Entries Tagged 'News' ↓

We were able to get the Crowne Plaza Hotel downtown to give us a special rate of $89/room for the nights of October 12th and 13th. This is a savings of $20 off their regular room rate, so it’s a good deal, if not still a bit pricey (but hey, it’s a really nice hotel, too). But the big advantages of staying here is A) you’re downtown (lots to see), and B) you’re only 3.5 miles (less than 10 minutes) from Off Broadway. Just make sure you mention the Show-Me Blowout when calling in your reservation: (314) 621-8200

Now, if $89/night is still too much, we can also recommend the nearest Motel 6 at 6500 S. Lindbergh Blvd. in South St. Louis County, but that’s considerably further (9.4 miles to the venue) and isn’t really close to anything interesting, other than maybe Grant’s Farm. The normal single room rate here is just $51.99/night. They weren’t able to give us any sort of special room rate for this event, sorry. (314) 892-3664

Another thing you can do is to go to www.priceline.com and for a zip code type in St. Louis and then, after you search for hotels, look for the “name your price” link under “More Ways to Save” on the right side. Click that link, then on the next screen choose Downtown St. Louis, then either 3-Star or 2 1/2-Star Moderate-Plus. Then just put in $50 or $60 in the “Name Your Own Price” box and see what happens. You may end up at the Raddison, Ballpark Hilton, or the Sheraton. All nice hotels and downtown, which is cool, and within a few miles of the venue. Good luck.

Big news! If you haven’t already heard, taking The Honkeys’ spot headlining the second night of the Show-Me Blowout will be the return of THE GEARGRINDERS featuring Jeff Hess with a new lineup, which just so happens to include three members of said surf/instro band (Jason Edge, Exene Cervenka’s hubby and also guitarist in The Original Sinners; Micah Edge on organ; and Cullen McGrane on bass) as well as Ben Wah, St. Louis native now living in L.A., who’ll be flying in to play. Ben Wah was also in Hippies in Flames (St. Louis/Seattle) and is the current drummer for the Feederz (currently on hiatus) and played with them on their 2002 reunion LP and 2003 tour.

Anyway, it’s gonna be huge. If you don’t have your tickets yet, you should get them now, because all bets are on that this thing will sell out.

The Geargrinders on MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/thegeargrinders

The Geargrinders on The Circuit:
http://lofistl.ning.com/profile/geargrinders

Click here to buy your 2-day pass for just $15 (includes BBQ party at Apop on Saturday afternoon).

If that link doesn’t work, just go to TicketWeb.com and search for “Show-Me Blowout”…

Thanks!

There’s certainly going to be TROUBLE in River City if Mayor Slay messes with our flag!

Our esteemed mayor has a flag poll up his butt, er, I mean, on his website this week, as he does every week, but this week’s happens to deal with flags. Now, normally, I’m not much of a flag waver (the only American flag we have hanging in our house is one of those hippy kinds with the stars in the shape of a peace sign), but I’ve always loved the St. Louis City flag and have one at home and also have it as a patch on my jacket. It rocks! And it appears from reading over the mayor’s new poll that the City is considering a redesign of this classic flag, which (according to a recent survey) just so happens to be one of the top five city flags in the entire USA. It’s perfect as it is! Why change it? Besides, shouldn’t the mayor have more important issues to deal with than changing the city flag? There are a lot of problems with our city, the least of which would be the design of our flag. That’s just my two cents, of course.

Anyway, here’s the direct link to the poll. Please vote!

http://www.mayorslay.com/polls/20070809Flags.asp

Leave the city flag alone!

Show-Me Blowout Update: The Honkeys have canceled. Jeff Positive got offered a gig to tour with a Thrill Jockey Records band in the UK the first half of October. Can’t say that I blame him, really, because it’s a great opportunity. I have to admit this bums me out a bit (this jockey isn’t the least bit thrilled, in other words), not only because I thought they really deserved to be on this bill (and would have good pull), but because I was away on vacation and missed their show at the RnR Prom and was just looking forward to seeing them perform again. Oh well, shit happens. So that means I’ll have to fill that void with another band. I have a few in mind, so I’ll let you know when everything’s confirmed and the updated lineup is ready to post.

The Mad Titans will be replacing Thee Hypnic Jerks at the Apop shindig Saturday afternoon.

Hey, just a quick post to let you all know that there’s a new TIRC group photo pool on Flickr. If you have any rockin’ photos you’d like to share (live show pics, band photos, flyers, etc.), then please go ahead and join the group, upload your pics, then use the “send to group” option to add them to the group photo pool. Joining Flickr is free, by the way…

Once we get a good selection of shared photos on there, I’ll add a Flickr badge to the sidebar of the blog.

Call me crazy, call me stupid, but I had no friggin’ idea that Zander Schloss’s brother was one of the owners of the Atomic Cowboy. I had a vague recollection buried in the deep, dark recesses of my brain that Zander was originally from St. Louis, before high-tailing it to the City of the Angels back in the early 1980s where he would dabble here and there in acting and later join one of the best punk rock bands of all-time (the Circle Jerks, duh). My favorite among his movie roles? Karl, the “wiener kid” in Alex Cox’s 1987 film, Straight to Hell. He was also in such cult hits at Repo Man and Tapeheads. He hasn’t done any acting (that I know of, anyway), since 2001’s That Darn Punk, a film whose soundtrack includes a few too many Epitaph bands for my liking, but it’s fun nonetheless. But then again, Zander keeps himself fairly occupied these days playing bass with Duane Peters in Die Hunns (as well as the occasional Weirdos reunion) so who knows what the future holds for the wiener boy. Anyway, so someone—I’ve no idea who—set up a Zander Schloss fan page on Myspace recently, which I discovered about the same way I discover most Myspace pages—via a friend request, naturally. So Zander was fresh in my mind the day I watched Bill Streeter’s Lo-Fi Saint Louis vlog post about the Cowboy Cabaret at Atomic Cowboy. Lo and behold, right smack dab in the middle of it, this guy flashes on the screen and he’s actin’ a little crazy, wavin’ his arms around and stuff, and I look at his mug and immediately get that astonished “wait! I know that dude!” look that you often get when you recognize someone but can’t quite place their face right away. He looked sooo familiar… Glasses, curly blond hair, kind of a nerdy-lookin’ guy. Then the guy’s name pops up on the screen: CHIP SCHLOSS. Lightbulb goes off over my head. “Chip Schloss! uh… Schloss? Zander! No… Chip? Who the hell’s Chip? That must be his brother!” Bingo, come to find out (thanks Richard Beckman) it is. But damn, he looks just like his brother. See what I mean?

That’s Zander on the bottom, by the way.

I dunno, I just thought that was kinda cool. I’d no idea Zander had a brother involved in the music scene in St. Louis. Learn something new every day!

Zander Schloss - Salsa Y Ketchup (MP3)

Well, I finally went and did it. I registered TroubleInRiverCity.com and put up yet another local music blog… go figure. Technically, this is the blog’s first post, although I will be transferring some previous blog posts from the TIRC Myspace blog over here and back-dating them for posterity (plus, ya just never know when Myspace might just suddenly delete your shit, which happens a lot more than you might think… just ask The Vultures). So this is where you’ll be able to find all of the past and future TIRC Podcasts as well as other posts about music, mostly locally oriented, of course. If you have a blog and would like to be linked here, by all means let me know (post a comment or send me an email: kopper (at) garagepunk (dot) com) and I’ll try to get you linked up as soon as I can. And if there’s anything else on your mind, don’t hesitate to let me know. Thanks!

By the way, the Wordpress theme I used to set this up is called Dark City. Groovy, ain’t it?

I just found out there’s a great new garage-punk/broken-blues duo featuring Marky Mayhem and Chris Powers. They’re called The Vickroids, and they’ve got a fantastic primitive, lo-fi sound that you don’t encounter often enough in this town. Check ‘em out on Myspace!

The Vickroids - Friday Night (MP3)