Greetings. If only to break the silence here, some notes about a new project.
Second Set will run Thursdays at the stlbeacon.org site. Here’s the explanatory text that accompanies the series:
For the past two-decades-and-change, Thomas Crone has covered alternative music and culture in St. Louis for such publications as the St. Louis Beacon, Riverfront Times, Post-Dispatch and St. Louis magazine, along with a host of smaller, deceased titles like Jet Lag, 15 Minutes and his own zines Silver Tray and 52nd City.
He’s co-produced the music documentaries “Old Dog, New Trick” and “The Pride of St. Louis,” along with several shorts. He’s currently pre-producing the web series “Half Order Fried Rice,” while teaching media writing at Webster University.
This series will highlight the known and unknown stories of St. Louis musicians, deejays, promoters and gadflies. Each week’s edition will showcase artists, albums and songs that collectively make up a fascinating Midwestern musical culture, one filled with both major successes and vexing could-have-beens. Combining personal recollections with interviews of the principals, these article will put into context the people, recordings and venues that have informed St. Louis’ recent rock’n’roll and pop music.
At the end of 2012, the pieces will be collected, along with new essays and Q-and-As, into a book, produced by the Beacon.
Here’s a link to today’s piece, dedicated to the old Pablo’s. And one to the debut, about Bill Boll’s “36 Minors.”
There’s this person I know, not terribly well, who works at a national music magazine. Recently, I put out one of those 1-in-76-success-rate pitch letters, thinking at the keys about how I’d turned into a very casual music fan, after growing up as a serious, died-in-the-wool, must-see-shows freak. It happens to many of us, this trend, and I’m not proud about it all, but, hey, we all go through changes. And, yet, the band Viva Voce really just put that all into perspective. This is how.
A friend who still maintains the flame, Jim Utz, mentioned that Viva Voce were playing the Firebird. This was on, oh, Friday or Saturday of last week. I had no idea that they were coming to town, let along were going to be here within a few days’ time. It dawned on me that I’m only skimming the upcoming shows lists in the local papers, and if Eduardo Vigil doesn’t have tickets on my Silver Tray freebie list, there’s a chance that a show like this just sails right n by. Well, the lad was not only good enough to tell me about the show, he spotted a ticket, so off I went to the Firebird on a Tuesday night.
Driving up, it was obvious that this was going to be a small turnout. No cars on Olive and virtually none on the back parking lot. Walking up to the club, about a dozen smokers hung near the door, making the inside of the room even more sparse. When you tossed out the members of the opening band, there were maybe 25, 30 paid customers in the joint, not even including myself, there on scholarship. This was freakishly just like the first time that I’d seen the band; then, they were playing to maybe a dozen people at the Way Out Club, and I loved them so much (and felt so bad for them) that I immediately shelled out $25 for their second and third albums and, maybe, a sticker. It’s a bummer when the bands you love don’t seem to gain traction, but I’d done my part, playing cuts from the group’s newest, “The Future Will Destroy You.”
Last night, that’s all they played. These are lovely songs, but somewhat reserved for the duo, come can really tear into a set when their minds are set that way. But at the ‘Bird, they moved languidly from one to the next, chatting on-mic about their short tour. Drummer Kevin Robinson was a bit more vocal than wife Anita Robinson, who was content to tune, play, tune, play and repeat. This isn’t to say they were dismissive of the couple-dozen fans, either, as they expressed appreciation more than once.
But you did get the sense that Viva Voce aren’t going to route tours with St. Louis as a must-stop from here-on-out. This had to have been a show in which they wanted to play, sell some merch, get the best night sleep possible and then hope for more at the next stop.
Sorry, y’all, I tried. Didn’t pay, but I showed up, that’s something right? And if I’d have known about the show, there would’ve been some extra punch on the radio show, really. (And, you know, there’s always karma. I so, so, so wanted to interview them for thesamefivequestions.com, yet never made connects.) Maybe we’re not supposed to click, ultimately. Some crushes run one way only.
Last week, the St. Louis Fimmakers Showcase played the documentary short “My Name is Haji Haji,” which I worked on with Brian Spath. I had another short on the same bill, but in picking up Tyler DePerro, the DP/editor of “The South Side of Luck: Frank’s First Alarm,” he and I showed up late enough to miss both works. At some point in time, that’ll become an amusing anecdote, brought on by just a classic run of bad luck and weird circumstance. So goes life. For now, I’ll just remain miffed.
If things had broken a bit different, young Haji would’ve been in St. Louis to see his mini-doc on the screen of the Tivoli, too, but he wound up visiting Saint Louis during the wrong month this summer, missing the the showing by a couple weeks. Luckily, there’s the web, and the short “My Name is Haji Haji” can live there for a good, long while.
At the time of the shooting of the video, the fall of 2009, Haji was already living in North City. But he was a South Sider for about four years prior to that, part of a large, growing population of Somalis that’ve taken root in our city. He’s a real corker, with a curious, hyper-talkative way of expressing himself and watching him in new situations immediately got me to thinking of ways to feature the kid in his own video series, which we envisioned as “I Am Haji Haji.” But as soon as Brian and I started the project, his family first moved North, to an immigrant-centric housing complex on the City/Wellston border, followed by a more dramatic move to Lewiston, Maine.
We initially envisioned a variety of fun scenarios for Haji to get into, from cooking goat (a Somali specialty) to visiting new places and working/visiting with the crew, like at the City Museum or at Zoo. Who knows what it could’ve turned into? This summer, I tried to get back to the concept, but things didn’t click again. A new camera proved trickier than I thought, Haji got his job back at the flea market, then poof! he was gone again.
He’s a wacky kid, though, with an interesting, curious way of looking at the world. I’m happy that Brian dusted off the old tape and put together this short, shot over four sessions with him, most of them after his move to Maine was announced. Enjoy.
(Cross-posted with thesouthsideofluck.com. And thanks to DJ Wilson should’ve been in the credits, but we’ll add them here.)
Intermittent updates about the best kind of life: South Side life. It looks like two more independent study students from Webster U. are coming on-board for fall, one adding audio features, the other some video. It’s fun to put personal interests out there, especially when you can find young, talented collaborators to help execute those ideas. This one’s going to push beyond the initial summer run, it appears.
Here’s the idea: three songs posted daily, in the form of good, old-fashioned music videos. Sometimes, a rock documentary trailer will sneak in. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity for an interview, or two, as well. Possibilities abound. Today was day one of this experiment, (which holds the same non-money-making potential of all my best ideas!) Part of this is simply shilling the Silver Tray radio show (back on the air today, actually), but it’s also a way to force me to keep at least mildly current on new music. So we’ll have old cuts for young people, and recent cuts for the geriatrics, who still enjoy finding new stuff. That’s the idea, anyway. Got a request?
A person whom I’ve known just shy of forever is Spike Gillespie.
This is appropriate enough background to say this: Spike is going to be appearing in a new version of Slacker, directed scene-by-scene by 20 different filmmakers. And in describing her role on her blog, I get name-checked in the piece. Craziness.
If I’d only enjoyed my first visit to Blues City Deli, with my friend and former radio co-host Amanda Doyle, that alone would’ve been a cool way to spend part of an afternoon. (That’s without the complicated-to-explain addition of some bargain t-shirt shopping at a clearance warehouse; next time.) And, earlier in the day, there was shared membership pitching on Silver Tray, with Valis (of KDHX’s day-breaking Trip Inside this House); that was pretty boss, as well. Then, to have a chance to go back into the studio, post-lunch, to enjoy three hours with Art Dwyer on “Blues in the Night,” well… that was simply one of the most enjoyable blocks of time I’ve ever had on the station. Just fantastic fun.
But the night’s activities turned a great day into something even more sublime, as The Painkillers played a wonderful set at Off Broadway, a venue that was suitably full for the occasion. There were so many rich, overlapping moments in the evening. Sean Garcia, who played music with me in our teeth-cutting, new wave days, before he went onto a successful run with Three Merry Widows, was on guitar and vocals. And he perfectly captured the feeling of late Painkillers guitarist/songwriter/vocalist Jeff Barbush, while melding into the trio of Jack Petracek, Carl Pandolfi and Mike Martin. Now, Martin and Garcia had their own nice run together in the band Tinhorn, so that bit of chemistry was expected; but together, the three, along with vocalist Tim McAvin, who joined the band for a trio of late tracks, was superb. There may’ve been a bit of nerves early, but those drifted away relatively quickly, as the group blended originals with some of the covers they were known for during the 1980s. If there’s a next time, here’s hoping that the group hones in even more deeply on their own catalog; the covers, though cool, are no more enjoyable than the originals.
As noted here before, the band’s CD is out now, in a new, remastered, expanded form. On Euclid Records’ house label, the 21-song disc is available at the shop, or via mail order.
Two things have circulated through my head since Friday night, now two days into the history bank.
1. In the liner notes, I used a word (in two forms) a total of three times in the first paragraph. I’m not sure how that happened, as I read and re-read that piece at least a dozen times before it was finally set in stone. But if the band can live with work they put out in their early-20s — material that they might feel self-conscious about to some degree — then I should be able to handle something as simple as using “portrayed/portrayal” three times in a forever-out-there set of liner notes. Right? Right? (Ugh.)
2. The whole getting into the ’80s state of mind has been freeing. Makes me wanna do something with that DIY energy I’ve just tapped. So there’ll be something coming live on May 1. Or not. Related to all this. Or not. Visit back on May 1.
Earlier today, the sounds of classic Guns n’ Roses was pouring out of the O’Connell’s Pub kitchen. With a light turnout in the restaurant and bar, the music was wafting through the room at a nice level and it started a conversation about the 1991 Riverport riot. Turns out that one of the servers at O’Connell’s was there, too, and we had a nice conversation about what the mayhem looked like from different angles in the venue. (She was on the lawn, I was deep in the stage-left seats.)
