No, this isn’t a fight. It’s a brawl. Probably one of the ugliest you’ll ever see, too. Keep in mind this video is over nine minutes long… and the REAL brawling doesn’t start until about halfway through it, after they flash the score up on the screen, so keep watching for the best part of this. By the way, I don’t remember this one at all, mainly because I wasn’t living in St. Louis in ‘91 (Gina and I were still in Lawrence where we were without Blues hockey on the tube). But later on I heard about this fabled “St. Patrick’s Day Massacre” between the Blues and the Blackhawks and saw some video of it many years later after returning to St. Louis. Now, thanks to YouTube, we can see it again. By the way, I’m willing to wager that this particular brawl was what originated the phrase “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” Enjoy!

These are fucking great (of course the visuals help, which you [unfortunately] won’t get if you listen on the radio, but what’re ya gonna do?)… Enjoy!

…as performed by the Argonauts live at the Ten Mile House this past Saturday night:

As you can probably tell from the video above, the band was great, despite this being their first show in over 12 years! But I’m really looking forward to hearing some originals in the future, as an entire set of covers wore a bit thin on me after a while (despite the fact that they were all pretty choice ’60s garage nuggets that they were covering, I still like to hear what a band can do on their own). Looking forward to their next gig.

Damn, what a shitty fuckin’ day this turned out to be. One of my true rock’n'roll heroes is gone. According to news reports that just started surfacing this evening, Lux (lead singer of The Cramps for those of you living in a cave the past 30 years) died at 4:30 at a Glendale, Calif., hospital this morning from a pre-existing heart condition. He was 62 (not 52 or 60 as being reported on some sites). In my humble opinion, this is the biggest rock’n'roll loss since Link Wray and Bo Diddley (and that’s sayin’ something). I was trying to remember the first time I ever heard The Cramps, and I can’t. It’s just been too long ago. It was probably in high school, circa ‘83 or ‘84, and probably on KYMC. But I’m not sure. For all I know it could’ve been later on, in college. I remember the Bad Music for Bad People album being everywhere back then. I also remember falling absolutely head-over-heels in love with their trashy, primitive rock’n'roll sound. Some called it punk. Others called it psychobilly, but I just called it wild-ass primitive rock’n'roll. And their music turned me and so many others on to some of the true greats of the past, like The Trashmen, Link Wray, The Sonics, Andre Williams, Hasil Adkins, Randy Alvey, Johnny Burnette, The Novas, Kip Tyler, Ronnie Dawson, and so many others (check out the amazing “Songs The Cramps Taught Us” series for a good healthy sampling). I feel lucky to have gotten to see The Cramps three times (twice in St. Louis and once in Columbia, Mo.) and they were phenomenal each time. Lux embodied everything that I hold sacred in regard to garage/punk/rock’n'roll music: Humor, sex, sleaze, perversion, trash, fun, B-movies and the primitive big beat. I don’t think I have ever witnessed a better showman in my life. I’m working on the next episode of the Savage Kick podcast tonight, and you can bet there’ll be a short tribute paid to him on this episode (Ron Asheton, too), but in the meantime (the podcast will post on Friday), I wanted to share with y’all a couple of things that I thought you might like to see/hear. First up is Lux taking the mic and hosting a radio show from 1984 called the Purple Knif Show. Click here to download or hit the play button down below.

Second, this fantastic video of The Cramps playing live at the Napa State Mental Hospital, recorded with a black-and-white video camera and a single microphone on June 13, 1978. This is the entire video, by the way, which I found on Vimeo. Enjoy:

The Cramps Live at Napa State Mental Hospital….Nuff Said from Jim Napolitano on Vimeo.

This will go down as one of the best moments in TV… EVER! It’s my new favorite thing in the world.

Watch more imeem videos on AOL Video

Maybe *someday* this band will make their way to our fair city. In the meantime, enjoy the hell out of this video!

Thanks to Paul at Amoeba Music for sending that one in! More info here.

A Saint Louis-based band from the early ’80s, The Obvious was among the first bands to play the New Wave/Punk styles of the late ’70s in St. Louis, a city a little behind the times. Drums: Kevin Brueseke, lead guitar: Alex Mutrux, bass: Jim Saltsider, vocals: Tony Patti, synth: Sally Barnes.

This video comes courtesy of Lo-Fi Saint Louis. Bill Streeter wrote:

This is a video sent to me by Tony Patti. In 1981 he and his band, The Obvious, made this video (shot on Super 8mm film) on the banks of the Mississippi River in downtown St. Louis under the famous Eads Bridge. In it you can see many young St. Louis scenesters of the time, including Steve Pick and the famous (or some might say infamous) Beatle Bob. I really love this piece. Thanks, Tony, for submitting this one!

One of the really interesting things about this video is that it was made before the days of MTV, yet is interestingly enough done in true early ’80s MTV style. So in that respect, The Obvious was slightly ahead of the times.

For a lot more info on the early days of the St. Louis punk/new wave scene, please visit Tony Patti’s excellent St. Louis New Wave Nostalgia site.

I’ll admit I don’t get nearly the chance to check out new sounds as much as I used to, but every once in a while I’ll stumble on a band that really works its way into my craw, makes me shake my ass or glance up and say “woah.” This week’s such band is Wrong Crowd from Kansas City (yes, Kansas City!). Check out their Myspace page… “Haunted” is an instant classic and one that I have to get on my next podcast. From listening to their music it sounds to me like they come from the Black Lips school of sloppy, Germs-meets-Back From the Grave-style garage punk slop with slight psychedelic overtones, which isn’t a BAD thing, mind you. Hell, if the Black Lips can influence a bunch of new kids to start bands and follow in their footsteps then it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Hell of a lot better than a bunch more Korn or Kings of Leon wannabes, right? Now, according to the band, this isn’t necessarilly the case, that it’s because of articles and reviews in The Pitch. Well, I haven’t read The Pitch since I lived in Kansas City (we’re talking early ‘94 here, folks), but I can tell you that they sound A LOT like the Black Lips. Much moreso than any band that ever existed BEFORE the Black Lips, too. So is it a coincidence or are they doing this intentionally? Who knows! And furthermore, who really cares? It’s great, trashy rock’n'roll no matter how ya slice it, kids. I also recently found out that the band was formerly known as “The Black Tarantulas” which is a pretty cool name, and one I think I remember stumbling upon on Myspace once before (probably last year when I was investigating potential KC-area bands for the Blow-Me Showout. Not sure why they changed it (a quick Google search found two other bands with the same name), but, again, who cares! Enjoy the rock’n'roll.

By the way, for those in the KC area, they’ll be playing a show on November 18 with Pinche Gringo and Thee Fleshapoids (another KC band I’m really digging!) at a place called Club Moustache at 31st & McGee.

Wrong Crowd @ Davey’s Uptown in Kansas City from Jameson on Vimeo.

Saturday, October 18 at the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis:

Barack’s right. It was a spectacular sight. We were standing about 50 feet in front of the large American flag hanging off in the distance on the left, way up the hill there. Yes, we were very far from the stage, but thanks to the video screen and the great sound system they had set up, we could see and hear everything just fine.

People are saying the photos of the event were faked, and there weren’t actually 100,000 people there (actually, there were 90,000 on the Arch grounds and 10,000 outside along the peripheral). Well, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police issued reports on the size of the crowd as it gathered (just as they do for any large event that happens downtown); it wasn’t an Obama campaign press release or that “liberal media” trying to blow things out of proportion. The Secret Service estimated the crowd at 80,000. So no matter how you slice it, there were a helluva lot of people there. By the way, the city police are pretty adept at estimating crowd figures as they do this all the time at the annual Fair St. Louis, so I’d give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. By the way, McCain drew 3,000 at a similar rally in St. Charles on Monday… just sayin’!

And regarding the photos being “faked”… well, photos aside, you should also take into account the video that was shot, which also clearly shows that very same expanse of people… so I guess that was all faked, too? And every photo from every photographer/videographer at the event (and there were a LOT)? Please. Also, the Interstate highway (I-70) that some right-wing nutjobs are stomping and screaming about that was supposedly “photoshopped out” of those pictures? You know the one… I-70, that runs directly in between the Arch grounds and the Old Courthouse? C’mon. It wasn’t “photoshopped out,” people. Maybe if you actually were FROM St. Louis, you’d know where it is. Trust me, the highway is indeed there, alright, but it runs below ground level, and it’s actually on the other side of the peak of the hill that leads down to the Arch. No, I-70 does not go through a TUNNEL (which is why you can still see the highway with satellite photos), but via depressed lanes that just so happen to be open to the sky. So you can’t see the highway in the photos because it’s just hidden, that’s all.

I read on another site that “there just wasn’t anything else going on in St. Louis that day” to explain why so many people would come out for this, as opposed to, you know, going to Wal-Mart or a Cards baseball game or something. This person has obviously never been to the Saint Louis Zoo, Six Flags, Grant’s Farm, the Science Center, the Art Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden, or any number of other very popular (and ALWAYS very busy) public attractions on a weekend. They’re always packed, especially on Saturdays. And I’m sure they were just as packed this past Saturday. Plus, I think people also tend to forget that 2.8 million people live in the area, so an event drawing one hundred thousand people isn’t that unlikely. That’s only about 3.5% of the population.

Let’s face it, this was HUGE. Not only for the campaign, but for St. Louis. I take great pride in knowing that my hometown was host to the largest gathering for Obama in this campaign to date. I think it speaks volumes for St. Louis and the fact that we are a “blue island” in a “sea of red” (consider that, in 2004, John Kerry won St. Louis City by 62 points (that’s 81% of the vote) and St. Louis County by ten points. And don’t hold your breath, but Missouri, that old “red state,” may just go BLUE this time after all. We can HOPE, can’t we?

Let’s face it, John McCain is 72 years old. The life expectancy for white men in the U.S. is 75, and even less than that for veterans and even less than that for POWs (Dept. of Veterans Affairs tells us that the POW experience shortens veterans’ lives by seven years). Add to that the fact that McCain has had the most lethal form of skin cancer (malignant melanoma) four times. He also smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for most of his adult life but has now quit. McCain’s father died at 71 and his grandfather died at 61.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that there is a VERY good chance that he will die while in office if elected president. If that happens, can you honestly tell me you would feel comfortable having Sarah Palin be the leader of our country? A person who doesn’t believe the science of global warming? A person who wants to ban abortion even in cases of incest and rape and who opposes stem-cell research? A person who is in favor of banning “questionable” books from the public library and whose only political experience prior to being elected governor just two years ago was as mayor of a small town in the smallest state (population under 700,000) in the country? I don’t know about anyone else, but she actually scares me more than Dick Cheney, and THAT is saying something.

One more thing: Sarah Palin has opposed funding what she calls explicit sex-education programs in Alaska and supports abstinence-only programs, which urge teens to refrain from having sex until marriage. If she can’t even get her own daughter to follow this type of program, then how do you think it will fly with kids all across the country? More unwanted pregnancies, more unwed mothers, and lots more babies! Oh yeah, and once she reverses Roe vs. Wade with her one or two Supreme Court Judge nominations, more back-alley abortions. Wonderful.

All I’m asking you is to THINK about what you’re going to do on November 4 and register to vote if you haven’t yet. Keep in mind that only one in five people voted for George W. Bush in 2004… that’s because almost half of eligible voters (two out of five) STAYED HOME.