Don’t know about you, but my vehicle’s got a tape player. For playing good, old-fashioned cassettes. And with my iPod seemingly down for the count, I’ve been revisiting some old favorites from the long-disgraced, but suddenly-hip medium of cassettes.

My big, plastic cassette box is really a vibrant time capsule. Whether it’s pulling out an oddball artist (Shellyann Orphan), a long-forgotten bootleg (Pixies, The Cure) or a personal story-maker (a Concrete Blonde live recording, hand-delivered to me the day after the show by the bootlegger), the cassette box has been a giver of great and surprising things of late.

The tape that got the most play in recent weeks is a mixtape of songs by Jeff Barbush, who headed up bands like the Painkillers and the Deadbeats, and who also did a fair share of home recording. The tape was given to me, if memory serves, by Marcia Pandolfi, whose brother Carl was a member of the Painkillers.* That group, as I’ll ramble on about to anyone, is primarily responsible for my caring about pop music, at all, as they practiced two-doors-down from where I spent a chunk of my teens. Just as I was ready to absorb local rock, a local rock band was playing on the block.

Those Painkiller songs are special to me. And, with a bit of time, the entirety of the Barbush cassette is locked into my head.

Of late, I’ve played with the idea of what to do with material like this, in terms of sharing. It’s solid music, still. It extends the life of a musician who passed too soon. It’s classic Saint Louis pop and is deserving on just that level. It really should be heard by more than just myself and the passengers in my truck; or by the other folks hipped into similar cassettes and home tapings.

So, the thought goes like this: start by finding some of the principals behind the music. See if they’re down with a limited-run CD. Talk to folks like Chris King, whose Enormous Richard recently re-released a long-ago cassette onto CD. Locate someone to bump the original recordings into a more digitally-pleasing form. And then drum-up the couple-hundred dollars to run, let’s say, 100 discs, for those who’d be naturally inclined to also fall in love with these songs.

This idea, it seems, could have legs. Or it could not. I’m open to discussions. And, in the meantime, I’ll be humming along to songs so catchy, so sweet, that I’m not the only deserving to hear such treasures. Thanks, Jeff Barbush, for leaving me something so wonderful, a cassette of magic, as much as a cassette of music.

* Rene Spencer Saller also made for me a fantastic mix-up CD of Painkillers tracks a few years back and it’s gotten steady play over time, as well. But, as determined, I’m not blessed with a new-fangled CD player in the car. Some of those cuts, too, deserve a hearing.

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.

-30-

Though this has been plugged elsewhere in the Thomas Crone Media Empire, I only learned today that I’ll be introducing the film noted above, “Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness,” on Thursday night at the Winifred Moore Auditorium; start time is 7 p.m. The film’s being co-sponsored by 52nd City and we’re happy to do so. In fact, we recently ran an interview with the doc’s director, Melody Gilbert, which you can find here.

If you happen to attend, the students you’ll see scattered through the venue looking like they’re working for some extra credit will probably be students of mine working for some extra credit. Just so you know.

If this is the first you’ve heard of it, the film’s description goes like so: “Plunging into the world of urban exploration, a growing international subculture of adventure-seekers who explore places where most people would never dream of going, documentary filmmaker Melody Gilbert follows Max Action, Shane, Katwoman, Mr. X, Slim Jim and Turbozutek on their ‘missions’ to infiltrate sewers, ‘lunatic asylums,’ storm drains, faded tourist attractions, secret U.S. government sites and even the forbidden Catacombs in Paris. Some do it for the thrill of being where they’re not supposed to be and not knowing what lies ahead. Others do it to document history before these long-forgotten places are demolished.”

It’s a sharp li’l motion picture. Hope you can drop in.

Got a phonecall around 8:50 this morning asking if I’d heard the news about Marti Frumhoff. I had not. “She’d passed, yesterday evening, news was going around.” Wow.

Since getting home late in the day, I thought about this situation, read the other blogs and their comments about her, thought a bit. Here’re two things I’ve not seen written about her, specifically:

At some point in the early ’90s, Marti was a print publisher. I remember it well, meeting her for the first time, in a small, brick-walled office above the old Sunshine Inn on Euclid. She was putting together a new, monthly magazine, called “Steppin’ Out.” She sensed that the RFT wasn’t getting to all the news it could, so why not have publications that would complement, if not compete with the established weekly, then still in the advocacy journalism phase of the Hartmann years. I was impressed by her pitch. Though money was tight for freelancers, she had me write one story, on not-yet-famous The Urge, which I still have in a clipbook somewhere. I wish I kept a few copies of “Steppin’ Out,” just for days like today. Magazines like that take up space, in a box, in your basement. One day, you just have to move them out, then wish you hadn’t.

Also, a couple years back, there was a several-week-long, intense, hell, remarkably-intense conversation about the future of Metropolis. A group, of which I was a member, was talking of running a slate to disband the group. Marti was invited into a large meeting, of about 20-25 people, held in my backyard. Out of everyone there, Marti was the one person to wind up not signing off on the plan. See saw something we didn’t. The election went down, a curious, somewhat fractured one, but one that left Metropolis intact. Marti was a passionate, very vocal critic of any desire to discuss the matter further. It was over, she seemed to argue, there was an election, it was done. Situations like that can sometimes strain relations between folks. Marti was always the same thereafter, though. A pleasant, passing “hello,” a “hey, Thomas, what’s new?” In fact, I got that line just last week from Marti at Hartford Coffee.

In fact, I’ll probably look for her there, or at MoKaBe’s some afternoon in the near future. And she won’t be there. And I’m sorry that’ll be the case.