Hey, my latest podcast is up! Check it out (and please leave a comment).
Here’s the playlist:
Savage Kick #68
The Spiders – Furi Furi ‘66 (Let’s Go Spiders!/Big Beat)
Nobunny – Chuck Berry Holiday (Love Visions/Bubbledumb)
Link Wray and His Ray Men – Drag Race (White Lightning: Lost Cadence Sessions ‘58/Sundazed)
The Nevermores – I Lost Lenore (Nevereverafter/TIRC)
The Booby Traps – Bad Reaction (Makin’ it with the Booby Traps/Off the Hip)
The Long Strides – Do it Again (The Long Strides/Off the Hip)
The Spectors – Gotta Sow My Wild Oats (Beat Is Murder/Get Hip)
Vee Dee – Out of My Skin (Public Mental Health System/Criminal IQ)
Hypstrz – Riot on Sunset Strip (Live at the Longhorn/Bomp!)
Hypstrz – Shake (Live at the Longhorn/Bomp!)
Tree – No Good Woman (V/A: Pebbles Vol. 5/AIP)
Nick Hoffman – King of the Moon (Howlin’ for My Darlin’/Teenage Shutdown)
The Torquays – Stolen Moments (V/A: Garage Punk Unknowns Pt. 2/Crypt)
Le Face – Tylenol Killer (Isolation/Dead Beat)
Mac Blackout – Pocket for Everything (of the Functional Blackouts and Daily Void from Chicago)
The Mystery Girls – I Took the Poison (Incontinopia/In the Red)
The Guilty Hearts – Don’t Wanna Know (Pearls Before Swine/Voodoo Rhythm)
Bob Log III – My Shit Is Perfect (My Shit Is Perfect/Voodoo Rhythm)
The Hunches – Your Sick Blooms (Exit Dreams/In the Red)
Subsonics – Disintegrate (Follow Me Down/Get Hip)
The Spastics – Pleasure Party (Live!/Rip Off)
The No-Talents – Bad Story…Bad Movie (…Want Some More/Estrus)
Fuller Todd – Cuddle Up (V/A: King Rock’n'Roll/Ace)
The Remains – Hang on Sloopy (A Session With…/Sundazed)
Found these tracks by The Geargrinders recently on an old cassette tape and thought I’d share them with everyone. If I remember correctly, these were from the mid-’90s, and the band wasn’t all that happy with the way they turned out (a bit muddy). But I still think it’s great stuff, regardless of the muddy production. Enjoy!
Probably my biggest personal accomplishment of the past week was the creation of a new and improved Twitter account that I took it upon myself to create for our wonderful local community radio station, KDHX FM 88.1. If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, you may have noticed that KDHX already had a Twitter account, but it wasn’t really getting used to promote anything going on at the station, and in fact, had a grand total of three tweets, with none newer than April 27, 2008.
At the same time, I’d been following what is probably the most popular independent community radio station in the nation, WFMU from the New York City metro area. I’d been really impressed with the way in which they updated Twitter with all kinds of cool stuff going on at their station. WFMU’s Twitter account had over 2,000 followers and was getting updated several times each day, helping to promote the station to its fans all around the world at a time when Twitter appears to be growing by leaps and bounds. Genius!
“Damn,” I thought to myself, “it’d be nice if KDHX had something like that.” That was when the proverbial light bulb sputtered on over my head and I suddenly realized I could quite easily set something up for the station my own damn self that would do even more than what WFMU was doing for its fans, and that was to create an account that automatically updated everyone (sorry, “tweeted”) every time a new show was about to come on the air, plus include tweets from the KDHX blog. Any additional information could always be tweeted manually by myself or someone at the station (who I’ve yet to really talk to in great detail about this) anytime they had an announcement they’d like to make.
The way I went about doing this was to go and gather up all of the pertinent information about KDHX’s daily program schedule and create a new program calendar using Google Calendar. The reason I wanted to use Google Calendar was because it has a way of sending out reminder e-mails for every event, or, in this case, program. I would have these e-mails sent directly to my e-mail address in Gmail, and I would use a filter to have those e-mails automatically forwarded to a special “e-mail to Twitter” address that I got after signing up with a free service called TwitterMail. TwitterMail would then, in turn, automatically update the station’s new Twitter account a couple of minutes before the start of every program. After a bit of tweaking with the input fields and whatnot, I finally got it to work the way I wanted it. I discovered, for example, that the outgoing Google Calender reminders were limited to about 60 characters for the Subject field, which was the one that I wanted to contain the name of the show, the name of the host or DJ, and a quick link for people to tune in online. Some shows simply had too long of a show/host name combo to make that work, so a shortened direct link to KDHX’s website was used instead of the slightly longer direct link to the streaming audio (live.ram) file. The longer link file got truncated if it, along with the show/host names, extended beyond 60 characters, and that truncated link didn’t work at all, so I had to ensure that each show’s reminder didn’t have too many characters in the subject field, lest someone not be able to get a good link they could click on from the tweet. Make sense? Well, if not, don’t sweat it. The bottom line is I got it working pretty well and even those shows that are tweeted with the shortened “www.kdhx.org” link will still take people to the station’s website where there is a “Listen Live” link right there on the front page. Pretty easy to figure out. And so far I have to admit that it’s been working great and I’m even seeing people retweeting their favorite shows when they come on. It’s also great for me, personally, because now I am also reminded of when my favorite shows are about to come on, so I can quickly turn the station on to hear ‘em, something I wasn’t doing much of lately because most of the time I’d completely forget about them. So that was the main point of doing this, to help others such as myself get reminders via Twitter about KDHX’s programs. I think it’ll work great for the station and may even help expose it to some new listeners, not only locally but all over the world as well. So if you’re on Twitter, by all means, please follow KDHX! And while you’re at it, feel free to go ahead and follow me as well. Thanks.
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!!
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
I haven’t done the facial hair thing too many times in my life. In fact, going back to the late 1980s, 99% of the time the only facial hair I’ve had has been sideburns (which I’ve not shaved off once in 20+ years). I’ve tried the “goatee” (or actually, the “circle beard”) thing a few times over the last 20 years, but it never lasted long. Maybe a few months at the most. I remember the first time I grew a circle beard… I was working at CompUSA in Kansas City, and a girl I worked with there told me I looked like Satan. I thought that was pretty rad, but I shaved it off anyway. Then about a year ago I grew a beard but shaved it off after only a little more than a month (I was trying to do the March Mustache Madness thing but failed miserably).
So this year, I thought I’d give it another go, and I was determined to not give in and shave it all off. I stopped shaving the second week of November and by Thanksgiving I had a pretty good, short beard going. By Christmas it had filled in even better. Then, in mid-January, I got a bit tired of the full beard look (and feel) and started thinking about how I wanted to trim it, but still retain some sort of beard. Watching a video on YouTube of my old TV horror host hero Ghoulardi (played by Ernie Anderson) was all I needed. That was it! A Van Dyck (also spelled “Van Dyke”)! Before I get into that, I want to try and clear the air on some common mistakes when it comes to beards. The following is a goatee:
Goatee
When you have a goatee that is connected to a mustache, it’s actually a “circle beard.” Some will even call this style a Van Dyck, but most beard experts will tell you that a true Van Dyck features a goatee that is disconnected from the mustache. Once they’re connected, it’s a circle beard (since it forms a circle around the mouth). A Van Dyck, then, is basically a goatee with a mustache. Got it? So now that we know what a Van Dyck is, let’s look at a few famous ones throughout history:
Buffalo Bill Cody and Sir Anthony Van Dyck
By the way, Anthony Van Dyck, a 17th-century Flemish painter (pictured above), is credited with popularizing this style of beard way back in the 17th century. Hence the name.
My inspiration:
Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
Some more famous Van Dycks:
Colonel Sanders and Viggo Mortensen
Heath Ledger
Johnny Depp
So, yeah, you probably see Van Dycks around more often than you realize, but definitely not as often as the goatee or circle beard. In fact, I was surprised to see a couple of my Facebook friends sporting Van Dycks recently:
Dave and Larry
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for (drum roll, please)… a couple shots of me with my new Van Dyck:
Kopper's Van Dyck (Feb. 2009)
By the way, speaking of the Mustache Madness thing, it’s happening again this year, and I do hope to make it to the party at The Royale on Saturday, April 4. You should, too. RSVP here.
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!
The Flat Duo Jets – Live at Cicero’s Basement Bar, St. Louis, MO (11/12/95)
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!
Since I’m on kind of an ice hockey kick, I thought I’d share with you what is probably my personal favorite hockey fight of all-time, courtesy of the St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings, if nothing else because of the fight between the two goalies (including my favorite Blues goalie ever, Curtis Joseph). Definitely not as ugly as the previously posted Blues/Blackhawks “St. Patrick’s Day Massacre” brawl, but fun nonetheless. This one is from January 23, 1992 (yep, I was still living in Kansas at the time… dammit).
Thanks.
I haven’t done the facial hair thing too many times in my life. In fact, going back to the late 1980s, 99% of the time the only facial hair I’ve had has been sideburns (which I’ve not shaved off once in 20+ years). I’ve tried the “goatee” (or actually, the “circle beard”) thing a few times over the last 20 years, but it never lasted long. Maybe a few months at the most. I remember the first time I grew a circle beard… I was working at CompUSA in Kansas City, and a girl I worked with there told me I looked like 
