The TIRC Records Showcase at Deluxe Saturday night was a lot of fun. We didn’t have a huge crowd there, but for a local show I thought the turnout was pretty decent, and it was enough so that each band got paid handsomely, so that makes it all worthwhile. The sound system at Deluxe is amazing. It was loud but it didn’t leave my ears ringing. And each band sounded great. The sound guy there really knows what he’s doing, which is a rarity these days. So kudos to the venue for that, and to Josh for just being a really cool guy. Any bar that has Rat Fink on the wall is alright in my book. And what’s the story with that place and cigarette smoke? When I walked in I saw quite a few people smoking, but it didn’t smell like smoke at all in there. In fact, even after leaving the place at the end of the night, I didn’t have that usual smell of smoke on my clothes that I usually have after leaving smoking bars. I mean, it was on me a little bit, but nothing bad. That place must have one hell of a ventilation system, that’s all I can say. Why can’t more smoking bars be like this? Anyway, I digress…
So the Nevermores CD is officially “OUT” now, and I’ll be posting it on the TIRC Store here sometime today (hopefully). In the meantime, you should be able to find it locally at Vintage Vinyl, Euclid Records and Apop Records. If you don’t see it at any of those locations, be sure to post a comment and let me know so we can get it restocked. And be sure and call your favorite KDHX radio hosts and request that they play something from it! It wouldn’t hurt to do this on KPNT (The Point), either… especially on their local music show (Sunday nights, right?).
By the way, I shot some video of the bands Saturday night, up until the point where the low-battery indicator was going off (I don’t think I was able to shoot any of Left Arm, who played last, unfortunately), but I haven’t had a chance to review any of it to see if it’s worthy of posting online. If it is, you’ll see it here before too long, I promise. I also snapped a few photos and the same goes for those. I realize I’ve been sort of neglecting this blog lately and I hope to correct that and start posting here more regularly soon… although I’ve got a vacation coming up in a couple of weeks so don’t look for much until after June 1 or so.
Anyway, thanks again to all of you that came out Saturday night and made it such a fun night of St. Louis-style rock’n'roll.
Saturday May 23 at Deluxe will see three local bands take the stage that each have TIRC Records releases under their belts: The 75s, who released their Stereo EP on TIRC back in February, Left Arm, whose Dissatisoul LP was the best local release of 2008 (if I do say so myself) and who will be releasing their latest 7″ single, “Electric Babies,” very soon, and headlining, veteran St. Louis rock-n-rollers the Nevermores, who will be celebrating the release of their first full-length slab, Nevereverafter. It should be a fun party and a fantastic night of St. Louis-style rock’n'roll, and I hope you’ll come out and support the label and the bands.
This is a great T-shirt (I love that logo on the back and have often admired it when I’m driving behind a STLFD vehicle). Just got mine in the mail yesterday, so you might see me sporting it around town soon. Get one!
Since I couldn’t find any reference to this on the Web, I thought I’d go ahead and do a short blog post about the Redbird Rookies T-ball program at the Marquette Recreation Center at 4025 Minnesota in South St. Louis (the same center where Cory Spinks likes to train). In case you’re not aware, Redbird Rookies is a FREE baseball league for kids who otherwise might not have the opportunity to play. This special league, sponsored by the St. Louis Cardinals’ Cardinals Care, provides kids with uniforms, gloves, bats, balls, and other equipment, as well as extensive off-field support in the areas of health, education, mentoring, and cultural arts. From what I’ve been able to find out, it appears there are a couple of these programs on the south side, the first at Marquette (as I mentioned above), and the other at the Cherokee Recreational Center located at Jefferson & Arsenal. The number for the Marquette Center is (314) 353-1250 and the number for the Cherokee Center is (314) 664-0582 (call both after 3:00 p.m.). My son started this past Thursday and there were only a few other kids there, so there’s definitely still room on the team if you (or your child) would like to come out and play. Practices are at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
A couple of weeks ago I created a new Tower Grove South group on Facebook, and last night I did the same over on Flickr. If you live in or just have interest in this incredibly dynamic, vibrant neighborhood in South St. Louis, please join both, share information, events, news, photos, etc. I’m about to head over to the Facebook group right now, in fact, to post about a community garden or yardshare (wouldn’t that be cool? [I mean, the garden, not me posting about it]).
The Greenhornes were in town on tour almost eight years ago now, and were kind enough to drop by the station to record this short live set before heading down to the Rocket Bar for their show with the Swag and Holy Infants. This recording was featured on episode #279 of The Wayback Machine the next day. Enjoy!
It always bothers me when I bring in a CD from home to listen to while I work, because I have to listen to it on my computer’s disc player, which doesn’t sound bad, mind you, but I’d rather have it playing on a nice, big stereo system where I could really crank it up. This release, for example, needs to be played LOUD to be fully appreciated. And since I can’t do that without blasting everyone else out of their offices, I’ll try to keep it down low enough to work while I hammer out a short review telling you all to run out and buy this sucker immediately (if not sooner). What the hell am I talking about? Well, if you haven’t figured it out from the cover art pictured above, Nimrod, I’m talking ’bout the fantastic reissue of White Lightning: Lost Cadence Sessions ‘58 from the late, great Link Wray and His Ray Men on Sundazed Music. This is the perfect medicine to take if you’re sick to death of this fucking highly annoying ’80s music revival and sudden appreciation for anything recorded in the era of crappy, soulless (over)production. That’s because this record has TEETH. And those teeth will gnaw and tear at your brain with such primitive ferociousness that you’ll be lucky to come out of this listening party alive, friends. Give Link Wray a Danelectro and listen as he bends, plucks and strums the Devil himself out of them thar strings.
This release came out last August, and I’m just now getting around to reviewing it. So sue me. I’ve decided that there is really no time limit involved with reviewing good records. No expiration date. So don’t be surprised if I throw in an older release now and then when I feel the need to tell the world what I think of a certain release.
Now, about this record. It’s simply splendid. Downright MUST OWN for any true fans of Link Wray. The guitar is loud and up front, crunching, distorted, mean, and nasty. This is rock’n'roll, friends. This LP was originally intended to be the follow-up release to the blockbuster hit, “Rumble,” you know, the only instrumental song in the history of music to be banned from radio airwaves because it was inciting riots (or so they said). This was the late ’50s in the good ol’ US of A, and everyone—Cadence Records label-owner Archie Bleyer included—was talking about this new threat to the morals of the American youth. So they gave Link & Co. the boot and shelved the album, where it sat, collecting dust, for nearly 50 years. That’s where our pals over at Sundazed Music come in, because they were finally able to get the rights to re-release this splendid historical set so all of us HONGRY rock’n'roll connoisseurs could finally sink our own teeth into this thick, meaty platter.
Note: The vinyl LP version of this release is limited to 1,000 copies on numbered, high-definition vinyl. HD vinyl? Yeah, ya got me, but there ya have it!
Here’s a taste (please note these tracks will be removed after a few weeks):
This one came out not too long ago on Voodoo Rhythm, a label that hit a bit of financial trouble as of late. The band is the Movie Star Junkies, a great broken blues-punk combo from Turin, Italy, whose primary influences are (quite obviously, actually) the Birthday Party and the Gun Club. This particular record, the band’s first full-length LP, happens to be a concept album (no shit!) about Herman Melville of all people, the famous 19th-century writer and adventurer (best known for the classic, Moby-Dick). Thus, the record is full of stories of shipwrecks, illness, religion and love, although I’m not sure exactly how most of them relate directly to Melville’s life. Maybe they don’t, who knows? But what I can tell you is that most of these tracks are incredibly dark, exotic, moody, and crawl along menacingly, full of emotion, lust, anger, fear and desperation. This is a record I can listen to back-to-back for a couple of hours and not get bored with it, and that’s saying something. This shit just sounds IMPORTANT to me. Like, future classic important. I guess time will tell if that actually happens and is considered such, and it would definitely be a lot more probable if they can churn out a couple more masterpieces like this one, so we’ll just have to wait and see if that ever happens. But I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed. Heh. And here I bet you thought I was a “glass half empty” kinda guy… Shame on you.
I don’t know how many of you remember (or even ever heard) a band from a few years back called the Starvations, but they remind me a LOT of them, in fact, even moreso than the aforementioned influences. I’m also hearing a bit of Turpentine Brothers as well as later-period Deadly Snakes here, too. Think spaghetti westerns meet pirate movies set to music. Ah, hell, why do I even try? Here, just listen to a few choice cuts:
By the way, if you dig these sounds, definitely go see the band performing live at Lemmons next month (Saturday April 25) with Kentucky Knife Fight and the Argonauts (yes, admittedly, this is a show I set up… so please excuse the blatant self-promotion). How often do you get to see an Italian blues-punk band up-close and personal? Especially one this good?
I haven’t played corkball since I was a kid, and even then it was only at a couple of family reunions (on the DuParri side of the family at that, too, if I remember correctly), and usually the game was spearheaded by my dad or one of his countless cousins. I remember having an old, weathered corkball and a beatup old corkball bat around the house growing up. That bat was really thin and long, and part of the nob had broken off at some point. Once in a blue moon my dad would toss the tiny, miniature baseball to me in the backyard and I’d try my best to whack at it, usually missing the damned thing miserably. Back then I actually liked playing bottle caps more, and saved a whole shoebox full of them (90% of the caps featuring Falstaff, Ballantine or 905 beer logos) that I’d haul out of storage and use at family gatherings or whenever I could convince some kids from the neighborhood to play. My favorite part about throwing the bottle caps was the way they would zing and curve around before almost hitting the batter right in the face. No, there wasn’t much control in throwing bottle caps, or at least, if there was, I sure as hell didn’t know how to do it. But it was fun as hell, nevertheless.
If you’re like a lot of people these days, you’re probably wondering what the hell it is I’m writing about. Corkball? Bottle caps? WTF? And, I guess it’s because my dad was older—he had served in World War II and played stickball on the streets of Manchester and old North St. Louis when he was a kid—that I knew anything about it. Most of the other kids in my neighborhood had nary a clue what any of it was. To them, there was only one sport and that was baseball. So that’s what we played most of the time, including my junior-high years when we would play baseball every freakin’ day for two or three summers in a row (even if it rained). But that all came later, and once I’d started playing baseball, I never even really thought about corkball or bottle caps ever again. That is, until recently.
Corkball is a St. Louis thing, but unfortunately it doesn’t quite have the attention of other “St. Louis things” like toasted ravioli, St. Louis-style pizza, rolling stops, or our quirky habit of asking other locals where they went to high school. No one is quite sure when the game first started being played, but most local historians point to the turn of the twentieth century, and it’s been played ever since (in fact, the Gateway Corkball League has been around since 1929, believe it or not!). I could go into some great detail about the history of the game, but I couldn’t say it better than it was said in this Esquire Magazine article published on June 1, 2000. Do yourselves a favor and read it! Truly a unique story. And while you’re poking around on the Web for more info about this great old sport, be sure to visit the Corkball page on Markwort Sporting Goods’ website for detailed rules so you can really differentiate it from baseball and, indeed, other forms of stickball. Further reading can be found on the South Saint Louis Corkball Club, the Lemay Corkball Club, the Sportsman’s Corkball Club as well as the aforementioned Gateway Corkball Club sites. In fact, if you’re looking for some more competitive leagues, I would highly recommend any of those over what I’m planning on starting, but more on that in a minute.
So I basically went my entire adult life (so far) without having played even one inning of corkball, much less even watching a game. That is, until this year. I never forgot about nor lost my love of the game, and always had it in the back of my head that someday I would get off my ass and play it again. Well, a few weeks ago I realized that I’m not getting any younger and if I want to start playing, I should do it now. Why wait any longer? And since the four corkball fields at Tower Grove Park (within walking distance of my house) are going virtually unused in the 21st century (thanks to the Sportsman’s Corkball Club hightailing it for the “safer” Jefferson Barracks Park some nine years ago), there’s really no reason why I shouldn’t be playing.
So, I’ve started recruiting players to form a new, relaxed, non-competitive league, named the River City Corkball Club. The emphasis will be on having fun and we won’t be keeping track of stats or wins/losses. In fact, each game will be pickup-game style, just like how some of used to play pickup softball games at Tower Grove Park a decade ago. I figure we’ll start playing on Wednesday nights the third week of April (April 15). We’ll need to purchase some equipment (mainly a couple of masks, a batting helmet, some balls, etc.), and the best way to do that is to have everyone chip in some money. Maybe we’ll even have some shirts made, who knows. But this is definitely not the type of league that will be highly competitive or have bylaws, like those other local corkball clubs (no disrespect intended, naturally).
If you’re interested in checking it out, by all means, let me know. Post a comment below and/or join the Facebook group, and we’ll see you at the park!
