Soooo... LouFest. Many apologies for having taken so long to set it all out but it was in fact... a lot. When I attended the first LouFest two years ago I was hosting a friend who was having a minor melt down and we caught about 59% before he had to hop in the car and head back to another State to try and save his marriage to a witch. Last year I skipped altogether because I was not excited enough about the bands and because we found a way to be out of town. This year, when I was interested in the bands again I got excited again about what is becoming a pretty sweet St. Louis music tradition.
I know most of you have other distractions but the fact is I really like live music. Granted I have a (sad) weakness for things that twang but the general genre of indie rock is one I find somewhat pleasing and alluring and if they throw in a mournful cello... I am good to go. This years line up looked pretty alluring and several weeks before I jumped onto Spottify and started to listen to the newest stuff from bands I had heard of but were not familiar with their work. I was excited because there were some bands I had not heardf anything but buzz about:
Sleepy Kitty
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Cotton Mather
Girl Talk
Along with more than a smattering of bands that I had heard before and or (now anochronistically) had bought their CD’s.
Sun Volt
Dinosaur Jr.
Flaming Lips
Dawes
I mean, seriously, if you can see 8 bands that you have an interest in over a two day period for a total of 60 bucks... it is a no brainer. I had bought 4 tickets which were to be used at various times as follows:
Me Me Me Me
Son Jon Son Jon Son Jon Son Jon
Wife Sandy Ohio Friend Above Random STL Friend Sons friend Ben
Jon’s Fiance Lydia Ohio Friends New Girl Jon’s Fiance Lydia Jon’s Fiance Lydia
I naturally assumed that anyone in town would be pleased to spend a day or two in the park. The summer had cooled down. There was no rain. What could go wrong. Instead my wife elected to go to a bachelorette party for a niece in Chicago, to be replaced by Ohio friend who now was going to fly in from Dubai. Sadly (and predictably) he had VISA [prpblems and was ano show causing a general flailing around for the other two spots and a decision that Lydia and Jpn’s friend would just wade in when they wanted rather than make an event of it..
When the day came. Suddenly after the driest summer on record rain was predicted. And it came. I worked Saturday morning and grabbed a Protzels (tm) corned beef sandwich and headed over to Central Field at Forest Park. Central Field is massive. My guess would be about 5 city blocks. There are no trees (thus the field moniker) and it sits on a hill. In year one, I baked. One of the great things about LouFest is you park, in the park, withing about a quarter mile, for free. I found a shaded spot and grabbed my chair and headed up.
Theentrance as is typical had a place for people who biked in and a lot environmental stuff i walked by. I got my wrist band and walked in around 12:30 for a 1:00 start. I got my breaings and then walked around to look at the Merch and the food. It looked intruiguing. It was not an AB Centric environment. Schlaffly, while not having a hammer lock on beer sales had a nice presence and their were other beers too. Before we get to the music I can comment briefly on this.
Beers were 6 bucks a piece. Though not baseball, football, hockey or strip bar prices that is pricey for a 12 or 16oz beer. There were no cheap options. You could go 5 bucks for a 12oz can of Schlaffly. That did not seem like such an awesome deal, it is expecially difficult because they have not yet made the leap to let you use charge cards at the beer booths. This means that if you and your son want to have a few beers over tyhe day (or cokes) you need 50 bucks in cash or you will be dry. My other major bitch is that the people working the beer tent must have been volunteers. While that is cool, the line to get a beer was always 10-15 people deep AND the workers, rather than grinding it out did a lot of chatting it up. I appreciate that they are likely not compensated or are poorly compensated but lets train a little more and have them ready to serve... in a hurry vecause when i am paying 6 dollars cash for a beer and asked for a tip I think I deserve a little bit of speed. Then again, i am an asshole.
The foos was another mater. Three words: KOTA, Fish Tacos. Awesome. % bucks for two talapia tacos with KOTA Lime infused cilantro slaw. Awesome. There was other food. PM BBQ, Bar Louis (blech) and others. The food was all good and seemed reasonably priced but once again, cash is king. I had the KOTA Tacos, twice. And some beer.
The bands could not have been much better. Sleepy Kitty is simply a great local band. They moved down here from Chicago and make their home on Cherokee and are very vocal about the scene. http://sleepykittymusic.blogspot.com/ Printmaking is their gig when they are not playing music. http://sleepykittyarts.com/ The band is just the two of them and they are a kind of White Stripes in reverse with her playing guitar and him playing drums. They rock but she can really sing and play guitar and she uses a lot of effect, vocal and guitar to beef it up. They were my favorite band of the show and they kicked it off. I could not have been more pleased.
I wandered over to the blue stage to see King Tuff. They did not impress. I came back to the Orange Stage for Cotton Mather. These guys came on the scene in 1987, recorded an album and did not hit and then did not stay together. Really tight power pop and they of course were “big in Europe”. They are back together now and kind of debuted their comeback at LouFest and this Austin Band put on an awesome, tight show and are worth listening to. Beatlse-esque... but in a good way, with an edge. http://www.starapplekingdom.com/cm-news.html Back to the Blue Stage which i had already come to think of as the losers stage to hear Little Barrie. I didnt care and went back to eat some tacos. Back to the Orange Stage to see St. Louis own Sun Volt. Sun Volt (Jay Farrar) broke off ftom Uncle Tupelo and put out the brilliant album “Trace” and immediately establshed that farrar was the brilliant genius of Tupelo and Jeff tweedy was a sad little partner who started a sad little band Wilco. The rest is history as Wilco but out three of the best albums of the last 20 years and Sun Volt continued to make the same album year after year and never reached the perfection of “Trace”. Still, he puts together a great band. Brooklyns own mark Spencer comes in to play the guitars and slide and whatever else and other than being big does a good job and the band was tight and played well and... I walked away.
Back to the loser stage to hear Phantogram and then Back to the Orange to see Dinosaur Jr. Rarely has a Marshall stack of such pretense been assembled and J Mascis came out looking like the Dark Lord Saruman and played, well, he just played fucking LOUD and I was 10 feet away from it. It was deafening... and dumbing and even though i had seen him numerous times it was numbing. I was not ready for that kind of loudness and i really could not hear it. I was tired and left before Girl Talk. Everyone (younger than me) loves Girltalk. It is a mash up guy and evidently he put on a brilliant show. I am sorry i missed it but I am old, and tired.
NEXT....DAY 2!
