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Culture
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[MISSING PERSONS]
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Brace Yourself
St. Louis native Dave Holmes’ new podcast traces the mystery of Sudden Impact
Written by JACK PROBST
In 1998, St. Louisan Dave Holmes woke up feeling ambitious. A boldness inside him that morning compelled him to audition for MTV’s Wanna Be a VJ contest. It turned out to be a life-changing decision.
Holmes made it past the grueling audition process on live television, ultimately finishing in second place. Thanks to his charm, freakish knowledge of random music trivia and ability to perform under pressure, he was quickly offered the gig and went on to host various MTV shows and events until leaving the network in 2002.
When looking at his career, you could argue he was the contest’s real winner. The exposure was the boost he needed to make his lifelong obsession with pop culture a sustainable career. He is currently a writer and editor-atlarge for Esquire, wrote a memoir titled Party of One, was recently a talking head in the documentary Woodstock ’99 Peace, Love, and Rage, and continues to be the host of a handful of podcasts, such as Homophilia and International Waters. His newest podcast, Waiting for Impact: A Dave Holmes Passion Project, explores three seconds of music video history.
“It’s about an investigation into the whereabouts of a boy band called Sudden Impact, who made a three-second cameo appearance Boys II Men’s ‘Motown Philly’ video, and then that’s all they did. Or at least that’s all that we ever saw them do,” Holmes says. “That video was huge in 1991 when I was sort of at my peak video-watching years. Michael Bivins of New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe had a development deal with Motown. You know, he brought Boys II Men into the world, and they became the biggest-selling R&B group of all time. Bell Biv DeVoe was huge for a few years. There was a group called Another Bad Creation that had a couple of hit singles. All these acts are in ‘Motown Philly.’ And then for three seconds, there’s Sudden Impact, who are these five guys in matching shirts and neckties, and they pointed the camera boldly like, ‘Get ready for Sudden Impact!’ and I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m ready for Sudden Impact!’ And then nothing happened.”
In 1991, Holmes didn’t have the internet to seek out information on Sudden Impact. All he knew was that they were a bunch of white guys outfitted in dress shirts and ties that resembled the dress code of Vianney High School. It was a time when, as Holmes says, “You could have a moment of fame and then vanish and not leave a trail of digital crumbs the way that you do now.”
“At the time, I was just kind of like, ‘I wonder when that album is coming out,’ and it never did. As life went on, it was just something that I would think of every few months, and I always kind of felt that there was a story there. I really did believe deep down that it’s not only the story of this band; it’s [a] story about resilience, and it’s about dashed hopes and what you do with them. It’s about ’90s pop culture and how utterly different it is from our world right now. It touches on so many things that I’m interested in, and the story of this group, on top of it, it turns out to be really interesting as well.”
Over the course of ten episodes, Holmes interviews folks that aspired to reach a level of fame Sudden Impact seemed poised to seize, along with people whose careers were heading down a similar path before they pivoted to something that worked better. The podcast’s structure frames the early ’90s as a time when everyone experienced things as a monoculture, meaning altogether — a time before the internet shattered popular culture into millions of niche categories that seem near infinitely impossible to know.
As someone who, only seven years after Sudden Impact’s toe touch in popular culture, landed his own place in the pantheon, olmes re ects on what it was like for a kid from St. Louis to suddenly be in front of the entire world on MTV at the height of TRL and boy-band popularity.
“It was completely insane, obviously,” Holmes says. “I remember when I first started at T , once they got past the audition and the contest, and once I started hosting, specifically hosting live shows, it was very strange. I felt very calm for the first time in my life. If your interests run in this direction, you grow up a little anxious about how you’re going to make a living, whether you’re normal and all of these things that are crazy from where I am now. But to wake up and go to work and the fact that you’ve got a brain that retains the three seconds of Sudden Impact from a 1991 video that goes from being an embarrassing quirk to being a job skill for, like, a really cool job. That was incredible.
“Walking in during the audition and seeing the studio, feeling the excitement and all the PDAs running around with headsets and clipboards and all of the chaos. It just really felt like the mothership came down to pick me up. And once I got that job and started being able to do it and use my skills — and stuff that I didn’t even know were skills — I really just relaxed into it in a way that I had never really relaxed in any kind of job before.
“Growing up in west county and going to an all-boys school where pretty much everybody was your stereotypical football-playing male and being somebody who wasn’t, that definitely was a bit isolating and a bit terrifying. But in adulthood, the sort of anxiety of my youth has transformed into an insatiable need to create and to succeed and to be heard and understood. I feel like I have a restlessness from my youth that has turned into kind of a crazy work ethic, so I’m happy for that.” n
You can’t promise us these guys and expect Dave Holmes to just forget about it. | SCREENGRAB
Waiting for Impact: A Dave Holmes Passion Project is out now on Exactly R!ght Media.
ELEVENTH HOUR Got Back?
Welcome back from Twickenham, 1969, where we’ve all been time-traveling with the Beatles in the greatest musical documentary ever made, says me. “Ever,” that is, until they finally release Peter Jackson’s original eighteen-hour cut. If you haven’t been watching Get Back and you love music, cancel this week’s appointments and get thee to a Disney+!
FINE TO ME: Pokey LaFarge has a new album and a new video out. It doesn’t sound like he used to and he doesn’t dress like he used to — but there’s a consistency to the new album, In the Blossom of Their Shade, that fans will appreciate and detractors will not fail to note. It runs his long journeyman study of popular American roots forms through sharp modern instrumentation and production, which makes for a whole new Pokey. At first it looked like he was doing a full Midwest tour run without STL on the calendar, but no sweat: There are two homecoming shows at Off Broadway to cap off the year, Dec. 29 & 30.
BURNT ENDS: Last weekend saw the release of the new tape by Molten Bone, the noisy new collaboration between Andy Kahn and Matt Stuttler — not to be confused with another excellent project, Cyanides, which they’re also both in together. If you like your garage rock spiced up with horror video game vibes, you’re in luck: Cyanides will be playing a few Molten Bones songs this Sunday 12/5 at Blueberry Hill in the Elvis Room with Still Animals and Freon. Otherwise, get on down to the Sinkhole and ask for Molten Bone — they should have some copies behind the counter. Meanwhile, you can sample tracks at sinkholestl. bandcamp.com/album/molten-bone.
GHOST WORLD: Speaking of Andy Kahn, his beautifully dreamy former project Frances With Wolves is finally available to hear via Bandcamp. The album, called Fruits That You’ll Never Know, is a collection of demos documenting Kahn’s collaboration with Leanna Kaiser, and it’s like ghosts making music, a gorgeously mysterious collection of color-dense synth clouds and unearthly vocals. It’s up for free at franceswwolves.bandcamp. com, though of course you can also drop some bills in their electronic hat as well. I recommend starting with “Endless Night,” a song that I truly think is ruling the dream-pop charts in a nearby alternate universe.
GEEKACHEECHEE: Fans of KDHX’s
BY EVAN SULT
Afternoon Delight show know that Jeff Hess is both encyclopedically knowledgeable about pop music and a genuinely weird guy. His excellent sometime- band project Tight Pants Syndrome proves the former, and his new album, Songs From Your Face, released under the name Jeffy, proves the latter. It’s a gloriously freewheeling collage of noises and instruments that feels like pure freedom and fun. You can find it at jeffy2.bandcamp.com/releases.
TO NAME SOMETHING IS TO GIVE IT POWER: Everyone’s favorite blueskinned, pointy-eared local demon is becoming more real by the second: The performer known onstage as Maxi Glamour and born as... you know what, it doesn’t matter — is filing the paperwork to legally change their name to Maximus Amadeus Glamour! The Metro Trans Umbrella Group (MTUG) recently offered grant money and guidance to STL trans folx to change their names to match their identities, and Maxi took ‘em up on it. Maxi has been performing all over this year — San Francisco, the Mexican Riviera, Portland Maine — and can next be found working with Alexis Tucci on an upcoming Nightchaser event at the Science Center called Love Lab. They’ll be making music and projections in an interactive “alien red-light district with club kids in the city” scene on Saturday, December 11, so obviously you should be there, looking sharp!
BEAUTY BEHELD: Photographic rock star Virginia Harold has an upcoming show at the Darkroom, and it’s going to be gorgeous. How do I know? Well, all of her photos are powerfully evocative — portraits, fern fronds, pebbles frozen beneath an icy stream, architectural details, chemigrams, everything. She’ll even have actual silver gelatin darkroom prints available for purchase. The opening is this Friday 12/3 from 4:30-7:30, so get on down there!
LOST BUT NOT LEAST: CaveofswordS’ Kevin McDermott has a “an audio sketch” project called cyclycl (extra points for the coolest band name basically ever) which just released a collection called Dulcet Diegetic. For being intentionally abstract, it’s a surprisingly moving listening experience, especially when you realize that the music is both inspired by and a eulogy for a certain cat who recently passed. As someone who has felt such a loss, and how quietly devastating it is, cyclycl acts as a soul massage that might even get you teared up.
Until next time: Keep sending cool art and hot tea to eleventhhour@riverfronttimes.com, plz&thx!
SLIFF Announces 2021 Award Winners
Written by JENNA JONES
The St. Louis International Film Festival wrapped up last week and with it came a long list of winners and even bigger attendance numbers. A hybrid format for the festival drew in viewers both from the city and internationally.
In a press release, the organization says the festival drew an estimated 21,646 viewers. Over 5,000 people attended in person, while there were around 4,300 online streams. Total viewership for the festival was calculated after factoring in that most films watched at home had more than a single viewer.
SLIFF’s hybrid format also allowed the festival to be shown globally; viewers hailed from sixteen different countries, as well as 44 different states. There were over 400 films shown at this year’s fest, with 78 countries featured and 37 languages.
These viewers determined the winners for the “Best of Fest Audience Choice Awards.” Divided into two categories, virtual and in-person screenings, Mila, directed by Cinzia Angelini, took home the online Best Narrative Short award, while the Leon Award for Best Documentary Feature was given to the in-person screening of Twenty Pearls: The Story of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, directed by Deborah Riley Draper. Draper also won the Women in Film award.
Other awards were chosen by a jury, with some categories coming with a cash prize. The Essy award for Best St. Louis film — a category that spotlights films with ties to St. Louis — went to Try Harder!, a film directed by St. Louisan Debbie Lum that profiles five high school students as they navigate college applications.
Documentarian and St. Louisan Nina Gilden Seavey received the Charles Guggenheim Cinema St. Louis Award, given to those from St. Louis who make “significant contributions” to film. The festival also honored St. Louis philanthropist Mary Strauss on its final day for her contributions to Cinema St. Louis.
View the rest of the winners on cinemastlouis.org. n
Belfast, directed by Kenneth Branagh, took home the TV5MONDE Award for Best International Feature. | COURTESY SLIFF
[DINNER AND A SHOW]
The Factory to Partner with Rock Star Tacos
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
In just four short months of business, hesterfield’s worldclass venue, the Factory, has already welcomed its fair share of music’s heavy hitters. Now, it’s about to play host to a different kind of rock star. The venue will soon be serving food from Rock Star Tacos (multiple locations including 4916 Shaw Avenue) thanks to a newly-minted partnership with chef Wil Pelly and his partner, Rebecca Schaaf. Pelly confirmed the deal last week, explaining that he has been in talks with the Factory about possible food opportunities since it opened this past July. There, at a friends and family event, he and
Schaaf talked with some of those involved in the venue’s operations, who explained to them that they were looking to provide food to hungry concertgoers, but had not yet settled upon the right fit. The arrangement grew from there.
For Pelly and Schaaf, the partnership with the Factory is natural. Since opening Rock Star Taco Shack in New Town in 19, the music-inspired brand has catered for several acts that have come through the nearby ollywood asino Amphitheater. For Pelly, who is also a prominent musician, the chance to marry his two passions has been one he has eagerly embraced, and he has positioned Rock Star Tacos as a natural fit for hungry musicians.
At the Factory, though, it’s the general public who will get to nosh on his delicious wares. As Pelly explains, the setup will be more like a large catering gig he and his team will drop off tacos in advance of a performance, and the Factory will then sell them out of one of its concession stands. Employees of the venue will man the stand, and the tacos will be available on a first-come, firstserved basis.
To start, Pelly and Schaaf will be offering three different varieties of Rock Star Tacos: the “Jumping Jack Fruit Flash, which is a vegetarian option featuring green chili-stewed jack fruit, the “Number of the Beef, which features ground beef, shredded lettuce and “Fancy Sauce, and the “Thunder luck, made with chipotle and maple pulled chicken. Though the pair hope to add to the offerings down the road, they want to take things slow to see how things go.
Rock Star Tacos, which just opened a brand new location on the ill last week, will launch at the Factory on December , debuting at the Old Dominion show. For Pelly, it’s a bit of a laugh to think that what started out as a funny idea between he and his bandmate over whiskey and te uila has turned into a bona fide food phenomenon with an outpost in hesterfield.
“It’s pretty exciting to be in a place I never thought we would be, Pelly says. “I never thought I would have a little satellite location in hesterfield. It’s pretty crazy, but rock and roll and tacos, man... n
Could there be a more perfect food vendor for the Factory than chef Wil Pelly? | MABEL SUEN
