Blogs

Here's a YouTube clip of Alejandro Escovedo headlining Twangfest last week at the Pageant. Escovedo prefaces the song "Sensitive Boys" with a recollection of a wild night (or two) he spent playing the old Cicero's club back when he was with the band The True Believers.

www.zazzle.com

It's a concert ten years in the making: Nelly is headlining a show at the Pageant on Sunday. 

photos by Keegan Hamilton

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Bonnie "Prince" Billy. I'd never seen him perform before and the eccentric singer/songwriter/actor formally known as Will Oldham has such a deep and diverse catalogue that I had readied myself for nearly anything, including, I feared, solemn, solo renditions of every song from his somewhat disappointing new album Beware.

Instead, Oldham brought a tight four-piece band to back him up and the support, particularly from foxy fiddle player Cheyenne Mize, coupled with the singer's playful stage persona made for a thoroughly entertaining and impressive performance.

Clad in white from head to toe with his Yosemite Sam beard freshly shorn into a thick horseshoe mustache and soul patch, Oldham whooped and stomped like he was performing at a crowded hoe-down in a barn in his native Kentucky.

A man with a reputation for excess, Oldham joked about his giddy demeanor and all-white outfit between songs.

"Cocaine makes a guy feel so young," he said, waving his arms over his head. "I swear man, after seven and a half days without sleeping, cocaine says 'Dress like me!' And I'm like 'Okay, anything you say man.'"

http://media.phoenixnewtimes.com

There aren't enough beefs in hip-hop anymore. I seriously miss the golden era-- back in the days of East Coast/West Coast feuding and Pac/Biggie rivalry-- when there was a new beef starting up damn near every week. Not only did that era inspire the best diss track of all-time, Tupac's "Hit 'Em Up," it was a real-life soap opera turned tragedy that gave people something to talk about.

photo by Jennifer Silverberg

Fresh off a pair of performances last week at SXSW, Gotta Be Karim stopped by RFT headquarters earlier this week to pimp his new mixtape and offer on update on what he's been up to since he left STL for ATL a few months back.

            

When it comes to songs about butts, there's a rich musical tradition. If you've been to a St. Louis nightclub lately, you've probably heard the latest candidate vying for a spot in the pantheon of ass anthems: "Donk Dat Booty" by Yung Ro. 

Today, the brainy pundits at Slate tackled this interesting topic: "How will Obama's presidency change hip-hop?"

There is something inherently radical about hip-hop, period, a genre in which the historically voiceless command the microphone and, from the repurposed DJ equipment of hip-hop's South Bronx infancy to the artist-owned labels of today, the means of production. Obama's rise might weaken the position of those less explicitly political MCs, for instance, who rap about the allure of the drug trade in neighborhoods low on viable careers, or those whose gangsta tales make an implicit point about the conditions that create gangstas in the first place. Even an unabashedly crass commercialist like 50 Cent casts his boasts of alpha-male domination as a socioeconomic symptom: "Some say I'm gangsta, some say I'm crazy--if you ask me, I say I'm what the 'hood made me." Going forward, there may be less patience for this line of thinking. Our president overcame the disadvantages of growing up black and fatherless--what's your excuse?

So how have St. Louis' rappers responded to having a hip-hop president?

So imagine the scenario: You're sitting around a Lawrence, Kansas coffee shop, blissfully unaware that you're due to play across Missouri on KDHX that very moment. Such was Titus Andronicus' dilemma earlier Wednesday afternoon.

It's to Titus Andronicus' credit that they not only made it to KDHX (eventually) and the Gargoyle within a reasonable time, but they apologized profusely onstage and attempted to make up for it with a ripping cover of the Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird." Somewhere, the Cramps' sadly-departed frontman Lux Interior (who made "Surfin' Bird" a cornerstone of their catalog) is smiling.

The rest of their set wasn't bad either: Titus Andronicus live is a sloppy but riveting spectacle in a manner rarely seen since the glory days of Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control. This New Jersey band take what are essentially conventional rock and blues structures, trashes and deconstructs them, and places Patrick Stickles' deranged screaming (which, live at least, resembled a hoarse cross between David Yow and Jon Spencer).

Audibly losing his voice after a few songs, one wonders how Stickles manages an entire tour of such antics. They seemed genuinely glad to be in St. Louis, which they called "familiar territory," having played the Gargoyle last year with No Age. Come back soon, folks.