Rest in peace.

"Scott and I have known each other since second grade. We were in bands together in high school. Our first bands were in eighth grade, I think. We didn't do much more than play in the bedroom." - Jozef Becker, 1993

I first heard Scott Miller's band, Game Theory, the summer after my first year of college. Driving around the hometown from which I'd finally escaped the previous year, I heard a song that was half Let's Active, half Big Star. The chorus was huge and melodic; the lyrics were about turning 24 and still being insecure about your place in life. I was an instant convert. Later I bought Real Nighttime, the album from which "24" came. It was endlessly melodic, wide-eyed, a little arrogant. The combination of self-assured, huge power-pop hooks and insecure lyrics was irresistible. It is still my favorite Game Theory album decades later.

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R.I.P.

The Screamin' Mee Mees posted a status update via its Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon announcing the passing of Jon Ashline:

R.I.P Jon Ashline - The drumming, (most of the time) lead vocaling and sometimes guitaring half of the Screamin' Mee-Mees. A very sad day indeed. Drink an ice cold can of Busch or Stag beer, blast your Mee-Mees records and shed a tear for dear ole' Ashline.

Ashline was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in 2002; we have reached out to a few people that were close to him for more details and will update this post when we hear more.

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R.I.P.

KDHX's Super Fun Happy Hour was a long-running punk-centric radio show hosted by locals Tim Mize and Matt Meyers. In its fourteen years on the air, SFHH remained consistently entertaining and relevant, mixing local releases in with punk classics and rarities alike and oftentimes allowing for local punk bands to perform live on the air from within the studio. On February 28, 2011 the boys put the show to rest, citing the taxing nature of late-night radio and their desire to focus on their lives outside the studio as their reasoning. Senior RFT Music writer and KDHX programmer Roy Kasten conducted this interview with them upon their departure, which seemed to indicate that the hiatus was only to be temporary. "People like me and Matt, we can't sit still for too long," said Mize. "We need to be doing something. So we're just taking a break."

Last Saturday, August 18, Tim Mize suffered a massive stroke and passed away at the age of 45. According to family it was very swift and he did not suffer. Mize was an organ donor, whose kidneys, lungs and liver have already found new homes -- heroism in death should never go unnoticed. A memorial service is being planned; details can be found on this Tim Mize Memorial Facebook page.

In addition to the Super Fun Happy Hour, Mize contributed to the worldwide cause of punk rock in another way: In the late '80s, he fronted the much-loved local hardcore band Laffinstock. Click through for a download link to their demo. Also located below are downloadable KDHX live recordings of eight more St. Louis punk bands: Civic Progress, Sayonara, Dancing Feet March to War, Corbeta Corbata, Dumbledore's Army, God Fodder, The Beating, and Cardiac Arrest. All were recorded for Super Fun Happy Hour and all but the last on the list are no longer active.

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Carl Van Vechten

Gore Vidal in 1948, the year he published The City and the Pillar.

Gore Vidal was one of the world's strongest voices and greatest writers. He died last night at the age of 86 of complications from pneumonia.

Vidal had his most famous clash with establishment ideas when he published The City and the Pillar, which featured homosexuality in 1948, making it one of the first major American novels to do so. He was a playwright, a critic, journalist and even ran for office. He will be greatly missed.

The world today may be friendlier to LGBT ideas, but it is still way more fucked up than Vidal might have hoped when he published his first book in 1946. In honor of his legacy, we must never stop asking questions. Famously, Vidal said, "The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No first world country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity -- much less dissent."

To help you sort out your feelings, we suggest the perpetual weirdness of locals Skarekrauradio, who paid some kind of tribute to the author on a 2006 split with Columbia's Jerusalem and the Starbaskets on Apop Records (Apop 012, to be exact). The band likely would have disagreed with several specific tenants of Vidal's political viewpoint, namely his fiscal conservatism, but we have no doubt that they have a kindred disdain for complacency. Listen to "Lord of Gore Vidal" below.

See also:
Documentary sheds light on Skarekrauradio
The new Skarkrauradio album: Sexual poo worship and the death of Kuu.
Homespun: Skarekrauradio The One Eyed Swine Is Queen

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Sad news out of Wisconsin: Dennis Flemion, one half of the Milwaukee-based sibling duo the Frogs, disappeared over the weekend during a weekend family boating trip, and is currently presumed drowned. Of the growing population of rock & roll heaven, surely Flemion is one of the few members already equipped with his own wings, whether he needs them now or not.

It's safe to say that there has never been another band like the Frogs. Starting in 1980, Dennis and brother Jimmy Flemion recorded literally hundreds of cassettes containing ad-libbed "Made-Up Songs." These, more often than not, were extremely scatological and riotously funny. Sounding eerily like an even more debauched Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie, the Frogs couched these outrageous lyrics in pillows of acoustic guitar and fey vocals. Toward the end of the decade, the Flemions broke out of the cassette underground with a 1988 self-titled LP, but it was the next year's It's Only Right and Natural that really became the Frogs' statement. It was a song cycle mostly celebrating homosexuality at a time when that still made people nervous. Or wait: were the Flemions making fun of homosexuals? They sure weren't going to tell. At their concerts, they dressed in silver lame costumes complete with bat wings, and performed these songs in an absolutely deadpan manner. In this way, they made both the hipsters and the squares uncomfortable (while unconsciously anticipating the likes of Flight of The Conchords, who mined a similar absurdist approach with completely different subject matter).

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Cassie Kohler

Kerry and Tim Smith outside their music venue the Vault located in Farmington, Missouri

Bob Reuter's Alley Ghost, the Hooten Hollars and Rum Drum Ramblers rocked a full house Friday at the Vault. The crowd was an amalgamation of twenty-somethings to retirees to families. Children ran under legs. Everyone mixed between dancing up a sweat and savoring the performances with a theater like reverence from the seats. All the while, they sipped on Schlafly products and scarfed gourmet, locally raised hot dogs served with Billy Goat chips. Painted brick walls, open duct work and metal staircases enveloped the event with old factory charm. "We haven't been this packed in a long time," says local and house photographer, Steve Hull. Although the Vault's style seems right out of Saint Louis city, this 80 person venue, owned and operated by Tim and Kerry Smith, is actually nestled in the middle of Farmington, Missouri. Or it was. Friday's show was the Vault's last.

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There are plenty of musicians who died before getting definitive time in the musical spotlight. Tega -- a rapper who was affiliated with Nelly's St. Lunatics -- is sadly in that category, as he passed on while he was in the midst of climbing the musical ladder.

Tega -- whose real name was Oretga Devon Henderson -- was part of Da Camp, a rap group that often performed with Nelly and Murphy Lee. By 2009 the group had put out some mixtapes and was in the process of completing a full-length album.

But by the end of May of that year, Tega had died after succumbing to injuries sustained in a shooting.

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Founding member and one third of the Beastie Boys, Adam "MCA" Yauch died today after a three year battle with cancer. The hugely influential rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after a tumor was found on his salivary gland. The Beastie Boys have not played together live since the diagnosis, having to cancel several concerts and push back the release date on their most recent record, Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 2 on account of the illness.

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Levon Helm

There will never be enough praise that could be directed to Levon Helm. Notwithstanding his incalculable contribution to the Band's brilliant rock & roll ride, Helm's titanic craftsmanship and distictive voice provided a heartbeat to an untold amount of musical acts. Not only did he inspire others, he helped cultivate and nurture a earthy genre of rock music.

Helm's death on Thursday from throat cancer sparked emotional tributes -- and for good reason. Helm connected himself to countless music spheres: Touring with Bob Dylan, creating an immense catalog of influential songs with the Band and luring in younger fans with his Midnight Rambles.

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That high lonesome sound is resonating through the hollers today as Bluegrass music lovers and banjo enthusiasts alike are mourning the death of Earl Scruggs.

A musical innovator in the truest sense of the word, Scruggs died from natural causes at a Nashville area hospital. He was 88.

As a professional banjo player, Scruggs performed for audiences over seven decades. At 21, he was asked by bluegrass legend Bill Monroe to join the original incarnation of his band, the Blue Grass Boys. Scruggs employed a three finger banjo style - played with picks on his thumb, index and middle fingers - that the audiences of the Grand Ole Opry took a shine to immediately. The banjo licks that he developed are now standard fare for new players and his banjo instruction manual, Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo (1968), helped popularize the instrument and the bluegrass genre to a younger, more urban generation.

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