2007 RFT Music Showcase

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Subject(s):

Eric Hall, The Conformists

Big George Brock

http://www.cathead.biz/BigGeorge.html
When Big George Brock plays the blues, he's coming from two places: rural Mississippi (where he was born) and St. Louis (where he's spent much of his adult life). His music is a raucous collision between the electricity of urban blues and the more idiosyncratic sounds usually found only on front porches and in backwoods juke-joints. As one of the few remaining St. Louis bluesmen of his generation still active, Brock may be a treasure, but he's no museum piece: He can still sing, play harp and put on a show to rival the best in the business. (DCM)

Tom Hall

www.tomhallmusic.com
Tom Hall comes across as a quiet, laid-back kind of guy, both onstage and off, but his guitar playing speaks volumes. After a number of years spent playing electric lead guitar with several popular local blues acts, he began concentrating mostly on solo acoustic performances. His style has since evolved to incorporate blues, folk, country and more into an apparently seamless whole. Hall's guitar technique is impressive, but his musicality, taste and imagination are what really set him apart from the crowd. (DCM)
Riddle's Penultimate Café & Wine Bar, 9 p.m.

Marquise Knox

www.myspace.com/marquiseknox
When people see Marquise Knox perform, they can't help but notice that the singer, guitarist, and harmonica player is still in his teens. However, Knox isn't just good for his age; he's just plain good. Like many young musicians, he's still developing his instrumental and songwriting skills, but Knox's strong vocal abilities and precociously poised stage presence have already helped him make his mark after just a couple of years as an active participant in St. Louis' bustling blues scene. (DCM)
Brandt's, 11 p.m.

Casey Reid

www.myspace.com/caseyreid
Casey Reid is a young blues musician with a beautiful, guttural singing voice. His haunting, dirge-like moan sparkles with unique and lusty authority — even if he uses this gravelly groan to take on traditional blues topics such as love, loss and ladies. Though other musicians frequently back Reid, just his voice and his acoustic guitar are enough to carry songs. Why? His technique — he slaps and pulls the strings rather than strumming them — adds an extra layer of chugging, lazy lamentation to his gritty and intricate compositions. (JL)
Market in the Loop Outdoor Stage, 3 p.m.

Best DJ

Scotty Mac

www.soulsonica.com
DJs often seem to be competing with each other to see who can make the most seamless song transition, or who can throw down the most obscure, hard-to-find wax. But Scotty Mac needs none of this white-label pretense. He seems to be in the DJ game for one thing only: to make some booties bump. He plays "house" music, a danceable genre of electronica rooted in disco and jazz. He spins tenacious tracks featuring big-voiced divas and comfortably predictable beats that manage to keep the energy high and the clubbers shakin' it. (JL)
Pin-Up Bowl, 10 p.m.

DJ Foster

www.foster303.com
DJ Foster's list of professional accomplishments is steadily growing, including scoring the coveted opening spot for Green Velvet at Dante's a few months ago. As he nears ten years of experience playing hard Nine Inch Nails-style techno in front of huge crowds, DJ Foster has recently stepped up his game. His sets were always crowd-pleasing, but there's a new fluidity, a new smooth sexiness to his style. While thick beats drive most electronic music, he has found the ability (and agility) to both work the beats and lift them to a new tech-y, minimalist sound. (JL)
Pin-Up Bowl, 7 p.m.

Rob Lemon

www.myspace.com/roblemon
Rob Lemon is more than just a nocturnal club guy and hard-working scene promoter: He's also a phenomenal progressive-house DJ and producer (he's one-third of X-1). From the monthly parties he hosts at the Upstairs Lounge to running his nightlife Web site (www.velocitystlouis.com) to helping to create chart-toppers (X-1 's "Hypnosis" ranked on Beatport, an online source for electronic music), Rob Lemon is instrumental in keeping St. Louis bumpin'. And he's even won a prestigious RFT Best of St. Louis award! — Alison Sieloff
Pin-Up Bowl, 11 p.m.

Adrian Fox

Not only are St. Louisans fans of Mr. Adrian Fox, but so are the folks in Miami: This DJ represented our fair city at the Ultra Music Festival during the 2006 Winter Music Conference. His sets happily bounce from soaring vocal tracks to the booty-shakers everyone loves, and they perfectly suit any space, from the tiniest lounge to the largest outdoor party. Plus, this tatted fox likes to have a crazy good time — and isn't that all anyone can ask for in a DJ? (AS)

Flex Boogie

www.myspace.com/flexboogie
The ageless DJ Flex Boogie is the right guy to find if you are longing to spend the night grooving to a smooth, boogie-licious set. He's also the proper person to seek out to get down and dive into deep house — and look to him for the nü-breaks, too (or, well, practically everything else). He's just that good! When he's not spreading the love at Urban Lounge, the fab Flex gets to work putting up mixes on MySpace for your downloading pleasure. Plus, he's even been a volunteer-DJ at a Girl Scout fashion show — presh! (AS)
Pin-Up Bowl, 12 a.m.

Best Eclectic/ Uncategorizable

Ghost Ice

Anybody can make a racket. It takes a special set of ears to weave dissonance, clang and harshtronic into a cataclysmic stream of sound that unfolds with the meter and florid beauty of epic poetry, while still pinning your eyes to the back of your skull with brutal force. Ghost Ice cross-pollinates the woofer and the tweeter in just such a manner, giving rise to nocturnal gardens of radiation and shaking acres of tumultuous skree. Rather than stripping bare the bones of the earth and leaving leaden-hearted survivors, Ghost Ice's howls serve as tenebrous lattices for the souls of the haunted dead. On these scything branes of audial force, a new world is built, high above the detritus of the last epoch. Ghost Ice is the destroyer, architect, hero and recorder of this genesis, first and last in the new mythology. — Paul Friswold

Conformists

www.myspace.com/theconformists
In answer to your question: Yes, the Conformists' new album, Three Hundred, is the band doing its own version of a soundtrack for that half-naked Spartan grope-fest movie of the same name. Except instead of Persians, the enemy is complacency. And instead of Spartans, the Conformists have cast themselves as hunger artists. And instead of swinging swords, the Conformists are wielding questions: How much is want? How slow is too quiet? When is a guitar not a vainglorious assault on the senses, but rather an instrument for determining the calculus of desire? Somewhere in the thorny underbrush where intelligence, radical self-deception and foolish rock & roll rub thighs, the Conformists wage their ongoing war against...well, mostly themselves. But what a spectacle. (PF)

Eric Hall
www.myspace.com/ehallstl
Eric Hall describes himself as a producer, performer, improviser, DJ and installation artist. Unsurprisingly, elements of all these titles reveal themselves in his music. Using field recordings, percussive metals and various electronic devices, Hall coaxes ambient sheets of sound from various sources, and the results are both soothing and unnerving. His drones and tones mutate and overlap, creating dissonance and percussive patterns that linger for a while before flittering away. While Hall's been involved in many projects over the years (most notably the experimental music collective Grandpa's Ghost), his own recordings contain multitudes of styles, from ethereal arias to gritty dirges and everything in between. — Christian Schaeffer Halo Bar, 12:30 a.m.

Skarekrau Radio

www.skarekrauradio.bizland.com
This collective lands somewhere between a psych-rock house party and a religious cult, an imprecise balance that the band has cultivated for more than a decade. Celebrated for its skin-baring, anything-goes live shows and endless stream of boutique CD releases, Skarekrau Radio continues to redefine noise-rock and serve as a template of off-kilter creativity for this city's knob-twiddlers. This year's The One Eyed Swine Is Queen found Skarekrau Radio touching on twisted folk, ambient dub, two-chord punk and screeching minimalism, among other sounds. What comes next is anyone's guess. (CS)

Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship

www.myspace.com/superfunyeahyeahrocketship
Corey Goodman packs no shortage of energy, humor and weirdness into his one-man electro-spaz show. As the captain and sole crew member of Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship, Goodman has delighted (and confounded) crowds in senior-citizen centers and indie-rock clubs with his mix of jokey raps, cheesy drum-machine beats and rave-ready keyboards. With a manic, elastic voice and boundless energy and enthusiasm, Goodman has done the rare trick of turning shtick into substance. (CS)

Best Funk/Soul/R&B

Dogtown Allstars

www.myspace.com/dogtownallstars
To witness the Dogtown Allstars perform is to observe the power of the groove, that vital (if elusive) musical element. Luckily, the Allstars possess buckets of funky, high-stepping grooves, many of which are propelled by Nathan Hershey and his spitting, crackling organ. Adam Wilke's guitar figures favor a more jazz-oriented approach, while Andy Coco and Drew Weiss hold down the rhythm section with funky, bubbly grace. The Dogtown Allstars may not have invented the groove, but they carry it on expertly. (CS)
Delmar Restaurant & Lounge, 8 p.m.

Lamar Harris

www.myspace.com/lamarharris
Somewhere between smooth jazz, disco and the Star Wars cantina house band, the sound of Lamar Harris' trombone, trumpet and tuba funk is like nothing else in St. Louis — if not planet Earth. Manipulating all manners of electronic effects and hip-hop hip-beats, he makes horns speak in strange tongues, click and bleat like bent circuits, and yet somehow express the improvisational spirit of heroes like Miles Davis and Gil Scott-Heron. (RK)
Brandt's, 10 p.m.

Arvell Keithley

www.arvellmusic.com
If you're going to do the corporate cover-band thing, you might as well go all the way. Arvell Keithley isn't just a frontman — he's an industry. His bands frequent gala events and weddings, from Boeing to Busch, offering up note-perfect simulacra of the Four Tops; Earth, Wind and Fire; the Gap Band and Elvis Presley. A rousing master of ceremony, with a surprisingly supple voice, he's done more to get white people dancing than all the Jell-O shots and Jägermeister in St. Louis combined. (RK)

Kim Massie

www.kimmassie.com
Thrifty R&B fans are in luck every Tuesday and Thursday, when both Kim Massie regulars and curious weekday drinkers cram into Beale on Broadway for her bi-weekly residency. Walking into one of these nights is not unlike the blues-club scene in Adventures in Babysitting, where the uninitiated are moved to participate while simultaneously feeling overwhelmed by the talent and charisma on stage. Massie's sassy stage presence isn't even the best part. No, that's her thick, sonorous voice, which remains commanding through her own songs and blues standards alike. (JL)

Nite Owl

www.myspace.com/nitroowlious
Nite Owl lives up to his moniker in a few senses of the word. An early-morning RFT interview took place after he had worked all night at his "day job" as a resident counselor at a children's shelter — and as a musician he's seen around town almost constantly, performing his unique brand of soulful hip-hop to anyone who will listen. And people certainly are: Legendary New Jersey hip-hop label Select Records signed him to a record deal, while last year's Now You Can Boo Me has earned him some serious attention from the city's movers and shakers. — Annie Zaleski
Blueberry Hill's Elvis Room, 9 p.m.

Best Garage Band

The Gentleman Callers

www.myspace.com/thegentlemancallers
For a time these Nuggets-obsessed garage rockers seemed more like the Gentleman Stalkers. Two years ago, with the release of Don't Say What It Is, their slashed and slurred Kingsmen-esque sound was omnipresent on the south-side — and beyond — scene. Kevin Schneider sang with a boozy yelp and guitarist Mike Virag sprayed and scattered all the right and wrong notes, which went a long way toward rewriting the Brit Invasion formula. With the recent departure of drummer Matt Picker, the Gentleman Callers are giving their dance card a break. When they return to performing, they'll surely remain mod but not trendy, trashy but melodic, danceable and more than a little off-kilter. (RK)

Johnny O & the Jerks

www.myspace.com/johnnyoandthejerks
Johnny O & the Jerks are everything you could want in a young trashabilly band. They're dirty, adorable and chaotic, and they play sexed-up, unrestrained rockabilly music with the urgency of a punk band. While barely old enough to drink, these kids sure seem like they'd know a thing or two about getting down and dirty. Apart from their coltish appeal, the Jerks' contribution to the St. Louis scene can't be overestimated. Drummer Chris Baricevic has started his own successful record company (Big Muddy), and the band itself regularly contributes to both live shows and recordings by its friends and labelmates. Rock on, you dirty little Jerks. (JL)
Market in the Loop Outdoor Stage, 4 p.m.

The Nevermores

www.myspace.com/thenevermores
Finally, a garage-rock band with an Edgar Allen Poe fetish! The Nevermores (as in, "Quoth the raven...") write songs like "I Lost Lenore" and "Tell Tale Heart" and favor the color black, but their crunchy, sneering songs are more punk than poetry. Composed of former members of Tomorrow's Cavemen, the Fuzztones and Thee Lordly Serpents, this quartet cruises through fast-paced, fuzz-bombed tunes with a nod to the Sonics and the Pretty Things. (CS)

Long John Thomas & the Duffs

www.myspace.com/longjohnthomas
It sounds like Long John Thomas & the Duffs took the title of Chuck Berry's St. Louis to Liverpool to heart. This trio takes the mod/garage revival to its logical conclusion by playing Mersey-Beat-era songs and like-sounding originals with British accents and twangy, Duane Eddy-inspired guitars. This year's Presenting... found the Duffs completing the '60s mod circle by imitating British guitar groups — who were themselves imitating American R&B combos. (CS)

The Vultures

www.myspace.com/thevulturesmusic
Ryan, Ashley and Joey have moved from young, fresh-faced punkabilly upstarts to leaders of this city's garage-rock scene in the time in takes most bands to write their first album. Two years of constant gigging have turned the Vultures from an occasionally shambolic opening act into a tight, consistently thrilling headliner. The band's recent split seven-inch with labelmates Johnny O & the Jerks gives a taste of a new full-length that's in the works. (CS)
Market in the Loop Outdoor Stage, 2 p.m.

Best Hard Rock/Metal

Cross Examination

www.myspace.com/crossexamination
Like the old-school thrash bands of yore, Cross Examination takes strident stands on serious problems plaguing the scene. Take "Mortal Kombat," which addresses the mosh-pit martial artists whose freewheeling feet have turned hardcore shows into athletic-shoe gauntlets: "Careless ninjas in the place/That kick me right upside the face." Those karate kids can't keep up with Cross Examination's insanely fast riffs, basslines and backbeats, which are re-created live with startling accuracy. — Andrew Miller

Harkonin

www.myspace.com/harkonin
Now comes hate, and darkness, and the black marrow of Walpurgisnacht oozing thickly from the cracked bones of the damned. Now comes evil, and bile, and a scabrous invocation to the wickedness of human flesh. Now comes sacrilege, and blasphemy, and the infernal delights of Harkonin. "Heavy" as in loud, "heavy" as in massive, "heavy" as in Heavy. Fucking. Metal. Sharpen your horns, limber up your neck muscles, and prepare for war. (PF)

Head On Collision

www.myspace.com/headoncollisionmetal
Head On Collision isn't like other metal bands. For one thing, its members smile constantly. And though it still sports the Flying V and performs the requisite headbanging, Head On Collision is different (and so good) because of the tuuunes, dude. There's no joking when it comes to the music; it's dead serious when it comes to rocking you. Each member has a distinct job: Bassist Dave Carr bumps out a backbeat, guitarist John Hancock thrashes and guitarist/vocalist Pat McCauley wails — all on top of drummer Jason Brooks' brutally hard hits. They're authentic without being obnoxious — a rare quality in their genre. With the support of a new record label (Beer City Records), HOC are planning to hit the road even harder than the booze in 2008. (JL)

Shame Club

www.myspace.com/shameclub
Like a grizzly bear roaring awake from a winter's slumber, Shame Club has recently come out of hibernation for shows — perhaps because the quartet is on the verge of releasing its long-awaited next album, which it worked on with Carl Amburn (Riddle of Steel). As before, expect its tunes to resemble Led Zeppelin going on a road trip with Queens of the Stone Age to the California desert — controlled substances optional, but encouraged. (AZ)
Blueberry Hill's Duck Room, 6 p.m.

Spark Thugs

www.myspace.com/sparkthugs
Blending the foggy tones of doom metal with a propulsive space-truckin' pace, Spark Thugs provide a serious buzz for headbanging stoners and classic rockers alike. Tony Stone's roaring blues-infused baritone, strong enough to soar above his high-volume guitar leads, recalls Glenn Danzig, Jim Morrison and Ian Astbury. On the impending EP American Shogun, this power trio rides heavy grooves like a mythical hero corralling a minotaur, with strong, steady hands on the thrashing beast's reins. (AM)
Blueberry Hill's Duck Room, 9 p.m.

Best Hip-Hop DJ

Needles

www.myspace.com/djneedles
Look, anyone can download some Young Jeezy onto his MP3 player, hook up a couple of speakers and call himself a hip-hop DJ. Velveeta can also sit on a shelf and bear the label "cheese." But that nasty orange cube ain't the real deal, friend, and neither is DJ Look-Wutz-on-My-iPod. You want a hip-hop DJ who still hauls around the crates, who can barely move through his house without falling over vinyl, who plays out every week without fail. You want Needles. On Sunday nights, he rocks U. City hot-spot 609. On Wednesdays he hosts a new DJ night, Tableturnz, at Filter. And every Monday he holds it down along with his legendary DJ partner, G.Wiz, on KDHX (88.1 FM)'s The Remedy. The man is absolutely everywhere. If you haven't seen Needles spin, you're probably under house arrest. — Brooke Foster Blueberry Hill's Elvis Room, 8 p.m.

Trackstar

www.myspace.com/djtrackstar
DJ Trackstar is...a DJ. Yep, it's right there in the name. But here's the rest of it, the stuff that won't fit on CD covers and show flyers: Trackstar is a hip-hop scholar. He's a mentor to dozens of kids, an inspiration of the highest order. He's a savvy businessman and a tireless supporter of the STL scene. He drinks too much Red Bull. He has to drink that much Red Bull. How else could one person put out thirty mixtapes in less than four years? Trackstar's mixes juxtapose national heavy-hitters (Jay-Z, Ghostface Killah) with up-and-coming St. Louis talent. The brilliant emcee Lupe Fiasco — one of his hip-hop heroes — hosts his latest release, Boogie Bang 7. And you'll find Trackstar spinning in the Halo Bar every Friday night. He's a DJ, remember? (BF)
Pin-Up Bowl, 8 p.m.

DJ Crucial

www.myspace.com/ffiverecords
On a track from his album Noodle-Arm Whimsy, Chicago rapper Serengeti opines: "DJ Crucial's dope." The man speaks the truth. Crucial is dope. And inventive. And wildly talented. Proof can be found on last year's amazing Test Presses and Dub Plates, which starts out strong (the beyond-legendary DJ Premier does the intro) and never lets up. Of particular note is "Slum Lords," a collabo with the Committee that blows most other life-in-the-STL tracks out of the water. Check out Crucial's live skills at one of his many gigs (he's a regular at chic Loop spots, including Delmar Lounge and Modai). And when you see him, be sure to say congrats — he and his wife, the equally dope DJ Agile One, welcomed twin boys to the family in March. (BF)
Pin-Up Bowl, 9 p.m.

Charlie Chan Soprano