Poster by Potter

Our next TIRC live rock’n'roll event is scheduled for THIS Wednesday night at Off Broadway. Yeah, sorry, I’ve been busy and kinda forgot to post about this show ’til just now. So sue me. But c’mon, it’s not like most of you reading this have that much going on on a Wednesday night in the middle of summer, anyway, right? So it shouldn’t be too difficult to rearrange your schedule to squeeze this one in… I mean, really, when was the last time you got to see a great rock’n'roll band from Puerto Rico… or ANY kind of band from Puerto Rico? So, now’s your chance. And these guys are good, too. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be messing with getting ‘em a show here and promoting them on my website. Life’s too short to promote crap, that’s my motto… or something. So anyway, you’ve got this great band from Puerto Rico, they’re called Davila 666. My guess is that has something to do with the devil or Satan or whatever. Kind of a goofy name, but whatever. Go easy on ‘em, it’s not easy these days to come up with a band name that’s never been used before. So these guys play the kind of music that Kopper (that’s me, duh) really digs… soulful, trashy garage punk. Sorta like a Latin American version of the Black Lips, for those of you that need me to pigeonhole ‘em for ya. If that sounds like it might be up your alley, then I hope to see you at the show. For more info on these guys, visit their Myspace page. Oh, and if what I’m telling you ain’t good enough to convince you to go, then rest assured that ANY band on In The Red Records is one that you should do everything in your power to see perform live at least once before you buy the farm. That, my friends, you can take to the bank. Old Larry Hardy, my friends, that man knows how to run a record label.

Opening the show will be Left Arm and the Nevermores, so get there early to get adequately LUBED for these rockin’ Puerto Ricans.

By the way, RSVP and help promote this event on Facebook… CLICK HERE. Gracias!

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.

The Greenhornes Live at KDHX (April 7, 2001)

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!

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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):

Drag Race (MP3)
Raw-Hide (MP3)
Comanche (MP3)
Rebel Rouser (MP3)

By the way, check out episode #68 of my Savage Kick podcast to hear the excellent title track!

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:

Little Boy (MP3)
Run Away From Me (MP3)
Dead Love Rag (MP3)
Melville (MP3)

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?

Steve Buscemi, ca. 1996

The other day I found Steve Buscemi on Twitter, and since he’s one of my favorite actors (c’mon, he was “the Last Guy Standing” in Reservoir Dogs!), I thought what the hell, I’ll start following him. One of the first tweets I saw from him was to inform everyone about some “amazing” band called Abe Vigoda and then he asked, “Where are the good emerging New York DIY bands?” After first checking out the artsy “alternative” band he was hyping (not to my surprise, they’re not that “amazing” at all… ” in fact, I think they pretty much suck, but then again I could tell that from their list of influences: 311, At the Drive-In, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Fleetwood Mac, Nine Inch Nails). So I replied, sending a couple of links, one to the GaragePunkNYC site and the other to the Victim of Time NYC venues listing. I thought those sites might clue him into a part of the NYC “underground” garage rock’n'roll scene that he may be totally unaware of, such as DMZ playing tonight at the Southpaw, or the Fleshtones/A-Bones/Twistaroos/Demands next Friday night. To my surprise, he replied later via DM, not once, but twice! The second one contained his e-mail address and he said I could e-mail him for his top 10 list of current favorite songs. “That’s kinda weird,” I thought to myself. “Why would I want to know what your current list of favorite songs is? Oh yeah, I guess it’s because you’re Steve Buscemi.” Whatever. So I went ahead and e-mailed the guy, more to try to promote GaragePunk.com to him than anything else (especially since the latest episode of my very own podcast was going up the next day), but to be nice, I asked him to go ahead and send me that list of songs. So that’s what I have for you below. It’s not that I really find his list all that interesting or anything, but it is what it is. And, after all, he did give me permission to post it on my blog.

Here are my top 10 songs that I’ve really been into lately. There’s a few legacies in there, as well as some smaller LA bands I’ve really been into after receiving submissions from fans on Twitter. I have many more but these are songs that have really stuck with me in the past week. Roy Orbison is a classic, loved the usage of “In Dreams” in Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Joe Strummer’s cover of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song is a really touching piece to me. Both men were fucking legends. A fan sent me Halloween Swim Team and the entire debut album “The End Of The Sky” is ace plus. They pull off the vintage synth sound better than most bands of the vintage synth era. Keep your eye out for them…I’ve chosen to feature them as the sole weekly followed band on my Twitter account. Bing Crosby’s Guilty has always been a favorite and really struck me in the Amelie soundtrack. Santo & Jonny’s Sleepwalk is one of those songs that I can’t ever quite get over. It’s one of the best “driving by myself to go get coffee at 11 AM after a hangover” songs of all time. The Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” is the most fucking romantic and passionate songs ever written (besides Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”). I didn’t double check the facts on Meho Plaza but this song “The Beach” sent by a fan recently is really an amazing track; somehow it manages to have rich production while maintaining a lo-fi sound. Radiohead “Creep”? Where do I start? Story of my life. I only kid. Kind of. Last of the Shadow Puppets has to be one of the best pop bands to come out of the UK since Oasis. Wasn’t a big fan of Arctic Monkeys but these guys just kill it. Fleet Foxes is at the end of the list because they’re one of my favorite new folk bands at the end of the night. When all is said and done, Fleet Foxes take me into the night.

1. Roy Orbison – In Dreams
2. Joe Strummer – Redemption Song (Bob Marley)
3. Bing Crosby – Guilty
4. Halloween Swim Team – Coincidence
5. Santo & Jonny – Sleepwalk
6. Righteous Brothers – Unchained Melody
7. Meho Plaza – The Beach
8. Radiohead – Creep
9. Last of the Shadow Puppets – Standing Next To Me
10. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

Cheers!
-Steve B.

I wish Harry Dean Stanton was on Twitter. I’d kinda like to get his list of current favorite songs.

The Geargrinders – Weather (MP3)
The Geargrinders – Fuzz Grinder (MP3)
The Geargrinders – My Nerves Are Exploding (MP3)
The Geargrinders – Why Now (MP3)
The Geargrinders – Maggots on My Brain (MP3)
The Geargrinders – She’s a Bully (MP3)
The Geargrinders – What Do You Know? (MP3)

Almost forgot! In case you missed it, the latest episode of my podcast was posted last Friday. Clocking in at somewhere around 69 minutes, this high-calorie episode includes some requested stuff, including the Count Five, Guitar Wolf, Chrome Spiders, plus some greasy, deep-fried rock’n’roll by the likes of the Goodnight Loving, the Sonics, the Barbarians, the Hong Kongs, thee Fourgiven, Ron Haydock & the Boppers, the Scientists, the Cows, the Passions, Steve E. Nix and the Cute Lepers PLUS a fat set for all you chubby chasers out there that includes a lost ’60s “pounder” from St. Louis. I know you’re hungry so DIG IN!!

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After you listen to it, do me a favor and give me a call! That’s right, pick up that phone and leave a message on the Savage Kick voicemail line that I can use on my next show: (641) 715-3900, ext. 42878

Thanks!

The 75s - Stereo EP

The newest TIRC Records release is out now and ready for you to download. It’s a 3-song EP by local St. Louis girlie garage-pop sensations The 75s! Please head over to the TIRC Store for more info. And, if you’re looking for the live music hookup this coming weekend, be sure to make plans to attend the 75s’ EP Release Party for Stereo this Saturday night (Feb. 28) at Lemmons. Also appearing will be the Helium Tapes and That’s My Daughter. Plenty of girl-on-girl rock’n'roll action… don’t miss it!

Enjoy this hot rockin’ set from the Flat Duo Jets from Chapel Hill, NC, featuring Dex Romweber and Crow, presented by Kopper of the Savage Kick podcast. Thanks again to Jim Utz for providing this one!

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