilliant career spiral out of control before their very eyes. The majesty and travesty of the performance was something to behold.

In Tune on Time is the new DVD from DJ Shadow. Besides a full concert, the DVD features behind-the-scenes footage from his 2002 tour.

Jack White and Loretta Lynn are planning to collaborate on at least two more albums together. White will also be touring with Loretta this fall.

A musical based on the life of John Lennon will premiere in San Francisco early next year.

The video for “Proof,” the new single by I Am Kloot, features actor Chris Eccleston (Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later—and the new Doctor Who).

Morrissey is curating this year’s Meltdown Festival in London. Although he will be performing for several nights, the real highlight of the festival will be the reunion of the New York Dolls for two shows.

The Datsuns, The Killers, and Sahara Hot Nights have been added to Lollapalooza.

Bleeding Through is the title of the new Nine Inch Nails album, due later this fall.

The first four Camper Van Beethoven albums are being reissued through Cooking Vinyl records.

Robert Pollard has disbanded Guided by Voices. His new solo album, Fiction Man, is out now.

Denali, a band with promise, has also split.

After they release their new album, the

June 2004 Wu-Tang Clan is also splitting up.

The Black Eyed Peas are spending the summer in Europe working on their next record. The band wants the album to be a more collaborative effort and has discussed recording with The Darkness.

The Cure is mounting Curiosa, a one-day festival for their summer tour. Mogwai, The Cooper Temple Clause, The Rapture, and Interpol are all aboard for the festivities. The Cure’s new single, “The End of the World,” is the best thing Bobby’s done in years.

As a form of un-brainwashing, anyone who is going to see Hilary Duff should be given a free ticket to Patti Smith’s show. Then they’ll know how the world is supposed to be.

Low has a new box set out. A Lifetime of Temporary Relief collects the band’s seven-inch singles, covers, and other unreleased gems into a great collection of pure heaven.

Kraftwerk is re-mastering all of its albums for a late 2004 release.

Meanwhile, its new single, “Aerodynamik,” has just been released in the States.

When the Olsen Twins are allowed to make feature films, it is a true sign that Americans are culturally stupid.

Grandpa’s Ghost recently performed a multi-visual experience at NYC’s Knitting Factory.

Frakkur is the new musical project from Sigur Rós warbler Jonsi Thor Birgisson. The band is touring Iceland now and should begin recording an album later this summer. In the meantime, Sigur Rós is the subject of the drolly titled Sigur Rós on Tour, a film documenting the band’s 2003 tour. Among the films highlights are several unreleased tracks. The band can currently be found on the third Volume of the Shanti compilation.

The Constantines, Blonde Redhead, The Fever, Death Cab for Cutie, and TV on the Radio are performing at this year’s Siren Music Festival at Coney Island on July 17. TV on the Radio, who is very hot and hip right now, has signed to 4AD Records.

Smitten is the new album by The Martinis, a great pop band featuring Pixie Joey Santiago and vocalist Linda Mallari. The Martinis write pretty songs about the world in which we live that swerve to the left of the trite and conventional.

A new biopic about Joy Division and Ian Curtis is in the works in Britain. Although there is no script or casting, Moby will serve as “musical consultant.” The film is being made with the consent of New Order. Speaking of New Order, they have begun work on a new album on which John Leckie and Stephen Street are sharing production duties. Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook recently participated in Manchester’s annual memorial concert for former Joy Division manager Rob Gretton. Sumner performed an acoustic set with Doves, while Hooky helped reunite A Certain Ratio.

Could Simon & Garfunkel tickets be any more expensive? What, are they charging by the year now?

Lou Barlow has signed a recording deal with Merge Records.

Merge has also signed the reformed American Music Club.

In general, I hate Fair St. Louis. I have no compunction in questioning why people stand around in the heat and congeal as they pretend not to be bored. I am also mystified by the teaming masses’ urge to eat fattening food all day and see bad music all night. This year, however, the Fair organizers have thrown something interesting at us: Al Green and Isaac Hayes on July 3. Hayes goes on at 4 p.m. with Reverend Al taking the stage at 8 p.m. Both are playing the main stage and should not be missed! As a public service, I should caution you to avoid the Fair on the 4th. That’s when Smashmouth will be infecting

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Mondays: Open Mic with Heather Barth, 9-1 Tuesdays: .50 domestic draft/ $3.50 pitchers, 9-1, $3 cover 6.1 Racket Box • 6.8 Tim Fayh & Randy Furrer, Ali & Emily • 6.15 Confluence Benefit • 6.22 Racket Box • 6.28 The Tom Wood Band Wednesdays: $1 Stag, PBR bottles, Falstaff cans, 9-1, $4 cover—Call for Schedule Thursdays: Jake’s Leg $2 domestic bottles, 9-1, $5 cover Fridays: $2 premium pints or buy the glass for $3.50 and every fill up after that is $1.50, 9-1 6.4 The Dogtown Allstars • 6.11 The Flophouse Kings • 6.18 Big Star Kadillac • 6.25 Pitchfork w/Made Right Saturdays: 6.5 Lockedsound w/The Railers of Kiev • 6.12 The Breakmen • 6.19 Mugshot w/ Charleville • 6.29 Closed for Jake’s Leg Festival, for info call Magee’s Drink Specials Every Night—Free Beer Yesterday

Please Call for Schedule Updates

PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

RED EYED DRIVER

By Thomas Crone Andy Patania (keys and vocals) and Bryan Hoskins (guitar and vocals) have been through several changes in their newest project in just the past couple months: Changing their name, for starters, from Red Eyed Driver to Bipolaroid then back again, and adding a seasoned rhythm section in drummer Jill Aboussie and bassist Todd Dorsey, veterans of several area pop-oriented rock acts. Hoskins discusses his post-TripStar band while bartending the lunch shift at Mangia Italiano.

Elliot Goes

BRYAN HOSKINS

another song. Not doing it as a whole block.

Rather than having the same feel and sound, I’d like to record at different spaces and, more than anything, just have fun with it.

WEDNESDAY JUNE 2 @ CITY IMPROV 7:30–9PM Cirque & Improv Thursday June 3rd @ COCA

7:00 PM 8:00 PM 9:00 PM

CITY Improv Louisville Improvisors Sara Moore - Performance

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Friday June 4th @ COCA 7:00 PM Celestial Theatre - Blacklight Theater 8:00 PM Jesters Ink - Improv 9:00 PM BEATBOX - HIP HOP Improv 10:00 PM Jamie Black - Performance Saturday June 5th @ COCA 7:00 PM Underage Sugar Addicts & JUICE FSI 8:00 PM JUICE FSI & SPF7 9:00 PM Sara Moore - Encore Performance 10:00 PM NonProphets - Sketch Comedy Sunday June 6th @ COCA 7:00 PM BEST OF FRINGE with Sisters of the Silk Road COCA - 524 Trinity Ave UCITY THE LOOP

by Bosco (with illustration help from Jessica Gluckman)

www.mentalsewage.com

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You started out playing as a duo, but quickly added a rhythm section.

We got quite a few songs together, and started playing out. But we decided that it just wasn’t enough, and we decided to pursue drums and bass. I’d known Jill for quite a while and asked her if she wanted to come out and play. I gave her a demo CD of nine songs and she had a pretty good feel right away. The next practice, she started singing a little bit with us. And she mentioned that she wanted Todd to play with us. Evidently, they’d been talking about playing together for a long time. We’re happy to have that additional element.

Harmonies are obviously an important part of what you do.

They’re important to a degree, depending on the song and the melody. It’s a real natural

thing for me to hear. In the presence of other singers, it’s easy for me to convey what to try.

And usually, from the demos, I’ve already had the vocal arrangements worked out. They’re really good at picking out those harmonies.

It’s an experienced group, too. You’re not exactly breaking in anyone new, here.

Todd and Jill both have good experience.

Andy’s in another band, as well [Dead Letter Drop]. I’ve done two bands in 10 years in this town. Both got to a certain point and just flopped. And whenever you get to a certain point, you try to do something else or keep doing what you’re doing. We were just doing the same thing over and over—playing the same clubs, doing the same rehearsal dates.

You have to decide on another direction.

I’d say that people regarded TripStar as a band with a good local following but without that breakout beyond the hometown.

How will that differ with this group?

The good thing about a new group is that anything is possible. It’s really good to get excited. Excitement can lead to momentum and momentum to other things, you know?

After you’ve done something for four years, that excitement ceases. It’s hard to push in another direction.

I would imagine this group could do some interesting things in the studio. Any anticipation of how this group will record?

Yeah, this time in a recording atmosphere, I want to try new things. Instead of going in and chopping out 10, 15 new songs and getting a record from there, I want to record song-by-song. Record one song and really work that to a good state, then go on to

photo by CHRISTOPHER GUSTAVE

TAKE FIVE

Littleknownferretfact:WelovetoTwang HenryandIliketheskillandcamaraderieof Twangfestisfourdayoffun...andthenthere’s (justlookatthewaywewalk).Twangfest Twangpin,especiallysincetheTwangGang the TWANGOVER! givesusanopportunitytoshowoffourlicks! can’tknockthepinsdowntosavetheirlives.

June 2004 Following an appearance at the recent SXSW showcase, Magnolia Summer continues to broaden the scope of its success. The band’s Levers and Pulleys can now be sampled and downloaded on itunes. The band will be performing a hot set, both figuratively and literally, July 4 on Laclede’s Landing at 5 p.m.

At the SWIC (Southwest Illinois College in Bellevelle) Movie Festival, an unreleased music video of Uncle Tupelo’s “Pickle River” was shown. The video apparently was recorded somewhere around 1986, shortly before they signed with TNT Records.

Die Symphony’s complete catalog of albums are now available at the now legal Napster and Rhapsody Digital Music Service. Chicago’s New Rock radio station, 94.7 The Zone, featured Die Symphony’s new single “Runaway” on its “Fresh @ Five” new music spotlight. www.diesymphony.com Anticipated releases from Lord Baltimore, SevenStar, and Supercrush are in the works; Somnia’s Love and Other Problems EP release is July 16 at Mississippi Nights.

Sorry, fellas…singer/songwriter Brandy Johnson has accepted a marriage proposal from drummer/promotion master Jeff

JOE EDWARDS, BRANDY JOHNSON, TODD DORSEY, and JEFF SCHUNK Schunk. This will inevitably delay the release of her latest CD to possibly the early part of next year. www.brandyjohnson.com St. Louis’s Pavlov’s Dog are playing at the Pageant on Saturday, June 26 to celebrate their 30th(!) reunion. All proceeds from the concert benefit the Make a Wish Foundation. http://pavlovsdogband.tripod.com The Third Annual Euphio Campout (August 6–7) will take place in Lesterville, Missouri, at the Bearcat Getaway. The festival, which is hosted by Missouri’s own Bockman’s Euphio, will feature two days of music, camping, floating, fishing, and swimming in the scenic Black River valley. For more information on the Euphio Campout, visit www.euphiocampout.com or www. bearcatgetaway.com. Meanwhile you can catch Bockman’s Euphio with Speakeasy at Cicero’s on Saturday, June 4.

The Downtown Trio, consisting of Mott Bollinger, Mike Silverman, and Rob Silverman, are promoting their new CD, U City Blues, and have been busy performing with jazz greats such as Dave Weckl, Al DiMeola, and John Patitucci. If that isn’t enough, Mel Bay has also published a fifth instructional text/CD constructed by the group and they are currently recording a new disc consisting of jazz, funk, Latin, and world rhythms applied to the music of JS Bach. www.DowntownTrio.com.

A new group, Western Soul, features Tom Wood (acoustic guitar), Brad Sarno (guitar and pedal steel), Ric Rahmberg (bass), and Bill Walters (drums). Wood will host a special evening of original music on Saturday, June 19 at the Studio Cafe on Washington Avenue. The event will feature several performers alternating three-song sets of their best work. Check out www.mongomon.com for more info.

Mark Bland is the host/producer of a new St. Louis television show called Audaphobia.

The show, sponsored by Nelly and his charity 4sho4kids, is like a mix of American Bandstand and MTV’s TRL. www.audaphobia. com The Phoenix is goin’ country, so last month’s Local Scenery plug given to the 101.1 The River’s Home Grown Show is now obsolete. But don’t fret: a new venue featuring the show is “95 percent confirmed.”

We’ll keep you posted.

If you want to get out before the temperatures begin to soar (too late), you can check out the following events around the St. Louis area: Eric Ryszkiewicz’s Independent Musicians Workshops are being scheduled at the Commonspace (www.thecommonspace.org), 615 North Grand Blvd. Contact err1@cec. wustl.edu to sign up or call 314-520-1147.

The workshop places musicians in a collaborative environment where songwriters can critique each other’s work, get feedback, and swap home recording tips.

During select Fridays in June and July, Augusta Bottoms Consort, Brilliant Corners, Farshid Etniko, Rockhouse Ramblers, Erin Bode Group, and Dangerous Kitchen will be the featured acts at the Old Orchard’s Jammin’ at the Gazebo. The free concerts begin at 7 p.m. in Gazebo Park at the intersection of Old Orchard and Big Bend in Webster Groves. Arrive early for a choice place for your blanket or lawn chair. Coolers are also welcome. Parking for these events is

LOCAL SCENERY

EDITED BY J. CHURCH free and available at a variety of neighborhood lots.

The St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts will present the third installment of the Music Business Keys to Success Workshops at the Regional Arts Commission, 6128 Delmar (across the street from the Pageant). “Working with Managers” will be the topic of discussion and features attorney Emmett McAuliffe, Pat Hagin (managing partner, the Pageant), and Jeff Jarrett (manager, Nadine). Registration is $7 prior or $10 at the door. Refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Sue Greenberg, 314-863-6930 or vlaa@stlrac.org.

Art Saint Louis, a not-for-profit art organization and co-op art gallery in downtown St. Louis, presents “Primordial II: Earth” on view through July 1 in the Art Saint Louis Gallery, 917 Locust Street, third floor.

This juried exhibit presents artworks by 48 Missouri and Illinois artists who utilize earth as subject matter, including media such as ceramics, digital, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and textiles. www. artstlouis.org Cinema St. Louis (www.cinemastlouis. org) is gearing up for the Fourth Annual St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase to be held on the main screen of the Tivoli Theatre July 11–15. As a bonus to the local filmmaking community, all submissions are automatically entered into the upcoming world-renowned St. Louis International Film Festival in November.

New Line Theatre’s next production is the rock musical Reefer Madness, which runs June 3–26 at the ArtLoft Theatre, 1529 Washington. After Reefer Madness in June, New Line will partner with St. Louis’s newest theater company, the Washington Avenue Players Project, to present one of the first local productions of the rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. For more info on both shows, go to www. newlinetheatre.com.

In addition to a feature article about New Line’s March production of The Nervous Set in the TOM WOOD PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER GUSTAVE

29

PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

PAGE BY PAGE BOOKS

Long Stories

David Foster Wallace: Oblivion (Little, Brown; 352 pages; $25.95)

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This is a remarkable book: eight stories, six of them quite long, that in new ways illustrate David Foster Wallace’s mastery over his favorite subjects: masking and the marketing of self, the evolving ideology and influence of advertising, emotional isolation, our efforts at real communication. The prose of Oblivion, the American author’s first book of fiction in five years, is uniquely controlled and often sounds almost formal. It’s noticeably less concerned with itself on the page than the prose of earlier books, including the brilliant Infinite Jest and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. While those books offered plenty of sentences that crackled and popped with textual playfulness, most of Oblivion owns prose that smolders like a slow-burning log.

The book begins with the 64-page “Mister Squishy.” A focus group sits around a conference table in Chicago, assembled like a jury to provide a verdict on a new snack cake called “Felonies!®,” which, the narrator explains, is a “risky and multi-valent trade name meant both to connote and to parody the modern health-conscious consumer’s sense of vice/ indulgence/transgression/sin vis à vis the consumption of a high-calorie corporate snack.”

This is characteristic DFW, identifying how advertising has usurped individualism and counter-culture and made those ideas their ads’ own message. (Sprite’s anti-slogan slogan? “Obey Your Thirst.”) The author expertly and humorously examines “the whole ideology of rebellion-via-consumption,” but then digs more deeply into the lives of those held captive by such an industry. Take this passage describing the focus group, as led by question-administrator Terry Schmidt: …at least half the room’s men [were] listening with what’s called half an ear while pursuing their own private lines of thought, and Schmidt had a quick vision of them all in the conference room as like icebergs and/or floes, only the sharp caps showing, unknown and -knowable to one another, and he imagined that it was probably only in marriage (and a good marriage, not the decorous dance of loneliness he’d watched his mother and father do for seventeen years but rather true conjugal intimacy) that partners allowed each other to see below the berg’s cap’s public mask and consented to be truly known…

This passage contains much of what DFW is celebrated for: wit, imagination, penetrating insights on loneliness, even the author’s favored double-possessive (“berg’s cap’s”). The passage also sets the pace for a pattern that will follow: stationary first-person narrators calmly telling an oddly troubling tale.

Such is the second story, “The Soul is Not a Smithy.” The narrator remembers himself as a young boy in fourth-grade civics class, held hostage with three other slow-learners by a substitute teacher who’s

slowly entering a crazed rage. In the book’s measured tone, the narrator tells us, “Only much later would I understand that the incident at the chalkboard in Civics was likely to be the most dramatic and exciting event I would ever be involved in my life.” The set-up is so intentionally unexciting that you sense a DFW strategy: our culture’s manufactured drama runs so high—‘The Swan’ contestant weeps…— that real drama and emotion, tension and feeling, will instead be achieved through a slowly paced, richly detailed tale.

And it does. The narrator, as the tragedy unfolds, watches the outside world through the classroom’s window, its mesh squares providing “panels” of stories that he alone follows. While the teacher writes “KILL THEM KILL THEM ALL” on the blackboard, what appears in the “window’s narrative” is even more vividly chilling: a blind girl calls for her dog Cuffie, then is accosted by her students (“Ruth Simmons was at the weeping center of a laughing, mocking, hooting, cane-waving circle of deaf and blind children”); the blind girl’s mother routes carbon monoxide into her car as she applies Avon products (“forcing her hand into the shape of a claw that smeared lipstick all over her lower face as she gasped and clawed at herself for air”); the girl’s father wobbles in the snow after a horrifying accident with his snow-blower.

For each of each of these nightmarish scenes—and Oblivion has many, including the stunning, deeply disturbing three-page story “Incarnations of Burned Children”—there are sudden passages of beauty, such as when “Smithy”’s narrator wonders if his father ever opened up to the narrator’s mother about his sad work-day ritual of eating alone on a bench by two trees: I knew my father well enough to know it could not have been direct—I am certain he never sat down or lay beside her and spoke as such about lunch on the bench and the twin sickly trees that in the fall drew swarms of migrating starlings, appearing en masse more like bees than birds as they swarmed in and weighed down the elms’ or buckeyes’ limbs and filled the mind with sound before rising again in a great mass to spread and contract like a great flexing hand against the downtown sky.

Not all of Oblivion’s stories produce such moments. Two stories even feel reader-resistant. In “Another Pioneer,” a narrator tells a third-hand, hard-to-follow story of a child-made-God in a Third World region, a designated supreme being who answers lined-up villagers’ questions in return for gifts. The story is difficult to enter, and the vocabulary (“esemplasy,” “thanatophilic,” “phlogistive”) isn’t much help.

The title story is equally difficult to like and twice as long.

“Oblivion” is narrated by a buttoned-up man who sits with his fatherin-law in a golf course’s club house, watching a storm break and telling us about the increasing severity of a domestic problem. The narrator uses single quotes like breaths, so that descriptions become ‘descriptions’ (“the whole ‘can of worms’…the room’s large ‘bay window’…we then lay carefully or ‘ginergerly’ down”). The technique certainly works as another way for the author to give strange distance to the familiar (he does this throughout; in the first story, the Gap is “a large retail clothier”), but for me it delivered more annoyance than reward. Add

June 2004 the obscure vocabulary (“oneriric,” “strabismic”), and the stretched-thin 50-page plotline—the narrator’s wife thinks he snores; he says he’s never asleep at the time of her complaints—and it’s enough to wear even the most patient reader down.

But two additional stories make this collection truly an achievement. First is “Good Old Neon,” whose narrator Neal rides with the reader in the reader’s car. It opens this way: My whole life I’ve been a fraud. I’m not exaggerating. Pretty much all I’ve ever done all the time is to try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired.

It’s a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it’s to be liked, loved.

What follows is a 40-page coming clean from someone bright and winning but who’s stuck in a “fraudulence paradox,” meaning, for him, “the more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside—you were a fraud.” Neal lists a series of activities he engaged in after feeling disgust over his fraudulence, including going to an analyst (whose unhelpful diagnosis is, You’re not a fraud if you can tell me you think you’re a fraud), then tells the reader: “I know this part is boring and probably boring you, by the way, but it gets a lot more interesting when I get to the part where I kill myself and discover what happens immediately after a person dies.” Intrigued? There are 30 pages to go.

And finally there’s the closer, “The Suffering Channel,” which follows veteran Style magazine writer Skip Atwater’s attempts to profile an artist whose work is his own moved bowels, creations Atwater considers “somehow simultaneously both more and less natural than conventional artworks.” Told with absolute narrative control and memorable compassion, the 50-page story covers an enormous amount of ground: the media and New York, art and the Midwest, and most of all this, which drives many of us to even just peripherally follow the celebrities in Style: “The conflict between the subjective centrality of our own lives versus our awareness of its objective insignificance.”

More clearly, the narrator goes on to call this “death by demography— the fact that terror of being average was itself completely average.” For Atwater, this realization is “the core of the American experience he wanted to capture with his journalism.” The rest of this extraordinary story—the journalist’s quest to profile the artist—deserves to be left whole for the reader who finds it.

I realize it’s summer and beach reads are in season, but there’s something about this book that feels important now, no matter the season.

It’s challenging, and certainly there are whole stories difficult to draw reward from. But often, after a tough patch, there’s a very DFW description that reminds us we’re reading someone exceptional. Here’s a brief look back at the focus group of “Mister Squishy”: “One of the youngest men’s denim bellbottoms were so terrifically oversized that even with his legs out splayed and both knees bent his sock-status was unknown.”

With a smile, the reader feels gratitude that this author is documenting all that surrounds us.

And all that’s inside us. In “Good Old Neon,” Neal the perceptive fraud speaks of the impossibility of truly expressing what’s in our minds: “What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it any given instant.” Nearly 30 pages, the narrator, making sense of himself because the reader’s there with him, half celebrates and half (www.playbackstl.com) laments “the universes inside you, all the endless ONLY ONLINE inbent of St. connection and of symphonies of Trust different Thefractals Playback Louis review Rob Byrne’s Fundvoices, Boys. the

EVENTS AND CLASSES AT THE CRAFT ALLIANCE

TEAPOTS: OBJECT TO SUBJECT May 28 – July 18 Curated by Leslie Ferrin

Visit the Craft Alliance on the Web:

www.craftalliance.org

“Cube Skull Teapot: Tea, Blood & Opium” by Richard Notkin

WORKSHOPS The Architecture of the Tea Bowl with Andrew Denney Saturday, June 12, 10-4 pm

The Joy of Knotting 2 with Kate Anderson Saturday, June 19, 10-4 pm

31

PLAYBACK ST. LOUIS

MONDAYS — Sessions Jazz Big Band TUESDAYS — Cryin Shame Blues Band THURSDAYS — Oliver Sain’s Rhythm & Blues Review B.B.’s Jazz, Blues & Soups has been the home of St. Louis blues for over 25 years. We currently offer lunch starting at 11:00 a.m. (Mon–Fri) featuring St. Louis–style home-cooked and health-conscious cuisine. Music nightly by St. Louis legends and national acts until 3 a.m.

B.B.’s—for the best in blues.

MONDAYS — Soulard Blues Band TUESDAYS — Big Bamou WEDNESDAYS — Brian Curran (5–7 p.m.)

THURSDAYS — Bennie Smith & the Urban Blues Express SATURDAYS — Brian Curran (6–9 p.m.)

The Broadway Oyster Bar, a local favorite for over 25 years, offers the best Cajun-Creole food in the Midwest while offering live music seven nights a week. A great party spot, the Oyster Bar is “a great local dive that never changes — thank goodness.”

MONDAYS — Shakey Ground TUESDAYS — Kim Massie & the Solid Senders WEDNESDAYS — Rich McDonough Acoustic Blues THURSDAYS — Kim Massie & the Solid Senders Beale on Broadway is home to live blues, soul, and R&B seven nights a week. Catch St. Louis diva Kim Massie and the Solid Senders every Tuesday and Thursday at 9:00 p.m. 14 craft beers on draft. 35 Bottles.

Full-service dinner menu everyday ’til midnight.

32

CD AVAILABLE AT VINTAGE VINYL www.stevebequette.com

DELIRIOUS NOMAD COMPILED BY BYRON KERMAN

AS YOU LIKE IT SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OF ST. LOUIS Through June 17: Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis presents As You Like It in Forest Park (314361-0101, www.sfstl.com) Through August 26: Ferris Wheel operating in Forest Park (www.celebrate2004.org) Through September 12: Richard Scarry’s Busytown: huge interactive kids’ playground in Florissant’s Koch Park sponsored by the Magic House (314-822-8900, www.magichouse.org) Through October: Central West End Farmers Market, 8 a.m. to noon Saturdays, St. Louis Bread Company parking lot, Maryland Avenue (www.thecwe.com) June 1 and 8: Twilight Tuesdays free outdoor concerts at the Missouri History Museum; bring lawn chairs and a picnic (314-454-3150, www.mohistory.org) June 2: Strange Brew: Cult Films at Schlafly Bottleworks features animated Fantastic Planet, sponsored by Webster Films (314-968-7487, www.webster.edu/filmseries.html) June 2: One-night-only screening of Margaret Cho’s Revolution at the Tivoli (314-995-6270, www.landmarktheatres.com) June 2–August 25: Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden, 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays (314-577-9400, www.mobot.org) June 4: University City Ceramics opens at the St. Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072, www.slam.org) June 4–5: Erin Bode CD-release concert at Jazz at the Bistro (314-534-1111, www.jatb.org) June 4–5: A Clockwork Orange and Blazing Saddles, midnights at the Tivoli (314-995-6270, www.landmarktheatres.com) June 4–6: DieCon gaming convention at the Gateway Center in Collinsville (www.diecon.com) June 4–6: The Hubleys: First Family of Animation at Webster Films featuring guest Emily Hubley (314-968-7487, www.webster.edu/filmseries.html) June 4–26: Animation art by Emily Hubley at Gallery Urbis Orbis (314-406-5778, www.urbis-orbis.com) June 5: Carnivorous Plant Society Show and Sale at the Missouri Botanical Garden (314-577-9400, www.mobot.org) June 5–September 6: Good Grief! interactive fun based on Charles Schultz’s Peanuts at the Magic

House (314-822-8900, www.magichouse.org) June 5–November 28: SPACE: A Journey to Our Future at the St. Louis Science Center’s Exploradome (314-289-4444, www.slsc.org) June 7: Seminar for musicians on band managers by St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts at the Regional Arts Commission (314-8636930, www.vlaa.org) June 8: Author of The Quality of Life Report Meghan Daum at Left Bank Books (314-367-6731, www.left-bank.com) June 8: The Blue Gardenia screened as part of the St. Louis County Library Mid-County Branch’s Film Noir series (314-721-3008, www.slcl.org) June 9–15: U.S. Olympic Diving Trials at St. Peters Rec Plex (314-534-1111) June 10: Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell at Left Bank Books (314-367-6731, www.left-bank.com) June 10 and 17: MadCat Women’s International Traveling Festival of Animated Films at Webster Films (314-968-7487, www.webster.edu/filmseries.html) June 11: Art Dimensions Final Show at the Kastle opening reception; last chance to dig the Therapeutic Mindride (314-497-5356, www.artdimensions.org) June 11: Ernest Dawkins Trio with Hamiett Bluett at Mad Art (314-771-8230, www.madart.com) June 11: Public telescope viewing party, Forest Park Archery Field, just west of James McDonnell Planetarium (314-289-4453) June 11–12: Philippine Weekend, Missouri History Museum (314-454-3150, www.mohistory.org) June 11–13 and 18–20: Parliament Cheez presents Ben Gaa play Jackman’s Pier at Fort Gondo (314-351-6652) June 12: Chuck-a-Burger Car Cruise Night (314-428-5009, www.chuck-a-burger.com) June 12: Mondo Matinee featuring King Kong with trailers, cartoons, and short subjects at Webster Films (314-968-7487, www.webster.edu/filmseries.html) June 13: Kaiju Envy anime screening at Star Clipper

Comics & Games (314-725-9110, www.starclipper.com) June 16: Cowboy Randy performs rope tricks at the University City Public Library (314-727-3150, www.ucpl.mo.us/childrens) June 16–26: Opera Theatre of St. Louis presents John Adams’ Nixon in China at the Loretto-Hilton Center at Webster University June 17: Ciné 16 featuring Charles and Ray Eames films at Mad Art (www.afana.org/cine16stlouis.htm) June 18–19: Forbidden Zone and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, midnights at the Tivoli (314-9956270, www.landmarktheatres.com) June 20: Adam Rugo African Drumming Workshop at the Ethical Society (314-494-2506, www.ethicalstl.org) June 20: The Big Draw! at the St. Louis Art Museum; artists demonstrate techniques in the galleries and Sculpture Hall is transformed into an artists’ café with music and models to sketch (drawing materials provided) (314-721-0072, www.slam.org) June 21: Bella Morte live at Requiem at the Kastle (www.requiemsaint.com) June 22: Key Largo screened as part of the St. Louis County Library Mid-County Branch’s Film Noir series (314-721-3008, www.slcl.org) June 22: Heaven in a Wildflower: William Blake’s Book of Job opens at St. Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072, www.slam.org) June 24: Former crackhead and author of Grand Central Winter Lee Stringer at Left Bank Books (314-3676731, www.left-bank.com) June 24: Mississippi River Ghosts talk and slide show at St. Louis County Library Headquarters (314-994-3300, www.slcl.org) June 25–26: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and John Holmes (yes, that one) in 3D in Lollipop Girls in Hard Candy, midnights at the Tivoli (314-995-6270, www.landmarktheatres.com) A more comprehensive listing of the month’s events can be found online at www.playbackstl.com.

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YO LA TENGO

w/ANTIETAM at MISSISSIPPI NIGHTS June 10, 8 p.m. • all ages TICKETS: $15 • CALL: 314-421-3853 “We’re trying not to take this personally,” says Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, “but every time we come to St. Louis, we play a different place.

Clubs close the moment we play there. A lot of them are gone; it’s like Brigadoon.”

Fortunately, Mississippi Nights has stood still long enough to welcome Yo La Tengo back.

Those who missed the band’s lively performance at the Pageant late last year are offered a chance at redemption; those present at that show are strongly encouraged to return. Like thumbprints, each Yo La Tengo show is unique.

34 Kaplan explains, “It’s always been impor-

tant to us that each show is different. Even though we were [in St. Louis] roughly a year ago, the concert’s going to be completely different. I’ve always wanted to be a band like that.

Those were the bands that I liked the most: bands I could go see again and again and they would always do different songs .”

In addition to songs from their ten albums, a Yo La Tengo show includes a wide range of covers, unexpected alternate versions of the band’s own songs as well as some tongue-in-cheek choreography by its three members, amounting to what Kaplan calls “a well-rounded performance.” Expect little else from a band with a well-rounded sound, loved for subtle acoustic numbers, peppy guitar pop, and jam sessions more influenced by Sun-Ra than the Grateful Dead. Pinning this sound to a category is hopeless; Yo La Tengo makes its own genre.

Should you need further reason to come to the June 10 show, he offers this: “We’re selling tote bags on this tour!” With any luck, Mississippi Nights won’t fade into the mist after this show.

P.S.: Truly nerdy Yo La Tengo fans shouldn’t miss Webster University’s showcase of animation by the Hubley family the weekend before the show.

Not only will you see some amazing films, but you might catch YLT drummer Georgia Hubley’s voice in a few of them. —Jessica Gluckman

BLUE NOTE 11/1: Spiritualized w/The Soledad Brothers 11/3: Phantom Planet w/Ben Lee 11/4: Third Eye Blind 11/7: Shaman’s Harvest 11/8: Joan Baez w/Josh Ritter 11/15: An Evening with Medeski, Martin & Wood 11/16: Vendetta Red, S.T.U.N., Armour for Sleep, & Christian 11/17: Bob Weir & Ratdog 11/20: Greenwheel, The Adored, & Spent 11/21: The Sins, The Aisler’s Set, & Broadcast Oblivion 11/22: Phil Vassar & Craig Morgan BLUEBERRY HILL 11/1: Brave Combo 11/5: The Lost Trailers 11/8: Monte Montgomery w/Bill Deasy 11/12: Chuck Berry 11/13: Carbon Leaf 11/15: Barbarito Torres 11/17: The Fixx BRANDT’S 11/1: John Norment Trio 11/2: 10a-3p: Jobin Dreams; 7-10:30: Last Missouri Exit 11/3: Georgy Rock w/Mr. Dill 11/4: Bosch, Gokenbach & Gough Jazz Trio 11/5: Tom Byrnes 11/6: James Matthews Trio 11/7: Vince Sala Jazz 11/8: John Norment Trio 11/9: 10a-3p: Jobin Dreams; 7-10:30: Last Missouri Exit 11/26: Javier Mendoza CICERO’S 11/1: The Phix w/Prosthetic Head 11/2: Afternoon: The Expected, Blinded Black, Richboy Falling w/ Parkridge; eve: Open mic 11/3: Madahoochi & friends 11/4: Kind Tuesdays w/members of the Schwag 11/5: Shaking Tree w/Thos 11/6: Olospo w/Future Rock 11/7: Jake’s Leg 11/8: Dionysia w/My 2 Planets 11/9: Afternoon: Sounds Like a Riot, The Horrorshow Malchicks, The Deadrose Boys, Hyphen-O; eve: Open mic 11/10: Madahoochi & friends 11/11: Kind Tuesdays w/members of the Schwag 11/12: Project/Object w/Ike Willis, Napoleon Murphy Brock, & Don Preston performing the music of Frank Zappa 11/13: Global Funk Council w/Sac

Lunch 11/14: Jake’s Leg 11/15: Supercrush 11/16: Afternoon: Groupthink w/ Augustine, Prototype Bob, & Last Meridian; eve: Open mic 11/17: Madahoochi & friends 11/18: Kind Tuesdays w/members of the Schwag 11/19: Starrunner w/Brooklyn Deadwood 11/20: Bump w/Dogtown Allstars 11/21: Jake’s Leg 11/22: Speakeasy w/Liquid Groove Theory 11/23: Afternoon: Number One Sons; eve: Open mic 11/24: Madahoochi & friends 11/25: Kind Tuesdays w/members of the Schwag 11/26: Benefit for What’s Up? Magazine w/Bottoms Up Blues Gang, East End Girls, & The Round-Ups 11/28: Jake’s Leg 11/29: Bockman’s Euphio w/Hot House Sessions 11/30: Afternoon: The Pubes & Dollface w/Commiechung & Finally Foreign; eve: Open mic COWBOY MONKEY 11/1: Jamnation 11/3: Maritime w/Owen & Rocket Summer 11/5: Open mic night

THE ARCADE FIRE

w/THE UNICORNS at ROCKET BAR June 17, 8:30 p.m. • 18+ Abstract and perfectly danceable pop, The Arcade Fire’s strong suit is its injudicious use of colors and styles, along the same lines as The Flaming Lips, Chicago’s outstanding Head of Femur, and tourmates The Unicorns.

The dual vocals of Win Butler and wife Chassange—she in possession of a most righteously awesome French accent—stake a claim to the real estate Mates of State would survey for residence were the latter less straightforward. It’s smart music for smart people who still list recess as their favorite class. —Sean Moeller

11/6: The Pitch w/Mock Orange, Nolan, & Missing the Point 11/7: 5pm: Desafinado; 10pm: Agua Dulce 11/8: Blues Deacons 11/10: Goldenboy w/Summer Hymns & Mike Ingram 11/11: Appleseed Cast w/Orphans 11/12: Open mic night 11/13: 20 Miles w/Catfish Haven 11/14: 5pm: Roger Clair; 10pm: Big Bang Theory 11/15: Candy Foster & Shades of Blue 11/17: Hamell on Trial w/Larry Gates 11/19: Open mic night 11/20: Sick Day w/Feed 11/21: 5pm: The Prairie Dogs; 10pm: Noisy Gators 11/22: Rising Lion 11/23: Lorenzo Goetz Band w/ Deconstructing Jim 11/26: Open mic night CREEPY CRAWL 11/1: Lyndsay Diaries w/Saved From Tomorrow, Sophomore, & Augustine 11/2: Honky w/Lofreq & Swampass 11/3: One Eyed Jack Night 11/5: Sugarcult, Plain White Ts, Tsunami Bomb 11/6: Six Feet Under, Skinless, Behemoth, As I Lay Dying, Ornament of Disgrace 11/8: 6pm: The Redemption Song, Maya, Five Story Fall; 9:30pm: Jucifer w/Sullen & Shame Club 11/9: Give Up the Ghost, Fairweather, The Bled, The Daughters 11/10: Junior Senior w/TBA 11/15: Ultrablue, From This We Escape, Sex Robots 11/15: New Model Army w/TBA 11/16: Zao, Beloved, The Chemistry, This Day Forward 11/17: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists w/El Guapo, Duvall 11/22: One Cycle Occur, Ants, Rusted Skin, Postal, Sine Nomine, Lye by Mistake 11/23: The Rapture w/Beans & TBA 11/28: Silverstein, Bayside, Codie FREDERICK’S MUSIC LOUNGE: 11/1: The Silvermen w/R.D. Roth & the Issues 11/3: Free Monday Movies: Tenacious D: The Complete Masterworks & David Cross (Mr. Show): Let America Laugh 11/4: 7-9 pm: Ragtime open mic featuring The Ragtime Serenaders; 9 pm: The Civiltones w/TBA 11/5: Trailer Park Tornadoes w/ Adam Brodsky 11/6: Free Noiseday Hootenanny Open Mic & Jam Session w/Bob

Reuter 11/7: The Stapletons w/Thad Cockrell 11/8: Frogholler w/Trailer Park Travoltas 11/10: Free Monday Movies: Looney Tunes: The Golden Collection 11/11: 7-9 pm: Ragtime open mic featuring The Ragtime Serenaders; 9 pm: Stickmen Music w/TBA 11/12: The Hell Fire Club w/The Homewreckers 11/13: Free Noiseday Hootenanny Open Mic & Jam Session w/Josh Wiese 11/14: Tyler Keith & The Preacher’s Kids w/Michael Acree 11/15: Twangfest & Playback STL present Grand Champeen w/Two Cow Garage 11/17: Free Monday Movies: The Tick: The Entire Live Action Series (2001) 11/18: Stolie & Friends (aka Tres Femmes) w/Jeff & Vida Band 11/19: Jared Putnam of The Conversations w/TBA 11/20: Free Noiseday Hootenanny Open Mic & Jam Session w/Jon Baer 11/21: The Safes w/TBA 11/22: Waterloo w/Chris Mills & Amy Loftus 11/24: Free Monday Movies: Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train 11/25: Spot w/Johnny Fox 11/26: The Tripdaddys 11/27: Free Turkeyday Hootenanny Open Mic & Jam Session w/Tommy Halloran 11/28: Diesel Island w/Rex Hobart & The Misery Boys 11/29: Murder City Players THE GARGOYLE 11/2: Phantom Planet w/Ben Lee 11/3: CMJ College Music Tour w/ Hey Mercedes, Verbena, Damone, Squad Five-O, Marjorie Fair 11/4: Slightly Stoopid GENERATIONS 11/11: Beegie Adair 11/13: Michael Hill & Ana Popavic 11/17: Al Stewart 11/20: Deborah Coleman HI-POINTE 11/1: First Class, Last Annual, Like Linus, Lunasun, Under-rated X 11/2: Graham Colton w/The North Country 11/7: Bellyfeel & Dozemarypool 11/8: Headshop, Sofachrome, A Distant Second 11/9: Leon’s 80s Ladies Night: 80s spin 11/14: Gassoff, Shame Club, The Impuritans 11/15: Dash Rip Rock & New Duncan Imperials

11/15: The Bottlerockets w/Edward Burch 11/16: Duvall w/Dressy Bessy & Jiggsaw 11/18: Shelby Lynne w/Anna Montgomery & Kate Hathaway 11/19: Red Hot Valentines, Orphans, Everybody Uh Oh, Lorenzo Goetz, Goldfronts, Green Mountain Glass

PRIDEFEST

at TOWER GROVE PARK June 26–27, 12–8 p.m.

The GBLT community celebrates 25 years of raising awareness and unifying St. Louisans of all sexual orientations with PrideFest25, the annual two-day festival in historic Tower Grove Park.

This year’s entertainment includes national headliners “dance diva” Kristine W. and comedians Suzanne Westenhoefer and Michelle Balan, as well as local bands, including Glow, Girls With Guitars, and Missile Silo Suite. Also performing are the Non Prophet Theater Group, Belly Dance Mirage, Gateway Men’s Chorus, Novak’s Dancers, and Charis Chorus.

There’s also a presentation of the AIDS quilt followed by a commitment ceremony.

The parade starts at 12:45 p.m. on Sunday, so come out early, bring a lawn chair, squeeze into that rainbow tube top, and show your pride, St. Louis. —Brian McClelland 11/21: The Diplomats (former members of Bent Sceptors) & Knuckel Drager 11/22: Mondo Topless, Gentleman Callers, Tomorrow’s Caveman 11/23: Near Miss, Much the Same, Form Follows Failure 11/28: Earl & Fred’s Variety Group 11/29: Forty Till Five, Village Idiot, The Trees 11/30: Leon’s 80s Ladies Night: 80s spin HIGHDIVE 11/5: Temple of Low Men, The Signalmen, Angie Heaton, G Lee & Jet Blonde, The Greedy Loves, & Edward Burch 11/7: Jack Ingram w/the Bird Dogs 11/8: Soul Position w/Illogic, Prizm, & Inanimate Objects 11/12: Mezzanines, The Blackouts, Terminus Victor, American Minor, Nadafinga, & Feed 11/14: 5:30 pm: Pocket Big Band

IRON POST (www.iron-post.com) 120 S. Race, Urbana, IL 61801 • 217-337-POST 11/1: Jakehead w/Steve Reverb & The Soundtones 11/2: Rachel Sage w/Kate Hathaway 11/6: In Your Ear Big Band 11/7: Special Consensus 11/8: Synthesia 11/15: Jeff & Vida Band 11/19: Mike Coulter 11/29: No Secret JAZZ AT THE BISTRO 11/1: Geoffrey Keezer 11/5-8: Pat Martino 11/12-15: Steve Tyrell 11/19-22: Toots Thielemans & Kenny Werner Duo 11/28-30: Jeremy Davenport THE KASTLE 11/6: Dieselboy LEMP NEIGHBORHOOD ARTS CENTER 11/1: Neither/Neither World, The Frankenhookers, Crypt 33, Rosemary Malign 11/2: Ground Monkeys, Vialka, Yowie, Skarekrauradio 11/3: Miranda Sound w/TBA 11/5: Die Princess Die w/TBA 11/6: The Floating City w/Cathari & Eric Hall 11/8: The Wives w/TBA 11/10: The Judas Cradle, Nodes of Ranvier, Bury Your Dead 11/11: PSI w/TBA 11/14: Blind Snakes, Vox Humana, Necrinomitron, The Conformists, Lone Tree, Brain Transplant 11/15: Fork Knife Spoon, With Childlike Eyes, TBA 11/16: As Cities Burn, Astronaut Radio, TBA 11/21: Hazel Would, Five Story Fall, Uprise Ministries, Breaking of the Vessels 11/22: The Killer, Maya, TBA 11/23: No Time Left, Get It Away, TBA 11/25: BadxBusiness, To No End, Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting 11/28: The Potomac Accord, TBA MISSISSIPPI NIGHTS: 11/1: Bockman’s Euphio & Speakeasy

THE RICHARD THOMPSON BAND THE PAGEANT June 25, 8:00 p.m. • all ages TICKETS: $25 • CALL: 314-726-6161 Richard Thompson once again brings his droll British wit, whirling dervish guitar virtuosity, and trademark black beret to the Pageant.

Thompson, still plugging away (and occasionally unplugging away) after 37 years in the business, is currently touring in support of his latest record, last year’s The Old Kit Bag. Says the accomplished Brit folk-rocker on his official Web site, “I figure if I can hang on till I’m 65, then I can be a ‘legend,’ and hobble on any old how, and triple my fee...if God lets me, then I’m inclined to keep going—unless you insist that I stop.”

The Old Kit Bag, Thompson’s scaled back, folk roots–honoring record, showcases the gifted artist’s diverse songwriting skills, baroque vocals, and wood-and-wire guitar wizardry. 35 Thompson’s Old Kit Bag of tricks frequently contains gut-wrenching folk dirges, tastefully rocking electric guitar incursions, and caustically clever lyrics. Thompson’s adept string work occasionally extends to mandolin, mountain dulcimer, and even the perplexing hurdy-gurdy, committed to vinyl some two decades before Sting cranked it up on this year’s Oscar telecast for his Cold Mountain soundtrack numbers.

Thompson began his musical odyssey over 35 years ago with the seminal British folk-rock revolutionaries Fairport Convention before branching out with his then-wife, Linda, with whom he recorded the classic albums I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight and Shoot out the Lights, among others. When their marriage ended, Thompson embarked on a solo career infused with his acerbic wit, unbelievably beguiling melodies, and folk, rock, and jazzjuiced fretwork voodoo that would land him in the Pantheon of Unsung Guitar Gods.

For this U.S. tour, the Richard Thompson Band consists of longtime accomplice Dave Mattacks on drums, accomplished upright bassist Danny Thompson (no relation), and multi-multi-instrumentalist (put anything in his hands, mouth, or feet and he’ll play the dickens out of it) Pete Zorn. With his live band in tow, there’s no telling what surprises Thompson may throw our way.

—Larry O’Neal

11/7: The Jayhawks w/The Sadies 11/8: Adair 11/14: Medeski, Martin & Wood 11/21: The Subdudes 11/22: Rusted Root 11/26: The Brews w/TBA 11/29: Core Project w/TBA MOJO’S 11/1: The Bottle Rockets & Honky Tonk Chateau 11/2: Melissa Ferrick 11/3: Slugtrail & Cast the Stone 11/5: Drums & Tuba & That 1 Guy 11/6: Josh Rouse 11/7: 6pm: Bottom of the Boot Bluegrass Band; 8:30 pm: SRE 11/8: Max Groove 11/10: Rebecca Gates & Chris Brokaw 11/12: The Starlight Mints & Laguardia 11/13: Tab Benoit & Chump Change 11/14: 6pm: Rank Sinatras; 8:30 pm: Global Funk Council & Family Groove 11/15: 6pm: Mad Mark & the Gardners 11/18: Jucifer & Sullen 11/19: Cash Brothers 11/26: David Basse & City Lights

36

MUSIC CAFÉ 11/1: Steve Ewing Band w/Lojic 11/3: Open mic night 11/4: Agua Dulce w/A bateria 11/5: The Music Café Blues Jam 11/6: Freekbass w/The Groovaholics 11/7: The Trélese w/ The Potomac Accord & Namelessnumberheadman 11/8: Stendek w/The Frogs & Forrest Whitlow & the Crash 11/10: Open mic night 11/12: Broken Grass 11/13: Speakeasy 11/14: Swing ‘n Axes 11/15: Dr. Woo w/The Groovaholics 11/18: Tabla Rasa 11/19: Maxtone Four w/Two Tone Trio, Marc Pagano Combo, Beggars Can’t Be Choosers, & Old Man Rio 11/20: The Music Café Jazz Jam 11/21: Javier Mendoza Band 11/22: The Vexers w/P.O.S.T. OFF BROADWAY 11/1: Jack Ingram & the Beat Up Ford Band w/Plum Tucker 11/4: Melissa Ferrick w/Jeff Lang 11/5: 7:30 pm: The Basement Duo; 9:30 pm: Slim Cessna’s Auto Club w/Aintry 11/6: Bobby Bare Jr. w/Kip Loui & the Town Criers & Corey Saathoff 11/7: The Rockhouse Ramblers w/Bob Reuter & Palookaville

11/8: Southern BBQ Trip, Hezery, Multi-Racial, Alive, The Wendies, John Henry Parr, Mahakala 11/12: Showcase of the Bands 11/14: 7:30 pm: Pieta Brown & Bo Ramsey; 10 pm: Shady Deal 11/15: 7:30 pm: Darden Smith; 10 pm: Visqueen w/the Eric Ketzer Band 11/18: The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash 11/19: Eric Taylor w/Scott & Michelle Dalziel 11/20: NSAI Songwriters in the Round w/Billy Lee McDow, Dave Brooks, & Justin Carroll & Mike Barada & Rob Boyle 11/22: Catie Curtis w/Jennie Devoe 11/28: Rex Hobart & the Misery Boys w/Arthur Dodge 11/29: Panic Attack THE PAGEANT 11/1: Brian Regan 11/2: MYA w/Javier 11/4: Less Than Jake w/ Yellowcard & Fall out Boy 11/5: Belle & Sebastian w/ Rasputina 11/7: King Crimson w/Living Colour 11/8: Robert Randolph & the Family Band w/Los Lonely Boys 11/9: Kirk Franklin & Toby Mac w/Souljahz 11/12: Maroon 5 w/Gavin DeGraw & Michael Tolcher 11/14: Bruce Cockburn 11/15: Ratdog 11/20: Obie Trice & Bubba Sparxxx 11/21: Robert Earl Keen 11/22: Zebrahead w/Lucky Boys Confusion 11/28-29: Yonder Mountain String Band POP’S 11/4: The Headbanger’s Ball Tour 11/5: Dog Fashion Disco 11/11: Kevin Martin of Candlebox 11/12: Deicide 11/13: Art Alexakis of Everclear 11/14: Even Flow: A Tribute to Pearl Jam 11/15: The Ataris 11/18: The Girlz Garage Tour 11/20: Mindless Self Indulegence 11/21: Die Symphony 11/25: Cradle of Filth & Type O Negative 11/26: Thunderhead: A Tribute to Rush 11/27: Fragile Porcelain Mice ROCKET BAR 11/1: The Joggers 11/13: Retisonic 11/22: Just a Fire 11/26: 90 Day Men SALLY T’S 11/1: Halloweekend w/

Celia’s Cirque du Fantistique, Madahoochi, Almeter Stew 11/3: The Beating w/Losers Make Good 11/4: Girls acoustic open mic 11/7: Spector w/Manek & Without Warning 11/8: B.Koolman w/Johnny Fox 11/13: A Little Noise 11/14: Earl w/Pitchfork 11/15: Fallen w/Billy Coma 11/21: Nervous Pudding & Saw Is Family 11/22: Lungdust w/Shame Club & Dead Celebrities 11/25: Open mic night 11/28: Spent 11/29: Missile Silo Suite w/The Affair & Blue Eyed Dog SCHLAFLY TAP ROOM 11/1: Otis 11/2: August Bottoms CD release party w/Peter Clemens 11/7: Seldom Home 11/9: Dizzy Atmosphere 11/14: Lucky Dan, Naked Mike & Dave 11/15: The Orbits 11/16: John Farrar 11/22: Blues Blowout w/John & Viv 11/23: Fred Baue 11/28: Balfa Tojours 11/29: Flying Mulees 11/30: Tom Byrne SCHLAFLY BOTTLEWORKS 11/1: The Flying Mules SHELDON 11/2: Community Women Against Hardship Benefit 11/6: Jerry Jeff Walker 11/7: Jerry Douglas 11/8: Luciana Souza: Dous 11/9: The Capitol Steps 11/15: Stefon Harris Quartet 11/18: Alan Oxenhandler 11/30: Ray Kennedy & Tom Kennedy STUDIO CAFÉ 11/1: Andrew John & Moss 11/7: Botanists & Shed Shot 11/8: TBA 11/14: Plum Tucker & Joe Stickly’s Blue Print 11/15: Rowdie Cum Lowdies 11/21: North Country w/The Doxies 11/22: Valencia w/The Midnight Hour 11/26: Charlville w/Sam Thompson 11/29: Bill Michaelski & the Urban Blight Players THREE-1-THREE 11/1: EarthSol 11/7: Burn Disco Burn w/Nolan 11/8: Piasa w/The Phenoms 11/14: Keely Zoo w/Sediment House

11/16: Kristin Forbes 11/18: The Conversation TOUHILL PERFORMING ARTS CENTER 11/5: Tama 11/7: Eric Idle 11/8: BeauSoleil Avec Michael Doucet 11/21: Windham Hill Winter Solstice w/Liz Story, Samite of Uganda, & Will Ackerman WAY OUT CLUB 11/1: Nels Cline Casio Conspiracy, Carla Bozulich, Sins Forever 11/6: Sunday Drunks 11/7: The Round-Ups 11/8: Friends of Brian Pollihan Tribute Show 11/10: Head of Femur, The Bloodletters, Bug 11/11: Rocket Park 11/12: Big Star Cadillac 11/13: Dead Letter Drop 11/14: Asia Minor, Ghosts in Light 11/15: Dressy Bessy w/Maxtone Four 11/17: Reverend Brimstone, Lunar Menagerie 11/19: Pamela Andersons, Nervous Pudding 11/20: A Big Shifty 11/22: 7 Shot Screamers, Crazy Beats, Ryan O’Connor Turns 21 11/29: Bug VENICE CAFÉ 11/6: Leslie Helpert 11/14: Brian Capps & the True Liars

POP MONTREAL

TOXIC TUESDAY WEDNESDAY: HUMPDAY HOOTENANNY w/DJ

6/5: Se, Plum Tucker, eKE • 6/12: Brother Bagman, Watercast 6/17: Driver • 6/18: Reigning Heir, Drizzit, Sofachrome 6/19: Modern Red, Moss, B. Koolman • 6/24: sevenstar 6/25: Chris McFarland For Booking Please Call: 314-776-6927