We’ve been trying to get Ellen Cook (AKA Ellen the Felon) to come do a session for a while and as you can see she finally relented to our requests. She’s one of the newer musicians that’s been making waves in St. Louis in the last year.

It took us awhile to finally decide to shoot this session on the lovely roof of City Museum with Mattronome‘s drum kit set up at the bottom of the giant slide there.

Here Ellen performs two songs, ‘Where the Heart is’ and ‘Oh Timmothy’ and you can keep up with her via her website here.

You might recognize the Paper Dolls keyboardist here as Jenn Malzone from our session with Tight Pants Syndrome. Well this is her other band, one of two other bands actually. So she keeps busy. She told me about the Paper Dolls at the TPS session so when we got a chance we booked this one too. They play three songs here ‘Sparks’, ‘I Was Too Obvious’ and ‘Trash & Suicide’ and you can listen and buy their album ‘Sparks’ here.

Some nice folks from Nebraska came through town last weekend, they’re traveling cross country making these videos of local bands. The videos are similar to the videos I’ve been making for my Lo-Fi Sessions project and their project is part of an effort to promote Nebraska music via a website called Hear Nebraska. This video was produced by Lovedrunk Studios. My son Travis can be seen at the beginning of this video performing duties with a clapboard. .Cassie Morgan can be found here.

Our intern Trent Hover went out and produced this piece on the anual celebration of record stores in St. Louis. We’re blessed for a city of our size to still have as many options as we do for buying vinyl or any kind of physical media. We visited Euclid Records, Vintage Vinyl and Apop Records for this piece but there are even more options than those in the St. Louis area. And remember you don’t have to wait for Record Store Day to go and check out your local record store. Music for this video: Stellar Day by the Phonocaptors.

Here is one of our favorite local acts trying out some new material at the Firebird last month. The Blind Eyes are due to have a new album out in June so we look forward to that. This video was entirely produced by our intern Trent Hover. We think he did a nice job. Let him know what you think of his work in the comments!

So a few months ago we got an email from a young musician named André with a link to some videos that he had posted on Youtube. Normally we ignore unsolicited contacts like this but there was something about this guys video that really made us take a second look–he had great energy and enthusiasm if not some musical chops. So we sent him a message to see if he was interested in doing a session for Lo-Fi Saint Louis.

After a bit of back and forth for a few months working out some scheduling bugs we finally got together on a really nice warm evening at City Museum. We were mistakenly under the impression that this was a solo act but André brought a four piece band with him–a project he calls Dear Genre. Since the weather was so nice we made our way up to the very top of the roof near the giant praying mantis sculpture.

This really is a first for us, bringing a relatively unknown and very new band in for a session, and that’s not a bad thing. We love to discover new talent when we can–which is not something that’s so easily done believe it or not. And if André keeps up his work ethic and enthusiasm he should have a bright career ahead of him. Dear Genre on Facebook and on MySpace.

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I caught this act at Stag Night last month at El Leñador on Cherokee St. I didn’t know anything about this band before this performance. It’s just random luck that I was able to capture this performance by two members of what is normally a four piece group. Loved them I hope they make it back to St. Louis. They’re from San Francisco and they just happened to be passing through on their way to the True False Film Festival in Columbia Missouri. Sour Mash Hug Band on MySpace.

For this session we returned to the Architecture Hall at City Museum with the power pop collective known as Tight Pants Syndrome who have been on my short list for a while for a session. And finally after several scheduling snafu’s we finally got it together to shoot this session.

If you are familiar with Tight Pants Syndrome you know that they make wonderfully slick poppy rock-n-roll that’s not quite sweet enough to fall into the bubble gum category but really fun and lively none the less. Their music has been featured in the soundtrack of A. (Anonymous) by Daniel Bowers and they have garnered several awards and accolades over the year for their delivery of tight pop hooks.

This was one of the quickest sessions we have shot yet, the band set up and started cranking out song after song we mostly had to just pick a moment and start recording. They perform acoustic versions of three original songs in this video: Calling Panther Lake, Your Buzz is Safe with Me Tonight, and Telephone. If you like these tracks be sure to check out their most recent release Fully Active (itunes link) or one of their earlier releases. Also thanks to our intern Trent Hover for doing the booking on this session.

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Kid Congo Powers has been doing this rock’n'roll thing for quite some time. He started out as the president of The Ramones Fan Club and eventually formed a band that was to become The Gun Club. That led to a stint as guitarist for The Cramps. The Pink Monkey Birds is his latest project and they’re touring like crazy. This is their second stop in St. Louis in the last year (the first being an impromptu show at CBGB’s last spring). This show at Off Broadway was a blast, we hope we captured a little of the fun on video for you.

Download this video here.

About four years ago we had a chance to interview the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Since then you probably have heard them on NPR’s Fresh Air, or from one of their return visits to St. Louis in the last four years. I was able to see them at B.B.’s Jazz Blues and Soups in mid 2007 which was only a about a year after they first met each other at the First Annual Black Banjo Festival. They’ve since gone on to make a nice career for themselves and to win a Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album this year. So I gotta say that this is a first in the history of this site, that we were one of the first to cover an act that has gone on to win a Grammy. So in honor of this we thought we would reprise the Carolina Chocolate Drops interview we did way back when in a slightly new format, and that is as a single episode instead of the episodic two parter we did originally and has always been available in the site archives since it was first published (I don’t know what we were thinking with two part thing to be honest). It’s about thirteen minutes long and it includes performances and interviews with CCD. Be sure to catch Rhiannon Giddens performance of Another Man Done Gone somewhere in the middle of this video … it’s just stunning.

One program note: Rhiannon was present in the interview but she was off camera nursing a cold and a sore throat so that’s why you only see Justin Robinson and Dom Flemmons in the interview. portion.

We’re a little late getting this one up. But it’s our favorite Philly band Mondo Topless performing at the Beat ‘N Soul fest from last fall. Great show, great band, good times ‘nuf said.

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Our good friends at Mad Art Gallery (our favorite art gallery in an 1930′s art deco Police Station) threw a huge party to celebrate 10 Years of being in business (see the video we made about the place a couple of years ago here). And because hosting wedding receptions have played a large part in keeping them in business they decided to throw a wedding themed party. Guests were encouraged to dress in their favorite wedding attire. It was certainly one of the best wedding bashes we’ve ever attended! Here’s to at least another 10 years! (we have video of this party coming soon too–stay tuned)

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If you didn’t already know about the Fleshtones you are in for a treat. This band was founded in the mid 1970′s by Keith Streng who was later joined by current member Peter Zaremba. The Fleshtones came up in the legendary NYC punk scene of that era. Unlike many of their contemporaries like the Cramps or the Ramones they never really acheived broad notoriety. But they have cultivated a loyal underground following none the less.

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I wasn’t expecting the Brothers Lazaroff to play jazz infused rock on this session, I thought they would play more of the alt country flavored stuff you’d hear on their MySpace page. They pushed some boundaries with their amps and electric bass, but it all came together and sounded fantastic gathered around the vintage Wulitzer Pipe Organ at City Museum.

These are songs you can hear on the Brothers Lazaroff’s new self released CD Give ‘Em What They Need. Which is available both online and in stores around town. Or you can come to their CD release party at Lola this Friday and buy a copy directly from the band themselves.

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Here are some photos from the night two of the Beat’n'Soul fest at Off Broadway last night. Unfortunately we weren’t able to attend night one. Videos to come within the next week or so …

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Enjoy the photos below this video I slapped together:

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Theodore is a band that I’ve been wanting to get for a session for a long time now. I had them in mind since the first batch I put together a couple of years ago. For some reason it never worked out.

This one was recorded later than most of the other sessions. We met at the museum around nine pm and we didn’t leave until after midnight. And in case you can’t tell, this video was recorded in City Museum’s Enchanted Caves. The first time we’ve shot there since the Irene Allen session.

Theodore is definately a ‘Lo-Fi’ band in the most literal sense. They rolled in with a bunch of toy instruments and some circuit bent gadgets. I’m not even sure they got to play them all. I’m not sure how much they even plan which instruments they’re going to play. I got the feeling from the short time we were together that they kind of thrive on playing right at the edge of chaos.

This video is long, over 15 minutes. I hope you can stay and watch the whole thing. I think it’s worth it. They play three songs here, Butcherbird and a combo of Daisies Never Tell/Death’s Head.

Also we have been getting a lot of questions about the sound on these sessions. For that all credit goes to Matt Giant for the great job he does on the sound. This particular video is exceptional in that regard.

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When we met Sleepy Kitty at City Museum last week we were surprised to find out that they had already sort of choreographed their Lo-Fi Session performance the day before when they scouted out the museum for locations. The choreography eventually required some modification due to the way we record audio but they’re still the first band that actually planned how they would perform their session.

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This is the first performance we’ve recorded on the roof of City Museum. Though this isn’t the first time we’ve shot anything on the roof. We did shoot Doc Pop performing Yo-Yo tricks there when the roof space was still under construction back in 2007. The roof is mostly complete now and it’s a marvel to behold, with fountains and a slide (of course –after all, this is City Museum) and a giant praying mantis sculpture atop a dome.

Beth Bombara is fairly new to the St. Louis music scene (she’s been here just three years) but has had some success making a name for herself.

She performs two songs here, You Don’t Know and Can’t Win here with her husband Kit on violin. You can catch her playing out fairly often around town playing with her full band. She just raised enough money on Kickstarter to press a full length vinyl record due out in November.

Here’s a little behind the scenes video we live streamed at the time of shooting on Justin.tv:

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I think it’s time to bring back the Lo-Fi Sessions, don’t you? The Blind Eyes have been kicking around St. Louis in one form or another for about five or six years now.

Well … that’s not exactly true.

The Blind Eyes are a distinctly different project from these three guys previous band The Gentleman Callers which shared the same members but played a distinctly different kind of music. The Gentleman callers were more of a 1960′s style garage band. The Blind Eyes follow a later tradition of music, starting out with heavy influence of the late 1970′s English Mod revival bands like the Jam but has matured into a sound of their own.

We spent a little time scoping out the museum to find an ideal spot to record this and somehow ended up inside the skeletal remains of one of the Lear jets that sit atop the Mad Max like jungle gym entitled MonstroCity. I managed to stream some of this exploration live to Justin.tv and later moved it over to YouTube for posterity and editing. I’m including it here for your enjoyment (or not as the case may be).

The songs here are “Pages” and “into the Breach.” Both songs are from their regular set but are the first time they’ve been played acoustically, since, normally The Blind Eyes are all electric.

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Last Friday Evil Prints opened up it’s doors to the public to see what kind of debauchery goes on in their large space above Vandeventer Ave. Beer, chili and cookies were served. Print making was demonstrated and prints were sold. Also showing (and selling work) was photographer in residenceBob Reuter who’s dark room and photo archives reside in the space. The space it’s self is a sight to behold. Huck’s trademark red dominates (of course). This is our first visit to the new studio. When we first interviewed Huck it was in his Washington Ave studio nearly 5 years ago. My how time flies.

Also, thanks so much to Left Arm for their awesome music. You can buy their Electric Babies EP from iTunes here or download their album from TIRC records (name your price).

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Here are some photos of the opening night of Sci-Fi Lounge and it’s new home, Artspace at Crestwood Court. We think it’s a great use of a dead mall space.

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Scion Garage Fest 2010 Trailer from Scion A/V on Vimeo.

UPDATE:

We have winners! Congratulations to Kevin Schneider and Jodie Whitworth who each won two pairs of tickets! You will get your tickets in the mail soon.

Wanna got to the Scion Garage Fest in Lawrence KS next month? Are you too much of a lazy bum to go pick up some FREE tickets for it? We’ll send some too your lazy ass for free!! Yes that’s right we have dug deep into our pockets and scrounged up enough cash to buy two pairs of FREE tickets to a FREE event! Aren’t we generous?

Seriously it might be a pain to get these tickets at this point so we’re giving some away. So go here and fill out this form (or click the poster art) (sorry contest is over) and we will pick two random people to each get one pair of tickets in the mail courtesy of LO-FI SAINT LOUIS. Do it fast because entries close on September 10th.

The band roster includes:

Fine print:

Winners will be chosen at random and notified by email. They will have 72 hours to claim their tickets. Tickets will then be mailed to the address provided for the winner. Tickets do not guarantee entry to the Scion Garage Fest.

We visited Coyote and his Sci-Fi Lounge back in 2007 in Lofistl Episode #139. We heard recently that he was moving the lounge to a new location; a dead suburban mall that is now being used as space for artists.

The mall is now known as Crestwood Court and artists can get space at low cost in the mall to peruse their endeavors. It seems a few independent galleries, theatre companies and dance studios have taken the mall up on their offer. See our photo gallery of the mall (t0 be posted here on Lo-Fi Saint Louis tomorrow) to see more views of this space.

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Ok so this site has been dead for a while. But it’s not been without good cause. Most of my free time over the past year has been spent working on a feature length documentary about brick in St. Louis. It’s a topic that might seem obvious to some and not so obvious to others, I won’t spend a lot of space explaining it here when I’ve already done so here and you can read what St. Louis Magazine wrote about it here. But we’re nearing completion of the film which should (hope!) be done sometime this fall. So I thought I would put the trailer up here to let you see it (in case you didn’t know what I have been doing.)

As far as this site goes, I have some great things planned for it to start very soon. But that’s another post. Until then enjoy this trailer for my new film Brick By Chance and Fortune.

Lo-Fi Saint Louis will be back in full force this fall but until then I thought I’d share this wonderful trailer for what promises to be an excellent documentary about Bob Reuter. Bob’s been featured here on Lo-fi Saint Louis several times (check the sidebar of this post) and I’m very pleased to see this project by Josh Rolens near completion. The movie should be complete by the fall. An eleven minute excerpt screened at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase last week.

Live music produced exclusively for us at City Museum. Three rules apply; one camera, no editing, and all sound is recorded live.

Thanks to Doormatt of the Rum Drum Ramblers for turning me on to Mississippi Gabe Carter. He’s actually from Chicago but he spent a few years in Mississippi studying the Bentonia style of Blues from Jimmy “Duck” Holmes and others. When he’s in Mississippi he’s known as Chicago Gabe Carter. He’s on the road quite a bit, so if you keep your ear to the ground you might catch him traveling through your town.

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Monte Beauchamp of Blab! Magazine explains the obscure German Christmas myth of the Krampus. This video features art by Gary Baseman and book collections of antique Krampus and Devil postcards curated and edited by Beauchamp and available from Fantagraphics Books.

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Those Darlins showed up and kicked ass even the night that King Khan and BBQ were also supposed to play but got hung up by getting arrested in Kentucky. But this post isn’t about that, this is about Those Darlins, here is how they describe themselves on their web site:

If you’ve followed me on any of the social media networks I participate in you’ve no doubt been aware that I am a big advocate of Pokey LaFarge. I’m not getting compensated for it, though it might seem like it. I just see him as this musician that is exceptionally talented and rare, who has a unique sound that’s willing to work hard to get somewhere in this world. He’s on almost a non-stop tour schedule now with his band, The South City Three. I won’t go into detail describing his sound you can hear it for yourself in the video, but I have gotten to know Pokey personally and I can tell you that his slight frame is packed with southern charm, the relentless drive of a wallstreet tycoon, the mischevious spirit of every class clown you’ve ever known, and, what seems like, one very old soul.

This video is a little different for me. I was driving home from an event this particular afternoon in August and I saw these guys with boxing gloves on the corner. I thought that I’d stop and talk to them to see what the story was. Turns out this was a coach and a couple of his young boxers out hitting up the cars at the intersection for loose change to raise money to go to a tournament in Kansas City. They were more than happy to talk to me and demonstrate their skills.

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Scott H. Biram playing at Off Broadway in St. Louis. Scott H. Biram is known as the dirty old one man band from Austin Texas. If you’ve never see him live you’re in for a treat. He plays a blend of country-fied broken blues and is a real crowd pleaser. He’s got a kick ass trucker web site you can check out to get more info about his music and where he’ll be appearing next.

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Program note:

Obviously this event has past but we’re leaving the video archive here so you may relive the experience.

Tomorrow TODAY, August 9, at 11:00 a.m. CST Tom Coghill and his crew will build the WORLD’S LARGEST BACON LETTUCE AND TOMATO SANDWICH! Live at the Tomato Fest presented by Iron Barley in St. Louis. Don’t miss this historic event when 500 pounds of magical bacon, 50 gallons of savory mayonnaise, lots of toasted bread, crispy lettuce and bushels of red ripe tomatoes come together in the form of one of the most delicious sandwiches known to modern man, presented in the most gigantic form ever seen.

Often compared to the Black Lips, Davila 666 finally made it to St. Louis with this amazing performance at Off Broadway last week. They hail from Puerto Rico and are on a national tour right now. Check their MySpace page for a tour schedule, and you can get their latest release in MP3, CD or vinyl(!) here or directly from In The Red Records. I want to send a big thanks to Eammon Azizi (video) and Shawn T. Bell (audio) for helping out with this one.

Download the MP4 (for iPhone, iPod or other players here)

This is the second installment of the Lost Tape Series. Shows that I shot in the past but were never posted because they were lost or forgotten or any number of other reasons. This episode features the whacky and energetic rock-a-billy band The Dempseys from Memphis.

The Dempseys in a Scene from Walk the Line (click for larger view)

The Dempseys recorded live at the Way Out Club in January of 2007. The Dempseys are a Rock-a-Billy band from Memphis Tennessee who appeared in the 2005 film Walk The Line as Elvis’s band the Blue Moon Boys.

Download the iPhone/iPod compatible version here.

The Phonocaptors playing their reunion show last month at Deluxe

Download podcast here or jump to the bottom of this post and listen by clicking the play button on the flash player.

This is something new for me and Lo-Fi Saint Louis, it’s an audio podcast. I have been wanting to do this for a while but never really got things together enough to try it until now. I’m not sure if this will be a regular thing or not. So if you like this and would like for me to do more please let me know in the comments.

This podcast is pretty much just an interview with a musician named Jason Hutto. If you don’t know who he his I hope you stick around and find out. The thumbnail version is that he’s one of the most talented guitarist and songwriter, you’ve probably never heard of. He’s played in at least a half a dozen bands in St. Louis in the last decade but is probably best known for his band the Phonocaptors which still has a loyal fan base even though the band officially broke up nearly 4 years ago. They recently played a one off reunion show at Deluxe in Maplewood Missouri to a packed house of old fans who sang along with every song.

Click to download Call It What You Want by The Phonocaptors

Click to download the Walkie Talkie USA 8 Song Demo

Now one more thing that I need to tell you before we get into the interview is that Jason has given me permission to give away, that means free folks, the Phonocaptors entire last album as well as the 8 song Demo for Jason’s followup project called Walkie Talkie USA. So that’s 18 tracks of great music for you to enjoy courtesy of Jason Hutto. And he said please share this stuff with your friends. These are zip files to make them a little more modular to download, and in each zip is a text file that says exactly how you can share this music. (It basically boils down to share with your friends but don’t resell it and don’t use it for commercial purposes without permission).

We talk about this music and more in this first audio podcast from Lo-Fi Saint Louis. Enjoy.

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Editiors note: This is a post by guest blogger, Doc (Scott) Lasser. Doc is the drummer for the band The 75′s and he and some friends traveled to Memphis last weekend to check out the Gories and Oblivians show at the HiTone. I asked him and Jason Potter of Left Arm (who also went) to blog about it for Lo-Fi Saint Louis. Honestly I wasn’t expecting something this long! but here it is! I almost feel like I should pay him for this. But I’m broke as a joke so I guess he’s shit out of luck.

I’m from Detroit, and have a great affinity for dirty, tired, old river towns. This probably explains why I took to St. Louis so easily, and why I like Memphis so much.

Downtown Memphis

This weekend myself (avid garage rock fan and drummer for The 75s), Jeff “Kopper” Kopp (of KDHX’s “Wayback Machine” fame), Jason Potter (the drummer for local garage punk band Left Arm), Ryan Snowden (aka Ryan Katastrophe, a garagepunk.com podcaster from West county), and our friend Tom Quistorff (a local artist) drove down to Memphis to catch the reunion show for two much-beloved, and pretty much defunct garage bands: The Oblivians and The Gories.

A week before this show, I kind of looked at it as a typical rock n’ roll summer road trip: a bunch of hard core music fans giving up their weekend by driving 300 miles in ungodly heat, scarfing down crappy fast food at every stop, cooling down at the club with cheap beer, and eventually crashing in some dive hotel at 2:00 am. And while, yeah, it was all that, by the end of the trip I realized it was much more. It really was a pilgrimage to the place where the garage revival explosion of the 1990′s really started, to see maybe the two bands responsible for it all. Without The Gories there may have not been an Oblivians, and without The Oblivians, I doubt if the world would have ever heard of The White Stripes, The Hives, all the bands on Goner Records, and Hell, even Goner Records itself. I’d also throw Missouri’s own Cripplers into that group.

The trip began on Saturday afternoon, with Jason Potter serving as captain/Memphis tour guide. Jason was kind enough to drive the entire trip, a job which he genuinely seemed to enjoy. (To be fair, if The 75s has a kick ass band van like Jason/Left Arm does, we’d probably never stop touring.) It was, like, 150 degrees outside as we made our way through Missouri and Arkansas, but in Jason’s cavernous mini van that has an A/C unit that works better than the one in my house, everything was cool, literally.

I made the team! (Hand Model: Jeff Kopp)

Once you hit Arkansas, you are officially in “the South”. And there is kind of no mistaking it. The Stuckey’s start popping up like weeds, and the side of the highways are littered with the remains of front and back tires. We stopped off at a gas station in Blytheville, AR, which wikipedia tells me was once the residence of actor George Hamilton (!). It was at this little stop in Arkansas that we found a hat for sale that proclaimed any potential wearer as a member of “Jesus’ All-Star Team”. This of course made me wonder if Jesus wins their Home Run Hitting Derby every year…

Memphis doesn't have an arch, but they do have a Pyramid.

A couple of hours later we hit Memphis, a town with a modest skyline, with a truly great landmark: a big glass pyramid. The Pyramid Arena was once home to the usually lowly NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies, who the city stole from the basketball hotbed of Vancouver, British Columbia. The team moved into a new arena, and the Pyramid now stands without a permanent tenant. If that had happened in St. Louis, someone would have turned in to a parking structure or a Walgreen’s.

Now, before I say this, I want to refer readers to the first paragraph of this blog. I’m from Detroit, and I love dirty, tired, old river towns. With that fresh in your minds, I want to throw this out there: Memphis could very well be the Detroit of the south. Memphis is dirty, gritty, and a little crazy. There is garbage everywhere, bars on the windows and doors of what seems to be every other house, and no one seems to mind that people are walking around with open beers everywhere. There are a lot of abandoned buildings and maybe even more businesses. As for the proverbial southern charm… I think Memphians are more likely to tell you to go fuck yourself than provide the lost tourist with concise directions to Graceland. In short, Memphis is just fucking REAL. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is: a dirty, tired, old river town with a bit of an attitude. And like Detroit and St. Louis, it has something that a lot of other big cities in America just don’t have. Memphis, ladies and gentlemen, has SOUL. Slow smoked, dry rubbed, fall-off-the-bone SOUL.

So it was against this backdrop that we rolled on into Memphis, and made our way to our hotel, The Artisan. What the Artisan lacked in finesse it made up for in flavor. It turns out that we would be sharing the hotel with a large convention of gay black men. What was that like? I’ll refer you to the picture that Jason Potter took of Ryan Katastrophe that’s included with this blog. Please direct your eyes to the background of that photo…

Dinner at the Bar-B-Q Shop.

We dumped our bags at the hotel, and made our way to find what came to be the unofficial second reason for this trip: barbecue. I’m a huge fan of Memphis BBQ, especially the dry rubbed stuff. Our plan was to head out to Payne’s, an iconic BBQ joint in Memphis, but they closed just after we made it into town. So, we went with Plan B and ate at The Bar-B-Q Shop. I had a chopped pork sandwich served on Texas toast, with a side of beans and some sweet tea to wash it down. After a 4 hour drive in the heat, it was close to heaven. Normally, I have an issue with a lot of the mustard-based sauces that seem to be a staple of southern BBQ; the pungent nature of mustard seems to overpower the smokiness that I think is the hallmark of really great BBQ sauces. But the sauce at Bar-B-Q Shop (which they call “Dancing Pigs”) was really subtle for being mustard-based, and still retained the bit of sweet and smokey flavor that I love. The pork was tender and juicy, and the crunchiness of Texas toast was a nice touch. The beans were sweet with hunks of pork mixed in. All in all, it was a pretty good representation of what Memphis BBQ is all about.

After dinner, we made our way to the club, The Hi-Tone Cafe. To put the place into perspective for St. Louisans, it’s like Off Broadway minus the balcony but with the vibe of the old Hi-Pointe. Now, The Oblivians (who are from Memphis) and The Gories played a show the night before ours, and we did read a few reviews of it online. The one thing everyone mentioned was how steamy the club was. That turned out to be the understatement of the century, which I’ll get to in a second.

Before too long, The Gories took the stage. This was really the treat of the night for me. The Gories are from Detroit, my hometown, and pretty much inspired every garage band to come out of Motown after them. Their stuff is raw, primal, and heavily rooted in the blues. I never got to see The Gories: I moved to California way before they formed, and never caught them in San Francisco. So this was a big deal for me. Mick Collins’ voice was shot, but he played his Strat like a mad man. Dan Kroha picked up the slack on the vocals, and the band did an instro number or two. Overall, I think their set was representative of their 6-year career. On a few songs, Collins and Kroha would pull away from the mic and let the crowd sing a line or two. The one thing that I had forgotten about the band was Peggy O’Neill’s drumming. She never really used a snare drum with The Gories, if ever. In place of a snare, she used a second floor tom. The cool thing about that is… The Gories are a trio with 2 guitars. The 2nd floor tom makes up for the lack of a bass and really adds to the primal nature of their sound. All of which was enhanced by the fact that The Hi-Tone has a great sound system with an engineer that knows what the Hell he is doing. All in all, The Gories turned in a great set, and it everything I had hoped for. And now that I think about it… What’s up with Detroit and minimalist, female garage rock drummers!?!

At this point, I should mention the, um, “weather conditions” inside the Hi-Tone. Everything was okay before the place started to fill up. But after The Gories’ set, which got people to jump up and down and heat the place up, the Hi-Tone effectively turned into a beer-soaked sauna. Seriously. I bet the humidity in the room was close to 90%. There is an A/C unit above the bar, and ceiling fans sporadically placed around the joint, but it didn’t seem help much. It will go down as the dirtiest, nastiest, and sweatiest show I have ever been to.

The Gories

And here is where the story turns a bit tragic. I planted myself under one of the ceiling fans in between the Gories’ and Oblivians’ sets. It was nice when the room cleared out a bit (there is a beer garden out back of the club, complete with an industrial-sized fan to cool the masses down). I managed to plant myself under one of the ceiling fans, and it did cool me down a little. But by the time The Oblivians took the stage, the Hi-Tone turned into a rice steamer again. I only managed to last 4 songs into their set. I was sweating faster than I could drink water to replace it, and my knees started to buckle a little. I fought my way through the crowd to the beer garden, and happily sat next to the giant fan. Ryan Katastrophe was there; he bailed out a song before I did. I wanted to go back in after I cooled down some, but Ryan, who had gone in to use the bathroom at one point, came back after only 6-7 minutes, dripping sweat. Once again, he only used the bathroom, which is in the very back of the club.

I had to console myself by thinking that I had least saw The Oblivians play four songs, which is four more than much of the world is going to see them play for a while. They were really great. Loud, bluesy, and soulful with a hometown crowd throwing beer on them, with love, of course. We all talked about this on the way back home, but so much of the stuff that we love as garage rock fans stems from The Oblivians, it’s hard to imagine what things would have been like without them. During their 5-year run, they were the best, and pretty much proved that they still are.

For the rest of the set, I sat outside and bullshitted with Ryan and some people who had driven 12 hours with 10 other people from Austin, TX in a van with only two seats and no A/C. Ryan and I waited for our friends, and when the show was over, we headed back to our hotel. The disaster area that the Hi-Tone had turned into was a little hard to describe. It looked like a gas station bathroom had exploded and they put out the fire with Pabst.

Finally, we made it back to The Artisan at around 3 am. We were all so beat that the throngs of black gay guys throwing down shots of peach schnapps and smoking weed on our floor didn’t bother us.

We woke up just in time for check out. We went to another southern staple, Waffle House, for breakfast. For added charm, we drove a mile or so into Mississippi to eat there. I had two buttermilk waffles and a side of diced, chunked, and covered hash browns. And a sweet tea. I mean, what ELSE are you going to drink in the south!?!

Goner Records, Memphis, TN

The one last thing we did in Memphis was visit Goner Records over on Young Avenue. Goner, in addition to being a label started by Eric Friedl of The Oblivians, is also a great independent, vinyl-centric record store. While we were waiting for Goner to open, Greg Cartwright of The Oblivians walked up, coffee in hand. After playing back-to-back shows inside of a Crock Pot, Cartwright looked every bit as haggard as you would expect. He commented that “next time I decide to put one of things together, it’s going to be in December…” Goner is a fun place to shop. They have a lot of old Sun and Stax 45s in stock, and a listening station with a turntable and headphones. I picked up a Gories CD and a Carbonas CD. Kopper, Jason, and Ryan bought a lot of vinyl. Ryan also bought a G.G. Allin bobblehead. Try finding one of those at Wal-Mart, kiddies!

And that was it. After we left Goner we hit the highway and headed home. I doubt that I’ll ever get the opportunity to see a show like that again, or ever take a trip like this one again. It’s kind of hard to roll up a convention of gay black men, great BBQ, a legendary garage rock show, and oppressive heat into one big travel package.

Fabulous.

This is the first of a series of shows that I’ve recorded but for some reason never got around to posting. Most are shows that I’ve forgotten I had and recently rediscovered.

This particular show is the Nevermores from the Show-Me Blowout from 2007. Actually, I did post a performance from the Nervermores from this show but it was as a backup band for Craig Moore of Gonn. So this is a performance of their own music. And speaking of Nevermores music they just released their first record, which is available from Trouble in Rivercity Records here (name your price!).

Got a chance to see this band from Columbia, Missouri, last week at Bob Reuter’s record release show. They put on a wild show. I’d link to their Myspace page or something but I’ll be dammned if I can find one. Never mind, I’m an idiot—I was spelling their name wrong, The Hooten HAllers’ Myspace page is here. Anyway, I hope you stick around for the whole video, I think it’s pretty good.