TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY
Blog, Booking/Promotions, Google Group, Record Label and Podcast
TIRC is about rock’n'roll. REAL rock’n'roll in a city that helped create the genre. It’s about wearing your heart on your sleeve and speaking your own mind. It’s about kickin’ ass and having fun. It’s about trashy, sleazy, noisy, raw low-budget outsider music and culture. It ain’t about musicianship. It ain’t about technical skill or ability. It ain’t about politics or snooty, hipper-than-thou attitudes. TIRC exists to simply promote rock’n'roll and related recklessness in St. Louis. This is done by any number of different ways… with an email list (Google Group), a podcast, a record label, local show promotion (rare, but it happens), and this here blog thing (mainly for reviews and rants and stuff’n’such).
In the beginning… Trouble in River City (TIRC) started out as a Yahoo-based email list back in the late ’90s (borrowing the name from a defunct local punk rock fanzine that existed in the early ’90s, which had obviously borrowed its name from The Music Man), then kinda morphed into a record label in 2000 with the sole purpose to release trashy garage, punk, surf, and primitive rock’n'roll from St. Louis and beyond. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the label only saw two releases early on. The first (TIRC-001) was a compilation CD called Landlocked & Loaded!, which featured “Hi-Octane Underground Rock’n'Roll from the Great Midwest,” including music from such star-studded bands as The Geargrinders, The Revelators, The Trip Daddys, The Cripplers, Thee Lordly Serpents, and a few others. The 2nd release was a 7″ single by a local surf/instro band, The Honkeys (”Tossage” b/w “Tell ‘Em Large Marge Sent Ya!”). Copies of both releases are still available, and are cheap. If you would like to own one of these releases, just visit our online store.
Then, in 2007, St. Louis garage-punk band Left Arm approached TIRC about resurrecting the label to release their new CD, Dissatisoul. A fine idea, indeed (esp. since the band would take care of the pressing costs!), so the deed was done. It, too, is available in the store.
What does the future hold for TIRC Enter(Exit)prises? Who knows… future releases are a definite possibility, although record labels anymore are a dying breed. So TIRC may just forge ahead as a simple promotional vehicle, or as a means for stirring up shit locally. But no matter what happens, we hope you’ll support us. And more importantly, support live rock’n'roll in St. Louis. Thanks for visiting the site, and Stay Sick!
