Email Author Jason Toon

2009 Stories by Jason Toon

• 

  COVER STORY

  The Best of 2009 in Music

  published December 16, 2009

  I gave the RFT's freelancers very simple guidelines when assigning the following year-in-music pieces: In 300 words, tell readers what... More >>

• Like Jell-O on Springs

  published December 16, 2009

  Jack Lemmon shredding on standup bass. A gangland massacre in a garage. Jack Lemmon in a flapper dress. Tony Curtis in a flapper dress. Marilyn... More >>

• Tommy Ramone explores bluegrass and honky-tonk with Uncle Monk, while we catch up with all things Ludo

  published October 21, 2009

  Bluegrass Bop A Ramone playing bluegrass and old-time string-band music? If it sounds like a joke, stop laughing. Original drummer... More >>

• An Electrifying Weekend

  published October 14, 2009

  O mute, inscrutable Giant Silver Ball! How many smudgy hands have lain upon your crackling surface? How many trembling hairs have you stood on... More >>

• Stay Clean

  published August 19, 2009

  If anybody knows the power of a well-placed naughty word, it's Dick Gregory. This is a guy who titled his 1964 autobiography Nigger. But... More >>

• B-Sides puts Green Day's consciousness-raising music in context with other artists'

  published August 5, 2009

  Sometimes simply being fun isn't enough to keep a pop act interested. Take Green Day. The band shocked its own career back to life in 2004 with... More >>

• Renaissance man Eugene Chadbourne brings a rake — and outspoken politics — to St. Louis

  published June 3, 2009

  Unlike his more dour peers, Eugene Chadbourne is an avant-garde icon for the rest of us. In more than 30 years of performing, the... More >>

• Dillinger Four

  published June 3, 2009

  The Chinese Democracy of the punk scene, Dillinger Four's 2008 album, Civil War, emerged after six years of delays,... More >>

• Morrissey and Agnostic Front go toe-to-toe

  published April 1, 2009

  As luck would have it, both beloved bedsit bard Morrissey and New York hardcore mooks Agnostic Front will be in town Wednesday, April 8. Alas,... More >>

• Masshysteri

  published March 25, 2009

  Don't be fooled by all those taxpayer-funded sex-change operations: Beneath Sweden's placid exterior, its heart still thumps to a Viking beat.... More >>

• From Downtown!

  published March 4, 2009

  With the NCAA dumping cold water (not, alas, Gatorade) on St. Louis' hopes of hosting the Final Four, local hoopheads will make do with the... More >>

• Marah

  published February 18, 2009

  When Marah elbowed its way out of Philadelphia in 1998, the band's melodramatic cobblestone rock felt a little like a precocious... More >>

• Mean to Me

  published February 11, 2009

  When Nina Paley's marriage fell apart in an especially crushing way — with a curt breakup e-mail from her husband while he's on a work... More >>

• The Ettes

  published January 28, 2009

  Lindsay "Coco" Hames of LA-born garage-rock trio the Ettes knows how to get the Nancy Sinatra look — the eyeliner, the hair, the... More >>