St. Louis Music Blog

Things have been quiet in the Scat Records camp since the release of last year's Prisonshake album. But now comes word from label head Robert Griffin that a reissue of Bill Fox's Shelter from the Smoke is now available on CD and double LP.

In the '80s, the songwriter fronted dreamy Cleveland garage-poppers the Mice, a trio that would have sent the hearts of Elephant 6 fans aflutter had they been around a decade later. (Superchunk fans would also be wise to listen to 'em.) But Fox's stripped-back Smoke, which was originally released on now-defunct NYC label spinART Records, is described by Scat thusly:

Definitive reissue of Bill Fox's 1997 debut album. Comprised of home recordings from the previous several years, most of the songs are acoustically based and rife with personal atmosphere, and survey a complete spectrum between folk and pop. The songs are anchored by Bill's versatile voice, often in harmony with himself, as well as his high-level songcraft and deft though spare arrangements. There are also four dynamite electric tracks with Bill's short-lived early 90s group, The Radio Flyers. 23 songs in all - this edition compiles both previous releases of the album, which had varying tracklists, along with the beautiful 1995 Scat 45, "Bird of the World" b/w "I May Never Know." The CD jacket is a miniature tip-on gatefold with a matte finish, and was printed as a true duotone. The first-ever double vinyl pressing ($14) has a standard single-pocket design and matte finish, pressing at RTI, mastering by Golden, and includes a free mp3 download of the album. Design in both cases is spare and true to the original. No liner notes or glorification, the music speaks well enough for itself.

Grab it -- as well as a compilation album from the Mice -- right here.

Jon Gitchoff

The two Johns: Linnell (left) and Flansburgh. Slideshow here.

They Might Be Giants has been playing all of its beloved 1990 album Flood in select cities on its current tour. St. Louis - long one of the most popular markets for the band - had the honor of hearing one of these performances last night at the Pageant.

This special enticement likely contributed to the show selling out. Although TMBG swings through town annually, the full house tickled the bespectacled John Flansburgh, who proudly mentioned it several times from the stage. The feel-good times continued for the next two hours, as TMBG mixed hit after hit with new tunes from this year's educational kids album, Here Comes Science.

After the rocking new song "Meet the Elements" and chestnut "James K. Polk" -- introduced as coming from a pre-Flood EP, but later popular due to its appearance on 1996's Factory Showroom - the sing-alongs started: cue "Theme from Flood" and the ageless pogo-pop hit "Birdhouse In Your Soul." Although keyboardist/accordionist/vocalist John Linnell promised Flood in order, that didn't quite happen -- the twanging boot-stomp "Cowtown" and a raucous version of "Why Does the Sun Shine?" (I believe the version rerecorded for Science) cropped up, and the sequencing of Flood's songs was haphazard.

photos by Keegan Hamilton

Chris Ballew of PUSA

​No self-respecting St. Louis music fan went to see the Presidents of the United States of America at Taste of St. Louis last night. Between Sea Wolf, Michael Franti, the Big Muddy Records rooftop party, Darker My Love, and the Cardinals game there was a whole bevy of "better" things to do than to go see some one-hit wonder goof rock band from the '90s sing songs about peaches and insects and lumps.

Bullshit. The Presidents rock.

Perhaps, as a native of the Pacific Northwest who grew up listening to PUSA blow the roof off every venue between Portland and Bellingham, this reviewer is more than a little biased. But I'll be goddamned if there is a band on this green Earth that puts on a better rock and roll show than PUSA.

Yes, they are best known for one song that came out in 1995 and yes, their last album (yes, they still make new albums) wasn't very good. But this is a band that takes the high art of rock music, sees the silliness in it, and plays to the bone with windimill strummin', drum kit standin', finger-tappin', guitar-swingin joy.

Bryon Miller

Hot Cha Cha, in the flesh

​

Cicero's hosts a riotous bill of epic proportions tonight. First up are long-distance-locals the Natural Selection. If you missed our feature a few weeks ago -- or missed the band's show then -- here's your chance to catch the act's funk-da-fied dance party again. Also on the bill is Cleveland's own Hot Cha Cha. The band makes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs look like a coffeehouse acoustic act. Says D.X. Ferris in last week's paper:

The all-woman quartet's fuzzed-out guitars, can't-sit-still beats and Teutonic-angel vocals are accurately classifiable as ethereal indie-garage pop, melodic punk or raw-nerve alternative. Singer Jovana Batkovic says you check them out if you want to "cry, laugh or masturbate -- but mainly to actually see a live show and be entertained." The group's set is always a hot-and-bothered experience, and they throw in covers such as the Cure's "Boys Don't Cry."

MP3: Natural Selection, "Down Elevator"

MP3: Hot Cha Cha, "Ticket Away from Prague"

Although it's Tuesday, you wouldn't know it from tonight's hectic concert schedule. First, at Off Broadway, it's Josh Ritter -- although if you don't already have tickets, you might be out of luck. According to Off Broadway's Twitter, "a few [are] available at the door at 8PM. Otherwise--SOLD OUT." If you don't make it in, soothe your feelings with Roy Kasten's feature and the following MP3/video.

MP3: Josh Ritter, "To the Dogs or Whoever"

Langhorne Slim is also on the bill.

Now, if Ritter isn't your speed, Gil Mantera's Party Dream is at the Firebird. I'm not sure what else to say about these Cleveland electro-crazies, especially because D.X. Ferris described 'em best earlier this year. Snag a video here. El Ten Eleven is also performing.

Last, but not least, at the Pageant is the final '90s act in our four-day trip back to the grunge future...

Because it's Friday, and warm, and nobody wants to be at work and even my non-Ohio friends found this hysterical. Shades of Parry Gripp, no? Tip to Nick for finding it.

Last weekend when I was visiting my parents, I had the pleasure of taking a music-centric tour of Cleveland and some of its music landmarks. The timing was fortuitous, because the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are taking place this Saturday, April 4, in the lakefront city. Those getting the nod this year include Metallica, Run-DMC, Spooner Oldham, Wanda Jackson, Jeff Beck, Bobby Womack and Little Anthony and the Imperials. I also had the chance to preview the Bruce Springsteen exhibit now at the Rock Hall, and have a slideshow below. Check out both things!

SLIDESHOW OF THE BOSS

SLIDESHOW OF ROCK HALL/CLEVELAND STUFF

Artist: Cursive

Album: Mama, I'm Swollen

Label: Saddle Creek

Equation: Equation of an Elliptic Cylinder

Tonight's not only the grand re-opening of the Bluebird (as the Firebird), it's also the return of Gil Mantera's Party Dream, by far the hippest thing Cleveland has going for it. (I speak from experience.) D.X. Ferris previews the show right here, and talks about the act's new album Dreamscape, which you can download from here. Listen to a new track from it at donewaiting.com. (Tip of the hat to irockcleveland.com for pointing these links out.) I personally love the new album, despite a lack of guitars; it's super danceable and super electronic, like M83 with focus.

GPMD, "Bunz Therapy"

Now, because Rust Belt folks must stick together, GMPD is pals with Pittsburgh's Grand Buffet -- a duo which opened for Girl Talk here in January. And lo and behold, the same YouTube user who posted that GMPD vid happened to have a high-quality vid of Grand Buffet doing "Top Seacrets," which was by far the best song they performed at last month's Pageant show. You might recognize the backing song as being originally by one Mr. Don Henley. Brilliant. Video after the jump.

Prisonshake is making its first St. Louis appearance in over three years tonight at the Bluebird (Preview here, feature on the band here, gank MP3s here.) The blog I Rock Cleveland was at the band's show last weekend in (where else?) Cleveland and has a review and pictures. Go check it out.

-- Annie Zaleski

Opening tonight's Vampire Weekend show at the Pageant -- did everyone read our pro/con piece in the paper? You should! -- is White Williams. Currently, he's an electro whizz incorporating gothy new-wave, modern disco and '80s retro beats. But I once knew him as Joey Williams, a grade schooler who hung out with my little brother. You see, he and I grew up in the same small Cleveland suburb and went to the same high school. In fact, here's his freshman year in high school photo, courtesy of the 1998 Rocky River High School yearbook. Go Pirates!

-- Annie Zaleski

(Please give a warm A to Z welcome to Last Days of Man on Earth proprietor Joe Stumble, who graciously penned this blog post about the Columbus, Ohio, music scene to wrap up our Cleveland Rocks! week(ish). Visit his blog for tons of great posts about and MP3s of forgotten bands -- that you should really know about.)

Prisonshake. Hmmmm…noisy rock & roll. Cleveland. OHIO.

I went to school in Ohio. I up and moved there on my own when I was 23, and I lived out the remainder of my twenties in Columbus. I love Columbus and hated moving away. To this day I have a soft spot in my heart for that town. With that said, being from Columbus is very different from being from Cleveland. Cleveland is rust-belt. Columbus is corn-belt. Prisonshake is definitely a Cleveland band.

Yeah, you know Cleveland. Rock & roll history. Drew Carey. Annie Z.

But what do you know about Columbus?

COBRA VERDE

HQ: Cleveland, Ohio
Website: MySpace; website
The Story: Formed from the ashes of legendary '80s Cle rockers Death of Samantha (Doug Gillard, of this post, was guitarist in that band), Cobra Verde -- featuring DoS vocalist John Petkovic, Gillard and drummer Dave Swanson -- formed in 1992. Although Petkovic remains the last original member, the line-up changes haven't changed CV's timeless formula: swaggering rock & roll based around glam, punk and loose-limbed garage. 1999's Nightlife is a personal favorite.

MP3: Cobra Verde, "Montenegro"

MP3: Cobra Verde, "I Feel Love" (Donna Summer cover)

Scat releases: "Montenegro" from 1994's Viva La Muerte; "I Feel Love" from 2005's Copycat Killers, a covers disc.
What came next? The band's releasing a new album on Scat, Haven't Slept All Year, on October 28. You may have also heard them make Foreigner cool-cool (and not ironic-cool) on The O.C. ; the cover of "Waiting for a Girl Like You" on its MySpace is flawless.

Fifteen years in the making, Prisonshake releases Dirty Moons today! You can find the CD at your local record store and of course online at Scat Records' website HERE. The band will be celebrating its release (kinda) with a show at the Bluebird on Friday, September 26.

Here's an MP3 from the album:
MP3: Prisonshake, "Crush Me"

And for good measure...

Remember how earlier this week I mentioned Michael Stanley, who went to my high school and is still a pretty big deal in Cleveland? A reader tipped me off that apparently he's playing KHITS 96's annual Rock 'N' CholesteRoll show at Jefferson Barracks on Saturday, October 4. Also on the bill is Kansas, Pat and Danny Liston from Mama's Pride and the KHITS All-Star Band. All of the ticket/show info is HERE. That same reader tipped me off that Stanley was a KSHE staple back in the day, which aligns well with that station's Midwest sensibilities.

Also, can anyone tell me why the show is named Rock 'N' CholesteRoll? I can't find anything about it being a benefit, so I'm super curious.

-- Annie Zaleski

Ever wonder where I got my big hair from? No, it's not via genetics -- it's because of Cleveland's own hip-hop kings, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, who set the Billboard charts (and my sophomore English class) on fire with its 1996 hit, "Tha Crossroads." Dedicated to Eazy-E, the song spent several months atop the Hot 100 Singles chart. It also spawned many LOLZ in our high school, because our 1996 yearbook theme was "At a Crossroads" -- a theme chosen long before the song became a hit. Synch-ro-ni-city.

The five core members of Bone, as we called them in school, are the awesomely named Krayzie Bone, Layzie Bone, Wish Bone, Flesh-n-Bone and Bizzy Bone. The quintet is reportedly working on new music together -- its first recordings as a group in years, although in recent years it had a monster hit with "I Tried," a song featuring Akon.

In this week's paper, I interviewed Robert Griffin of Prisonshake, which is releasing its first album in fifteen years, Dirty Moons, this Tuesday, August 26. (Read my entire story HERE.) The album is coming out on Scat Records, a label Griffin has run for nearly twenty years.

Started when Prisonshake was still in Cleveland, Scat is probably best-known for releasing seminal albums from Dayton, Ohio's Guided By Voices, including Bee Thousand ("Hardcore UFOs," "I Am A Scientist"), Vampire on Titus, Propeller and Box, a collection of the first four albums. (GBV front man Robert Pollard, incidentally, will be at the Bluebird on Friday, October 10 with his new group, billed the Boston Spaceships.)

But Scat's back catalog has a wealth of seminal releases, rarities and obscurities you might not know about -- but yet are still worth exploring. In the next few blogposts, I'll point to some of the best -- most of which are available to buy HERE.

MIRRORS
HQ: Cleveland, Ohio
Website: MySpace
The Story: Thanks to Cleveland's proximity to the East Coast, it saw its fair share of influential acts before other cities -- namely the Velvet Underground, who played there constantly between 1968 and 1971. Enter Mirrors, who were peers of Electric Eels and Rocket from the Tombs (pre-Pere Ubu), two of the most influential proto-punk bands from Cleveland. (Comprehensive info here at the wonderful ClePunk page.) Mirrors was heavily influenced by the aesthetic and music of the Velvet Underground: laissez-faire vocals, primitive shambling guitars, lo-fi melodies.
MP3: Mirrors, "We'll See"

Year: 1975
Scat release: Found on Those Were Different Times: Cleveland 1972-1976, a collection of songs by the Electric Eels, Styrenes and Mirrors. Griffin says this is "currently out of print but still available on iTunes, eMusic," but promises a "new vinyl pressing of it next year, though as 2xLP (the original press was a triple 10")."
What happened next?: Vocalist Jamie Klimek and multi-instrumentalist Paul Marotta went on to play with psych-rock weirdos the Styrenes, whose lineup also included future Golden Palomino Anton Fier. (Scat also has Styrenes music.) Mirrors held a reunion in July 2008.

Via Tom, via vivaelbirdos.com. From The Ed Sullivan Show, Denny McLain (star Tigers pitcher) and Bob Gibson (star Cardinals pitcher) doing a bubbly, jazzy version of "The Girl from Ipanema." I really don't know what I did with my day before YouTube.

Judging from other posts this week, Trent Reznor was a busy man in the 1980s before forming Nine Inch Nails, whose show is tonight at the Scottrade Center. (This article is a pretty thorough timeline of the bands I didn't mention, btw.)

One other seminal band Reznor was in briefly is Lucky Pierre. The group -- whose MySpace profile features St. Louis' own Femme Fatality in its top friends, and the profile features a great song called "Clouds" -- is the brainchild of Kevin McMahon, who started recording demos as far back as 1974. Tapes and vinyl surfaced through 1984, and then the band was dormant until around 1988. Reznor was in the lineup of Lucky Pierre then, which released the seminal song "Communique." I hereby bow to the comprehensive, amazing site LuckyPrick.net for all information and chronology about McMahon and his various projects.

MTV's Kennedy interviewing Kevin McMahon and Reznor:

That video right there is of McMahon and Reznor being interviewed around the time McMahon formed the better-known Prick.

After Trent Reznor left the Exotic Birds, he started doing some demos of his own stuff, which eventually turned into the first music he released under the moniker Nine Inch Nails. He also started playing live, including dates opening for Skinny Puppy. In fact, footage has surfaced of NIN's first show. I'm pretty sure I have some pals in Cleveland who saw this, so I'm going to try to convince them to post here.

Clip of "Sanctified" from the band's first live show:

Cover of Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf":

That Soft Cell cover is only one of many songs Reznor has reimagined over the years. After the jump, some you know -- and might not know, along with the Holy Grail of NIN TV appearances.

The Exotic Birds were a Cleveland synthpop band which in hindsight was sort of a farm team for electronic musicians. The band, which formed in 1983, at various times featured Trent Reznor on keyboards, programming and backing vocals; Andy Kubiszewski -- later known for his work in Stabbing Westward and as a touring drummer for Crowded House and The The -- on guitars/vocals; and Chris Vrenna on drums. (The latter once played in NIN, records now as Tweaker and has played live with Marilyn Manson and Gnarls Barkley.)

The Exotic Birds opened for Culture Club and Eurythmics in Cleveland, although its biggest claim to fame is probably this: Reznor and fellow 'Bird Frank Vale were part of a fake band called "The Problems," which performed in the 1987 Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett(!) flick Light of Day, which was set in Cleveland. (Clip here.)

Local Cleveland news story on the Exotic Birds (also featuring an interview with Thomas Dolby), featuring Reznor and Andy Kubiszewski:

Trent Reznor grew up in Mercer, Pennsylvania, a town less than 100 miles away from (but slightly southeast of) Cleveland. While in college, he started playing keyboards and singing in a band called Option 30. Although he apparently wasn't part of the songwriting team within the band, a bunch of videos have surfaced of the group playing live. The footage mostly involves performances of cover songs, which are something Reznor would continue to favor throughout NIN's career.

Trent Reznor in Option 30, covering Billy Idol's "Eyes Without a Face"

Option 30 covering Joe Jackson's "Look Sharp"

Option 30, "Show Me What It's Like"

(Me, with my vintage WMMS T-shirt. 100.7 FM is Cleveland's legendary classic rock/new music station.)

I'm a firm believer that you can never truly know a person until you know from whence they come. And as everyone knows, I'm a Cleveland gal, loud and proud, born and raised. I have so much Ohio pride, in fact, that I still have my driver's license from there, and it's paining me to buck up and get a Missouri license in the coming weeks. (Hi, St. Louis cops! Don't pull me over!)

Like the pride many (including myself) have for St. Louis, my Cleveland pride stems a bit from the city's underdog status. Our sports teams are generally hard-luck, the embodiment of "always the bridesmaid, never the bride." Guaranteed, this time of year is when the city's thoughts turn to football -- the NFL's Browns and the Ohio State Buckeyes (the state's college football team), because the Indians have no shot at the playoffs. And like how everyone from out of town associates the Lou with Nelly and the Arch, the two things people know most about Cleveland is the Cuyahoga River catching on fire -- and seriously people, that was years ago -- and The Drew Carey Show, whose blue-collar characters really do align with the city's salt-of-the-earth sensibilities.

So, I'm dubbing this week on A to Z Cleveland Rocks! week, due to Wednesday's Nine Inch Nails show at the Scottrade Center (the band started in C-Town, after all) and my feature on Prisonshake on Thursday -- a St Louis band whose roots are in Cleveland. We'll have lots of anecdotes and insanity from Trent Reznor's days in the Rust Belt, along with lots of good music associated with Prisonshake and its label, Scat Records, and a special guest post or two talking about other good tunes associated with the town.

Because, after all, Cleveland Rocks!

-- Annie Zaleski