Keith Fujimoto

Ticket scalping has been an issue for major events ever since selling tickets began. From the venues to the bands all the way down to the fans, nobody likes scalpers. Make that, especially not the fans: Fast-fingered scalpers snatch up tickets en masse, leaving many fans disappointed and empty-handed.

Enter the growing trend of "paperless tickets," the practice that requires fans to supply the original purchaser's credit card and photo ID at a show's venue in order to gain admittance. Though "paperless tickets" have been adopted by some big-ticket vendors, ostensibly to combat scalpers, they have drawn criticism from some groups that feel the tickets limit the rights of legitimate ticket holders and fans.

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Photo by Seven Fields of Aphelion

Imagine my surprise when, last fall, at a late-night gig after Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, I discovered that the falsetto-voiced singer of a new favorite band, Black Moth Super Rainbow, was a male, not a female.

To be fair, Thomas Fec (who also goes by the moniker "Tobacco"), the band's brainchild, sings through a vocoder, which means half the time he doesn't even sound human. This gives BMSR a weirdly lo-fi psychedelic space vibe, which you'll be able to experience for yourself tonight at the Firebird.

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[Editor's note: Patti Smith reads from her poetry and performs a rock set at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (3750 Washington Boulevard; 314-535-4660 ) Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30.]

There's no simple way to describe Patti Smith, the profoundly influential, incantatory songstress, poet, artist and writer -- though she may be best known simply as the Godmother of Punk. Her groundbreaking album Horses, released in 1975, has been hailed as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. Born in Chicago, she was raised in South Jersey and in 1967 made her way to New York City, where she met the now-celebrated photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who at that time was a similarly struggling unknown. Their relationship and maturation as artists amid New York's downtown culture of the late '60s and '70s is chronicled in Smith's 2010 memoir, Just Kids, which won the National Book Award. An accomplished visual artist and poet, Smith has published several volumes of verse -- including the Blakean Auguries of Innocence in 2005 -- and exhibited her work at the Andy Warhol Museum among other venues. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2007) and received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from the Pratt Institute (Robert Mapplethorpe's alma mater) in 2010. She released her eleventh album, Banga, which features long-time friend and fellow punk pioneer Tom Verlaine as well as her two children, last June.

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It's pretty cool to watch someone that you know grow into a well-deserved position in the comedy and entertainment worlds.

Kirkwood native, podcast superstar, MTV talk-show host and generally nice person Nikki Glaser's half-hour comedy special airs this Friday on Comedy Central.

See Also:
- Kirkwood's Own Nikki Glaser Makes Late-Night MTV Premiere

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Nate Burrell

Kevin Buckley

Kevin Buckley really isn't so hard to pin down. He's a fiddler, a guitarist, an Irish folk musician, an old-time picker, a singer, a rock & roller, a producer and one of the least pretentious and most consistently crafty songwriters in St. Louis. He slips between the hard-to-master world of traditional folk and the hard-to-catch and harder-to-make-catchy world of indie pop. At the age of 33, he makes it all look and sound easy by virtue of his sterling talent and years and years of musical study.

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At the beginning of the year, some show announcements put a mysterious new local venue named The Mad Magician (5625 Manchester Avenue) on the RFT Music radar. A quick Google Maps street view search revealed that it replaces the former A-B's Place Bar (prior to that, it was M.P. O'Reilly's).

We contacted the listed contact, Archfront Media, and got in touch with its proprietor John Mancuso to get the scoop on the promotion company's new digs and long term goals.

See also:
-Remembering STLPunk.com: How to View the Site Today and Find Your Old Profile Page

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Brillz

Photo by Maria Jose Govea - The Supermaniak

Emerging from Los Angeles' deep talent pool of producers, Brillz (LA slang for brilliant) has been on a tear lately, with a number of releases. Originally a dancer, he transitioned to making music that everyone can dance to. We caught up with Brillz during a short break from the studio to discuss his choice of headwear, his Twitter scuffle with Azelia Banks and his latest album TWONK.

See Also:
-The Best St. Louis Electronic [EDM] Music Shows in April

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This St. Louis-based pre-war blues record featured Milton Sparks' "Grinder Blues" alongside songs by thirteen other notable artists.

All too often we read stories about aging, sometimes-forgotten music legends that slowly wallow away into obscurity. Highly influential music pioneers get left in the pits of financial hell when -- if there was any justice in the music business (spoiler alert: there truly isn't) -- these legends' estates would be obnoxiously loaded, and today's disposable pop stars would cease to earn a penny once their fifteen minutes passed. It seems like this sentiment rings particularly true with blues legends. Blame it on the racial divide that plagued their respective era, or blame it on their insistence to do things on their own terms, without playing by anyone else's rules.

See Also:
-The Story of Stagger Lee

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Bryan Sutter

Troubadour Dali is one of sixteen bands participating in Lo-Fi Cherokee this Saturday.

Considering the subject matter, it's unlikely that Bill Streeter will be screaming "Quiet on the set!" this weekend.

The St. Louis director, producer and cinematographer will mix music and mini-movies Saturday, April 13, for a second round of Lo-Fi Cherokee, a celebration of local talent on one of the city's most vibrant streets. From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Streeter and his crew will film musicians such as Troubadour Dali, the Hobosexuals and CaveofswordS as they perform in a variety of Cherokee Street locations throughout the day. An after-party with The Blind Eyes, Picture Day and Old Lights follows at 8 p.m. at Foam.

We caught up with Streeter to find out what goes into such an intense day of shooting.

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For more than 30 years, Bad Religion has carved out a niche as the thinking man's punk-rock band. When BR formed in Los Angeles in 1980, the inspiration for lyrics came from the topic of corporate greed and the conflicts between philosophy, science and religion. Bad Religion's sixteenth full-length album True North -- released in January of this year -- continues the band's lifelong exploration of these topics.

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