Entries from October 2007 ↓

The Gore Gore Girls return to Atomic Cowboy tonight! Check ‘em out after you get back from trick-or-treating.

$10 | 21+ | Doors 8pm

Every year when we carve out our jack-o-lanterns for Halloween I always save the seeds and bake ‘em in the oven. This year I decided to use a different recipe, and I’ll be damned if they’re not the tastiest, crispiest, lip-smackin’est pumpkin seeds I’ve ever had (made, bought, or otherwise), so I wanted to share the recipe with, well, whoever the hell wants it. The only thing I added was to sprinkle some spicy Cajun-style seasoning salt to them after I pulled them out of the oven, but that’s because I usually like my salty snacks with a bit more kick. (By the way, I baked them for 25 minutes as opposed to 20 as it calls for below… but that’s just how long it took them to get slightly browned in our oven. Your mileage may vary.)

Fall has arrived and with it, the pumpkin season. There are always plenty of pumpkins to carve up around Halloween time and a great way to make use of the pumpkin seeds is eat them, salted and toasted. Our preference is with the shells on – if they are toasted properly they are wonderfully crunchy and easy to eat. It helps if you are going to eat them with the shells on that you use seeds from sugar pumpkins, somewhat smaller than the mega-sized carving pumpkins (not really pumpkins but large squash). The trick? Boil the seeds in salted water first, and then toast them in the oven.

• One medium sized pumpkin
• Salt
• Olive oil

1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut open the pumpkin and use a strong metal spoon to scoop out the insides. Separate the seeds from the stringy core. Rinse the seeds.

2 In a small saucepan, add the seeds to water, about 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds. Add a tablespoon of salt for every cup of water. Bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.

3 Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil over the bottom of a roasting pan. Spread the seeds out over the roasting pan, all in one layer. Bake on the top rack for 20 minutes or until the seeds begin to brown. When browned to your satisfaction, remove from the oven and let the pan cool on a rack. Let the seeds cool all the way down before eating. Either crack to remove the inner seed (a lot of work and in my opinion, unnecessary) or eat whole.

I ain’t shittin’ ya… these are delicious! And absolutely no diacetyl!!

Yes, it’s delicious, and I love to lick that buttery coating off of my fingers… But be careful of how much of this shit you eat!! Click here for more info.

I have “Digg This!” links that appear on every podcast entry on the GaragePunk.com blog. These are added automatically through my FeedBurner feed. They work great for adding these podcast entries to Digg, but there’s a problem with that. You see, I already have my podcast registered on the Digg Podcast Directory, so I was hoping that, by adding the “Digg This!” link on my podcast posts, when people clicked them they would add diggs to those podcast entries that already exist on Digg’s Podcast Directory (which get added there automatically via the RSS feed). The problem is, when someone diggs one of those posts from my site, instead of Digg automatically finding the other entry for this podcast on its Podcast Directory, it instead insists upon adding the item as a separate story. The next page after that (“Are You Sure It’s Not a Duplicate?”) may give you some possible duplicates, but none of them happen to be the very same post found in the Podcast Directory!

When someone diggs a podcast post from the source site, Digg should be able to find and match that up with the podcast post already on its directory instead of creating a new “news” item for it, should it not? How else would people be able to digg items in their Podcast Directory?

Feel free to try this out for yourselves to see what I mean:

Here’s the URL of my last show as it appears in Digg’s podcast section:
http://digg.com/podcasts/GaragePunk_Podcast/679314

And here is the URL of the news item that Digg created separately for the very same item:
http://digg.com/music/Savage_Kick_43

Any help from Digg on fixing this issue would be greatly appreciated! Please CLICK HERE to digg this article!

Thanks,
kopper
GaragePunk.com

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

It’s the annual Halloween special on Savage Kick, featuring enough musical madness to give you nightmares for the next two weeks! This episode features creepy and deranged cuts from King Automatic, The Hex Dispensers, The Invisible Eyes, Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue, Ric Rhythm and The Revengers, Black Time, The Staggers, The One Way Streets, Haunted George, Thee Headcoats, Roky Erickson, Sugar Shack, The Defectors, Things to Come, Ron Haydock and plenty more… Happy Halloween, kids! MUHAHAHA…

Spooky playlist!

I’m taking a break from the whole TIRC Productions show-promotion/booking thing. Why? Well, I feel like Bill Streeter and I really busted our asses to promote the Show-Me Blowout, only to have it not meet our expectations. I don’t mean that in terms of the quality of the performances of each band (they were all fantastic, as expected), but due to the very poor attendance both nights at Off Broadway (not even close to what I was shooting for, as a matter of fact). There were also dozens of people that I fully expected to see there (some of them from actually TELLING me they’d be there) who, for whatever reason, decided not to come either night (or show up at the free barbecue at Apop, for that matter). I don’t mind working hard to promote things that people enjoy and/or support, but when you work hard to promote something only to have it fail time and time again (and lose money doing it), it just starts to lose its appeal. It’s just not fun anymore. So I’m tired of it, tired of the disappointments, and am simply going to take a break. So don’t be surprised if you don’t see me promoting (or showing up at) any shows for a while. I just need some time away from music promotion and the whole local music scene in general. Whether or not this break becomes permanent or not is yet to be decided, but no matter how much I try to remain positive about the rock’n'roll scene in St. Louis, I keep getting reminded of how much it really sucks ass. Those two nights at Off Broadway were big, daunting, humiliating reminders of this for me.

So the big question remains: Will there be a Show-Me Blowout 2? Don’t hold your breath.

Well, I’m happy to say that the Show-Me Blowout seemed to be a nice success. The bands were all fantastic and there were really very few complaints or problems, especially on Saturday night when some of the timing issues were corrected from the previous night. Unfortunately, the attendance for the two nights combined didn’t even reach 200 people, with the second night falling far short of expectations. This despite good press both in print and online and plenty of promotion. Still, a fun show, and Craig Moore really ripped it up on stage with The Nevermores and The Geargrinders on their covers of two classic ’60s garage punkers, “Doin’ Me In” and “Blackout of Gretely,” respectively. The Saturday afternoon BBQ Bash at Apop Records also went off without a hitch, and all four bands were great there as well. Lots of people enjoyed a keg of Schlafly Winter ESB (they were already out of the Oktoberfest), damned fine burgers and some of the largest, juiciest hot dogs the world has ever seen, all prepared perfectly on the grill by Bill Streeter of Lo-Fi Saint Louis. Were you there? Then please post your thoughts on how the whole thing shook down on the TIRC-STL google group.

That said, because of the lackluster turnout, I have a huge overstock of Blowout T-shirts available that I’m “blowing out” for just $8 plus postage. This basically means I’m making just over a buck on each shirt. Hopefully I’ll sell enough of these to break even, but somehow I doubt it. Oh, and I don’t care if you were there or not. I’ll sell a T-shirt to anybody, anywhere, anytime. Just send your money in via PayPal using the button below (and don’t forget to indicate your shirt size and include your snailmail address). Thanks!

Share your photos of the event here!

The Show-Me Blowout starts tonight! In case ya missed it, here’s the local press it received this week:

Jason Toon wrote a great piece on it for “B-Sides” in this week’s RFT:
Show Me the Garage Rock!

Matt Fernandes wrote about it on the Rock Candy blog on Wednesday:
Get dirty this weekend at the Show-Me Blowout!

And, as previously noted, Thomas Crone in the 52nd City blog:
Show-Me Blowout @ Off Broadway; Q/A with Kopper

Now here’s a little somethin’ somethin’ to help get ya in the mood… BOOM!!

More info? Check out the Show-Me Blowout on THE CIRCUIT.

Doors at 7pm, show at 8:00 (or shortly thereafter). See ya tonight! And tomorrow!! And tomorrow night!!!

I decided to ditch the old St. Louis Area Mopars WordPress blog (it wasn’t getting updated very often, anyway) and redirect the domain name to a new social network that I just created for the club at Ning.com. This follows similar networks that Bill Streeter and I have set up for our respective websites, Lo-Fi Saint Louis (The Circuit) and GaragePunk.com (The Hideout). If you live in the St. Louis area and want to join, go right ahead! You don’t need to own a Mopar automobile to join, but it helps if you have an appreciation for them. See you on the network!

Thomas Crone published a Q&A with me yesterday on his 52nd City blog. Click here to read it.

Thanks, Tom!