Soooooo….I love the Old 97’s.  I have seen them, at the Old High Point, at the Old Cicero's, at the Duck Room, the Pageant, Mississippi Nights, Bonnaroo, Off Broadway, the Old Rock House and more...likely many more.  It is just kind of something you do when they are in town...you go see them.  I think they remind me of my early 30’s.  I thinked I peaked then and I didn't even know I had a peak.

They came on May 24th to “The Ready Room” with The Heartless Bastards and BJ Barham of American Aquarium.  The Ready Room is on Manchester in The Grove and I want to love it.  I want to love it so much but, after several attempts to love it with several bands I love… it is a shit show.  It is just horrible.  It has, no ambience.  It has horrible sound quality and the sight lines and “space” are questionable in both planning and execution.  The only redeeming thing about the place is that they schedule quality acts (good booking) and they have a very professional bartending staff that can really rip out the drinks and the beers in a timely manner and this is no small deal.

I come here not to praise The Ready Room but to bury it.  You really cannot believe how bad it is until you go and hear a band you love.  I saw Lucero there last year and had the exact same impression but I forget (I am old).  You get there and there is no street presence or marquee on the place.  It is like walking up to an AAMCO or some body shop. It is a cool neighborhood.  Sanctuaria is right across the street.  They could help create environment but...they don't.

I mean...cmon.  AT least try.  You walk in and they basically have a card table set up where they take your ticket and give you your 21 and up wristband.  Then you enter the bar and the venue and room with the stage in it are on your left.  The floors are cement.  The walls are cinder block.  Bar area has a 30 foot cinder block wall which separates from the music room.  They say it can accommodate 750 but they probably do 500 comfortably. The ceiling is… warehouse ceiling.  There is no baffling or material to keep anything from getting lost or just bouncing around sound wise.  Additionally there is no place to go but outside to get away from the sound.  It is just a horrible venue with no personality and no one should pay there and no one should go see a show there because it disappoints in every way.  

Even their website is boring.

http://www.thereadyroom.com/about/

They doubled down on stupid at the Old 97s show.  It was a Tuesday night.  Doors at 7, show at 8 but 3 acts.  3 acts on a school night is the type of stupidity I formerly had to deal with at Off Broadway.  New management has made that place a pleasure to go see a show.  But they always had three acts and always started late.  So on a Tuesday night Barham goes off on time and I only caught the end of his set but he was great.  Good voice and deeply, DEEPLY troubling lyrics.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vp8BH8eR_A

His lyrics are what I cheerfully refer to as “gun in his mouth” type lyrics but a great, mournful voice and good guitar.  I will need to check out his band… but that is not the point.

He got done and The Heartless Bastards went on.  I have nothing against this band.  Cool name.  Two girls in the band.  One of them is lead singer.  Good band, good guitarist, good singer.  I don't know any of their names and I never will because I don't care.  They came out and played their set.  No eye contact.  No stories.  No relationship building with crowd.  Nothing about the band stands out or should stand out.  They are really talented and I don't care and they played a set like they don't care.  Eminently missable.  But they kept playing and they kept playing.  Way more than 45 minutes.  You cannot play that type of music and Americana songs and be shoe gazers. They played for two full beers and I know because I left the floor and went and stood back by the bar because they bored and annoyed me.  They remind me of a less interesting and less talented Continental Drifters.  By the time they got off and did the equipment change it was 10:30 before the Old 97s went on!  I am too old to have the headliner start at 10:30 on a Tuesday.  This is stupid.

But Rhett Miller and the boys came on and did what they always do.  They rocked it, sweated it and chatted it up in a sing along for all to see and participate in.  Rhett whipped his hair and although they started without the typical, “Hi y’all, we are the Old 97s from Dallas Texas”... they still brought it.  I have seen these guys play so many times and Rhett Miller play so many solo shows that I should be bored.  Other than the shitty sound at The Ready Room, the band plays its straight ahead, rollicking music which provide a plate for you to eat up Millers 2 ½ minute poems.  Just to get a feeling of what they look like and sound like...watch this.  Another great song.  Kind of a long intro but it is worth listening to as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7-L7QmTo3A

Everyone in the band is great but Rhett Miller with the lyrics, the boyish charm and the good looks drives every show along with Ken Bethea’s relentless guitar.  It is not pretty guitar but it attacks and he has been throwing his ass into it for so long that it is a beautiful thing to behold. I really cannot say enough that you need to go see these guys the next time they come but hopefully they will not come to The Ready Room, because it ain’t ready and never will be.

Sooooo...Music has been problematic for me of late.  I am no longer buying music but just renting it and this continues a long occurring trend of “disassociation” from information about the music.  It is a long way from the liner notes I grew up with when I could often find everything I wanted to know about the album.  Who played on all the tracks, where they were recorded, who produced, who wrote.  The lyrics often we all there as well as a “feel” that you were really understanding what the artist was presenting.  You were delving deeper.  It often provided factoids to pretentiously throw at your ever diminishing group of friends who tired of such “card tricks” but still.  I miss them.  CD’s provided the same information but in tiny impersonal print and when I started buying from iTunes the separation continued knowing less and less other than artist name and track name...finally arriving at streaming music where other people (or algorithms) curate play lists tailored specifically for the hundreds of thousands of similarly pretentious pieces of shit like myself who still like to listen to new music.

My brain had tired of the game, reading reviews etc… in order to go deeper.  I was becoming a grazer.  A little of this, a little of that…”oh that is pleasant”.  Awful.  But it happens.  It is just a lot of work to keep up and with digital ALL the music in the world other than Prince and Bob Seger is at your fingertips.  But no filter.  No trusted sources other than NPR, No Depression and Lefsetz and that ain't much.  Rolling Stone long ago became irrelevant.  If it was not a major label release Jann Wenner wasn't having his folks review.  But last year with Courtney Barnett and Wakahatchie I started to try and list again and as always when you listen, there is a LOT of good music out there and there is even some great music.  Although I have my own peculiar tastes I will posit the Band Car Seat Headrest and their latest “Teens of Denial” is great.

The Pitchfork review is worth a read but to give you an idea of the grandeur of the songwriting and the angst:

“Teens of Denial is guitar-driven music filled with book smart lyrics concerned largely with depression, which naturally means that Toledo has been championed in some circles as an “indie rock savior,” whatever that means.”

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21673-teens-of-denial/

I mean Pitchfork is too pretentious 90% of the time to gush.  How uncool is that?  But they nail this one.  Will Toledo is the driving force behind it and in this heroin age he writes of denial, dysfunction and a personal dystopia that the sick and the lame (me) need as we thrash around with out brilliant, depressing, mundane, fabulous, perfect, disastrous and disappointing days.

I don’t have the strength

(I don’t have the time)

I poured myself a drink

(I told myself a lie)

You know I’ve worried

(You know I’ve tried)

Don’t you know I’m not strong?

(Don’t you know I’m not kind?)

Someone’s getting lucky

(Someone’s calling the cops)

Someone take me away

(Someone make it all stop)

I had a bright tomorrow

(I spent it all today)

Now I am silent at last

Now I have nothing to say

If I’m being honest with myself

I haven’t been honest with myself

-Vincent

Now I have to be honest.  I love songwriters who reference Van Gogh.  I love clever word play and if you don't listen to lyrics than you cannot appreciate how brilliant this guy is.  I always figure when I hear something like this that I am catching a guy who is peaking and it is a brilliant feeling.  Most of them never become greats who crank out brilliant music for years.  Their personal psychosis and their talent allow them to deliver a shooting star and then they thrash around but god help me I love the rush of feeding on his brilliance.  

Every song has trite, clever chestnuts.  I remember reading someone talking about alcoholics anonymous and saying the hardest thing is to give yourself up to the cliches like “one day at a time” but equally hard was realizing that those cliches tend to encompass huge and Biblical truths. In his upbeat song “Fill In The Blank” Toledo explains….

I’m so sick of (fill in the blank)

Accomplish more, accomplish nothing

If I were split in two I would just take my fists

So I could beat up the rest of me

You have no right to be depressed

You haven’t tried hard enough to like it

Haven’t seen enough of this world yet

But it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts

Well stop your whining, try again

No one wants to cause you pain

They’re just trying to let some air in

But you hold your breath you hold your breath you hold it

Hold my breath I hold my breath I hold it

I could go on reading and quoting his lyrics all day but the bottom line is this a great lyricist who with his band sounds like the great Ray Davies of the Kinks.  That is a distinctive voice and I don't think I have ever heard anyone and thought…”Ray Davies”.  How cool is that.  The atonal thrash that I love so much is Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Junior cacophony of brilliance and sometimes veers to the brilliance of my fave Built to Spill.

Buy this.  Rent this. Stream this.  Dream this.  You need music and you need to be distracted and you need to be reminded that your pain is not suffered alone and that maybe your pain isn't pain at all.  Thank you will Toledo.  You can bleed for me anytime.

The Best Steak House: The Diner Review

Soooo...what is the best steak house in St. Louis?  Mortons? Ruth’s Chris?  Flemings? 801 Chophouse?  Prime 1000?  J. Gilberts?  Annie Gunns? Certainly they all have much to offer but for lunch?  For 20 Bucks for a steak, salad, potatoes and...TEXAS TOAST!  There is only one choice and it is the obvious choice.  The Best Steak House!

So there are those in my little silo that eschew meat consumption.  I have always insisted on eating meat at every meal.  The evidence is monumental and incontrovertable that this diet is not good for you and my gut is likely living proof but the science says avoid meat.  I politely disagree and am hitting and age where I can look and see that I would have missed a lot of good food and lot of pleasure and if that has been the cost for meat… well it has been a price worth paying.  But meat cannot be good for you.  It tastes too good.  Let’s not even discuss the ethics of consuming piece of one of God’s creatures. I generally agree with the Reverend Horton Heat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQynViAF6Ds

Midtown and Grand Center and the SLU campus have certainly been brought back by Father Biondi, the resurgent FOX, KWMU, KDHX, Channel Nine, Jazz St. Louis and for God’s sake Pappy’s and now Southern.  Many good things but there is only one place that has been doing the work at Midtown, day after day since 1964.  Three years after I was born!  One of the Kennedys (one of the better ones anyway) was still alive when they opened.  52 years! More!

http://www.beststeakstl.com

This place is awesome.  Their peak time according to Google (Google knows all) is 3:00 in the afternoon.  They are only open from 10-9 so you cannot count on them for late night elegant dining or really elegance of any kind but what you can find is a unique steak and chicken cafeteria experience.  There is normally street parking on Grand with a meter and if not there is surely parking within one block.

So…. You walk in and go through the line.  Normally when you are about 10 people away from the counter the man grilling the meet calls for your order.  Your choices are steak, chicken, hamburger and shrimp in several different forms.  I think I normally go for the 12 oz sirloin but they also offer rib eye.  I have never tried the burgers or the chicken or the shrimp but I think on my next trip that there is a steak and shrimp option.  The shrimp is of course as God intended...fried.

Each meal comes with a salad, baked potato and Texas toast.  They will fry some potatoes on the griddle for you and normally have a mess of them sitting on the counter and they will of course cut up onions in them and melt some cheese on them… because that is the way you like it.  But the baked potatoes look pretty good too.  The salad is a parsimonious affair of iceberg head lettuce with a tomato slice.  When you reach the counter you can chose Italian, Russian or 1000 Island dressing. By the time you have made it past the salad dressing your meat should be cooked and you check out.

Their drink selection is my only real complaint.  No brewed iced tea, only fountain drinks and fountain tea so bring your own or opt for bottle water because… fountain soda is really just carbonated cancer.  That might be editorializing a little.  I think the price is about 12 bucks so with a dew bucks in the tip jar it is a $15.00 dollar lunch and it looks like this.

Now this is not my wife’s idea of a food steakk.  I like the taste fat gives meat but don't enjoy a lot of gnawing so you need to put the steak knife to work.  Most of the regulars get their steaks well done but I cannot cotton to that and so go medium rare and the steak is nothing if not delightful.  A healthy dose of salt and pepper and it is a really nice break from your regular lunch.

The clientele are eclectic and delightful and generally pull me out of my bubble of Clayton professional people.  I always feel like I am the one who has never been there as the crowded place seems full of regulars.  There is an older man and woman who walk table to table clearing trays and picking up glasses.  You will need to set aside 45 minutes to an hour for the lunch but take a break from your usual affair and treat yourself to a quick steak served by nice people.  Fresh cooked food, pretty fast.  It is not Ruth’s Chris, or Morton's and for that I think midtown can be grateful. You also get change back for your $20.00 which will not get you a salad at any of those places mentioned.  Bring a friend!

Separation Between Beer and State

Soooooo… I am not on Facebook so you have to endure this.  We have a lot of people in our country who fetishize our constitution and our founding fathers like it was a holy book and like they were holy men.  That is of course a misguided reinvention of the brilliant men who started our country.  They were rebels, they were elite, they were poor, they were rich, they came from all walks of white,  male life but the one thing they were united on was the principal of the separation between beer and state.  But now we have... this.

You know I am not a Bud drinker but it is an iconic brand.  Not just and iconic American Brand but primarily that but… but…

This just makes me so very, very sad.  I know that no publicity is bad publicity but this is just a bastardization of a brand and the fact that it is accomplished by a Brazil/Belgium run operation makes it even cheaper and dumber.  Where does pandering like this stop? I don't see them changing the name of SKOL to BRAZIL!

 

Perhaps they pay 100 Million dollar licensing fee to “The Donald” so they can really grab the media until November with, “TRUMP” and replace “E PLURBUS UNUM” with “MAKE BEER GREAT AGAIN”. 

 

Maybe InBev has plans for Stella Artois to have a black, yellow and red label and rename the beer WALLOON for some period!

 

“E PLUBUS UNUM”?  Out of many, one.  WTF? What does it have to do with Beer?  Is it a comment on the times?

 

Maybe, maybe, this would be cute to release for a week on July 4^th each year. 

 

This label does so many offensive things all at once.

 

“Indivisible since 1776”.  Really.  Tell that to the South which would desperately love to rise again.

 

“From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters this land was made for you and me”.  Woody Guthrie would have a gun in his mouth if he knew his revolutionary response to “God Bless America” was being bastardized for the sake a “Merica” beer campaign.

 

“Liberty and Justice For All”… I cannot even begin to start my rant against putting this on a beer label.  Never have we been closer to ignoring the “For All” portion and changing it to “For the Few”.

 

It just seems so wrong.  We do have a great country.  Budweiser is an iconic beer but I am only voting for politicians in the future who support the separation between beer and state.  Well, at least they have not tried to wrap their beer in the flag.


Never mind.