You’ll find this video as riveting as I do, I’m certain.

Let’s recap:

Thursday, June 25: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 6 – 8:03 p.m.
Friday, June 26: The Royale, 10 p.m. – 1:21 a.m.
Sunday, July 12: The Halo Bar, 10 p.m. – 2:48 a.m.

Would be lovely to see you soon.

Whoa. So what’ve you read off this here list?

“King of the Ring: The Harley Race Story,” by Harley Race and Gerry Tritz (compliments of the inimitable Wayne St. Wayne)

“It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News” by Drew Curtis (compliments of incomparable Rich Quinn)

“Fool for Life” by Wm. Stage (compliments of the esoteric author, himself)

“Globalization: Tame It or Scrap It?” by Greg Buckman
“Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians,” by Peter Guralnick
“O.K. You Mugs: Writers on Movie Actors,” edited by Luc Sante
and “This is Our Music: Free Jazz, The Sixties and American Culture” by Iain Anderson (all compliments of the free-to-be-me Webster Emerson Library)

“Spent: End Exhaustion and Feel Great Again,” by Frank Lipman, M.D. (compliments of Border’s and their continual sales pitches to my e-mail box)

Plus about 35 unread magazines, of varying titles.

See you in August.

Walked into The Wedge last night, about 9:29, just in time for my 9:30 record spin. The first thing striking me was that the bartenders were new. They were… how do I put this?… not necessarily cut from the same cloth as previous Wedge bartenders. And then it struck me that the entire DJ booth had been removed from the venue, replaced by a utilitarian, six-foot folding table. This should’ve been the first thing to strike me, since the booth had been located just inside the first-floor doors and was arguably the coolest element of the bar. But, no, the bartenders caught my eye first. How sadly predictable.

Anyway, a manager informed me that the venue had gone through a second round of changes since opening night, with some ownership swapping involved. Now, a fellow from D.B.’s is on the ownership end and the bartenders followed from that edge-of-Soulard location. And if you’ve been to D.B.’s you know the “type” of bartender referred to here. (Though, for accuracy, The Wedge’s versions were far more clothed.) The DJ rotation had now been changed, too, with more of a tab-and-dinner approach to payment, which I can understand for a venue facing some revenue issues. My contact was nice about it, but some gigs you do for fun, some for money.

After a second’s thought, I grabbed my Domino’s bag of CDs and headed back to the car, thinking about a stop at Fred’s Six Foot Under, but too mystified to walk down the steps. A premonition had come true. See, what had struck me is that when walking up to the venue, I knew (just knew) that something was going to be off for the evening. In fact, I’d had that thought all afternoon and sure enough… poof. A gig gone. Such is life.

Alas. I wish the good folks remaining at The Wedge a successful run. And I look forward to visiting in a month, or two, for what’ll surely be a very different room, with bartenders’ necklines dipping and hemlines rising. That’s just a guess, but I’ll lay a dollar on the outcome.

Greetings to curious readers of MayorSlay.com who may’ve been induced to visit here thanks to my somewhat bemusing addition on this week’s Mini-Poll.

To prove that I deserve to program your three-hour roundtrip, I can offer these qualifications: I am presently spinning music on St. Louis’ commnity radio station, KDHX, with my show Silver Tray; I’m also spinning records tonight at The Wedge, from 9:30 – 1:20; and I’m going to post up an actual three-hour playlist here, when not quite as pressed for time as I am at this second.

Nonetheless, I think I’ve satisfied Mayor Slay’s incentives in (ahem…) “his” inclusion of me in the Mini-Poll, as I’ve now Tweeted, Facebooked, personal blogged and radio mentioned this competitive situation.

S-U-C-K-E-R. I’m a sucker.

But I can’t lose to Kevin Johnson, I’m sorry…

Let me join everyone else on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, et al, who are writing a variation on this.

“Saw Grand Ole Party opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at (insert club name of hometown here) on (this particular evening) and they were great.”

And they were.

Two quick stories about tapes.

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Yesterday morning, I went into my big-plastic-container-of-cassettes, in order to locate some music from A Perfect Fit. Found two tapes: the store-released “action-potential-fire” and a three-song demo from 1989. With those in-hand, I headed to KDHX, where staff engineer/producer Andy Coco taught me how to a dupe a cassette to CD, a process that wasn’t too hard, even for a technical bonehead. So, I’ve now got a nice APF disc to work into tomorrow’s “Silver Tray” show, but I’ve also got a bit of a problem. This problem: all those dozens of local cassettes sitting in the box. Ugh.

Now that I’m aware that I could dupe all those tapes onto CD, it’s going to become that “should do this summer” project that I absolutely don’t need. Ugh. And it’s not as if it’s just the local stuff that’s in there, calling out to me. I mean, anyone actively into music in the ’80s and ’90s surely has some oddity on cassette that they would want to hear in a better, more convenient format. All those Robyn Hitchcock, Chameleons and Shellyan Orphan tapes are pulling me down, down to the basement, where they’ve been patiently sitting in a box for the last decade. Ugh.

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The same box of tapes yielded an unearthed “Red Tape,” a double-sided compilation of tracks from Mute Records and 4AD, compliments of Select. I’ve long since parted with October, 1990’s edition of Select Magazine, but the tape’s still a reminder that while finishing up grad school in London, during that exact month, I was listening to this cassette and almost nothing but this cassette. Actually, just side one, with the 4AD cuts. It’s funny to look at a tape and think about it absolutely turning you onto a whole scene, but the tracks on side one of “Red Tape” are still favorites.

They are: Cocteau Twins, “Pitch the Baby” (alt. version); Pale Saints, “Insubstantial”; Pixies, “Allison”; His Name is Alive, “Some and I”; Lush, “De-Luxe”; Ultra Vivid Scene, “Special One”; and Dead Can Dance, “Song of the Sybil.” Hello, tape. You’re the template for my falling in love with shoegaze. Thanks, tape. The sound system of my ’96 Corolla looks forward to getting to know you again.

A few weeks back, Angelo Ranzini walked into that wonderful nightclub, The Famous Bar. While enjoying a series of Bloody Mary’s with a friend, the conversation about great, old St. Louis bands came up, and maybe because Ranzini was in the bar, I determined that A Perfect Fit was the top St. Louis group that I’d love to see reunite for one show. Because I’ve been vaguely intimidated by Ranzini since I was about 17, for no particular, realistic reason, I passed on the opportunity to talk to him about my idea. After all, it was a quiet night at the Famous, he was in conversation with the bartenders and, hey, I’d probably come unglued just saying “hello.”

High-school-induced social anxiety disorder. My longest-running malady.

Anyway, I’ll go ahead and hang onto that notion of an A Perfect Fit reunion, though it’s now an impossibility, due to the death of drummer Joe Longi, who passed this weekend. In the modern way of things, I was first alerted to his death via text; it was then confirmed with some back-and-forth on Facebook instant messenger. It’s been years since I’ve seen Joe; gosh, could have been a decade since we really talked. But I remember him well, in my own, admittedly-dated fashion, as both the kit drummer of APF, and, later, as the percussionist of Funkabilly. Certainly, he did other things in life and his closer friends and family will remember a different, more current person; but I’ll be forever locked in on the younger Joe Longi, with his spiked hair, intense, on-stage facial expressions and sliced tee-shirts.

Back in high school and into college, I had a set of drums and played them with (essentially) one band, before letting go of the dream, at an early enough age to spare the embarrassment of getting cut after auditions, or dealing with the post-adolescent angst of band break-ups. And so musically illiterate! I never could figure out the worship of certain drummers. In the late-’80s, you couldn’t talk drumming or percussion without Fish, Larry Mullen Jr., Stewart Copeland, Bill Bruford, and Neil Peart coming up again-and-again.

My drum heroes lived on my block, like Jack Petracek of the Painkillers. Or they lived around the corner, like Peter Lang of Corporate Humour. Or they went to Webster U., like Richard Bach of the Stranded Lads. Or they played in the rock royalty of Webster Groves High School, like Jeff Herschel of the Urge, or Longi, with APF.

Joe had a special place within that sub-group thanks to his kit. He was the first drummer I can recall (though it might’ve been Peter Lang…?) to play an electronic set and he worked in eye-catching pieces like Roto Toms and Octobans. His kit just looked a bit more contemporary and cool than everyone else’s and that added to his appeal. When the Urge and APF would play VFW Halls and small, local clubs, I could’ve just watched the drummers, with Herschel’s left-handed set-up and Joe’s new wave kit always impressing; their taste in gear was just as sharp as their playing.

I can distinctly recall catching those two groups at my first “hall party,” at a VFW joint in some corner of St. Louis County. And, if faulty memory serves true, I seem to recall being very moved by the scene, this simple idea that kids from my high school were igniting other kids from my high school on a weekend night, with the vague notion that even more excitement was happening on the parking lot, or at post-show parties somewhere deep in Webster Park. Existing on, at best, the outer perimeter of any particular clique at WGHS, simply being at those hall parties was unbelievable, though, a much-needed release.

Local bands like the ones mentioned above changed my life; far, far, far more than the Beatles, or Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd, or R.E.M., or Fishbone, or any of the college radio bands that served as gateways to the world of rock’n’roll for so many teens of my era. The local bands were the ones that hooked me, for good.

Thanks, Joe Longi, for playing a role in all that.

Owe you one.