Leonard Cohen

Do You Want a Handwritten Letter in the Mail? Randy Osborne Will Write You One!

In the summer of 2011, a mysterious series of 100 letters began making their way from Atlanta to various parts of the United States, including to the office of Riverfront Times. Each letter contained a typed excerpt from a longer piece of writing, a ten-dollar bill and a handwritten note. The note e ... More >>

The Six Best Songs About Birds

Compiling the best songs about birds is tricky. Many great ones are too metaphorical ("Bird On A Wire" by Leonard Cohen, "Freebird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd) and many literal ones are not great ("I'm Like A Bird" by Nelly Furtado). Continuing the Nitpick Six series about animal songs, here are the six best ... More >>

Fiona Apple's Comeback Tide Rises with Release of "Every Single Night"

Fiona Apple is in an elite club of critical darlings that persevered, despite finding commercial success during the 1990s. Using the word "Despite" may sound odd, since selling a lot of records should indicate that a musical artist has something unusual to offer - a boisterous voice, an instrumental ... More >>

The Best of SXSW Music: Wednesday 3/14/2012

​If you're familiar with chaos theory, which in its basic form is the attempt to find patterns in the random acts of shit on Earth, then you may understand the difficulty that comes with describing a full day at SXSW. To break down the bright, scintillating chaos, Village Voice Media's roving musi ... More >>

Fiona Apple, Tennis and Corporate Sponsorship: SXSW 2012 Days 1 and 2

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 6:25 p.m. I've been coming to SXSW for over a decade now, and pre- and post-apocalypse days off are as much essential rituals as 2 a.m. taco runs and sleep deprivation. This year, there'd be no day-before day off, as SXSW has extended the music portion of the festival/confer ... More >>

The Best -- And Worst -- Of Baseball Broadcasting

​The noted sabermetric site Fangraphs recently did something a little unusual for such a hardcore stat-oriented website. They ranked baseball's television broadcasting teams. And while I might have expected them to come up with a statistic or formula to express the quality -- or lack thereof -- of ... More >>

"I Just Want To Do Things I Love": An Interview with King Khan

When I first reach Mr. Khan, he's somewhere in Florida, time zone unknown to him. King Khan: Do you know Chuck Berry? Roy Kasten: I've met him once. Do you want me to pass on a message? King Khan: Yeah. Tell him to come to our show. I didn't have the heart to say it: There have been nights whe ... More >>

Psychedelic Furs and Tom Tom Club at The Pageant, 9/23/11: Review and Setlists

Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler at a previous show.​Psychedelic Furs | Tom Tom Club The Pageant September 23, 2011 Well? What do you consider fun? In his latest book, Retromania, author/theorist Simon Reynolds explores pop music's current obsession with its past. We're all familiar with ba ... More >>

A Road Playlist for Tony La Russa

TLR, Bob Schneider and the Twitter bird. Don't ask me, but the image works.​Tony La Russa is driving home. Rather than flying home after the season, he's taking his time heading back to the Bay Area this year and recreating a trip he took in 1996, which you all may recall was the year he took over ... More >>

Show Review Setlist: Michael McDonald Brings It All Back Home at the Touhill, Friday, July 23

​Hometown legend Michael McDonald returned to St. Louis for a sold-out concert at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. The show was a well-paced mix of hits from McDonald's tenure with the Doobie Brothers as well as solo songs and soul cover ... More >>

2010 Music Showcase: 1 night, 50+ bands, 5 bucks this Saturday on Wash. Ave.

Game Notes: Cardinals 6, Redlegs 3 -- 7th April 2010

​Well, I think it's pretty clear by now the 2010 Cardinals aren't going to lose a game this year. I can honestly say, after viewing them for two entire games all the way through, this may be the single greatest athletic entity in the history of the world. Move over, '27 Yankees, the Cardinals are ... More >>

Top Sellers At Area Record Stores for 2009

Who says the record store is dead? Not us here in St. Louis, where both Vintage Vinyl and Euclid Records sold a lot of tunes. Below, please find the top selling albums from both stores, including a separate top vinyl list from VV. Enjoy! Vintage Vinyl: Top CDs ​1. Murphy Lee - You See Me 2. ... More >>

Interview: The Mars Volta's Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

Michael G. Rizzi​ The Mars Volta is far too weird for its own popularity, but somehow Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Cedric Bixler-Zavala and their virtual lazy susan of band members have turned virtuosic, psychedelic prog jams into gold records and a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Nobody is m ... More >>

Cooking For Your Cat: Cat Munchies

RFT staff writer Aimee Levitt and her cat, Bess, continue their culinary adventure.Bess just hissed.This is a rare occurrence these days. In our old apartment, she hissed a lot, but that was because one of our cat-roommates, Henry, was an asshole. He liked to eat her food and lie on her favorite spo ... More >>

Shivers Me Timbers: Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers breathes new life into rock & roll

Miscues: Local Cardinals Media Round-Up

Friends, I think you'll all agree that, in general, I'm a pretty positive guy. A ray of sunshine in an otherwise overcast land of --What? You don't agree with that? You say that I'm bitter, nasty, sarcastic, and rather appalling human being in general?Alright. Fair enough. That's probably closer to ... More >>

Best and Worst of Stadium Rock

Tonight, at the Scottrade Center, one of my all time favorite bands will rock the collective ass of St. Louis for all that it's worth. Ladies and Gentlemen, AC/DC is in the house. I know, I don't really seem the sort to love AC/DC, but what can I say? Maybe it's the screech of Brian Johnson's vocals ... More >>

RFT readers prove that it's never the off-season in Cardinal Nation

B-Sides cuts to the heart of the matter with songwriter John Hiatt, while a new book about Slayer asserts the band's thrash-metal dominance

2007: The Year in Movies and Music

A year-end wrap-up of what we adored, what was ignored and what the new year will bring.

Sean Nelson Talks His Solo Stuff, Robyn HItchcock, Harvey Danger

SXSW: The Rest

Our top DVD picks for the week of November 16.

Die, Jeff Buckley, Die!

It's time to put a bullet through the head of the Jeff Buckley zombie

Magnetic Personality

We chat with Stephin Merritt and Dayna Kurtz, explore the folly of !!! and talk band battles with Thee Lordly Serpents

Destroyer

Wednesday, May 19; the Rocket Bar

'03, Oh My!

Our critics weigh in on a questionable year’s best music

Ween's World

In the postmodern style of the times, Ween has found its niche by having no niche at all

The French Conniption

Neil Jordan and Nick Nolte pull off a twitchy Gallic heist

Spector of Death

Is Phil Spector mad, a genius or a murder suspect with decades of preparation? Read our results!

Roll Playing

On his latest album, bookworm musician Jim Roll collaborates with two music-geek novelists

List-omania

RFT music geeks pick the best recordings of 2001

Minstrel Tension

Whether it's race or religion, Chocolate Genius tells it like it is

Feel His Pain

Billy Bob has a simple plan: to sing about life and lovin' his wife

Married, with Music

Husband-and-wife team Puerto Muerto produce a strange and beautiful brainchild

American Icon

Emmylou Harris keeps proving herself to be one of country music's most important artists

Oasis

Standing on the Shoulder of Giants (Sony)

Wonder Boys

Directed by Curtis Hanson

Ghost Upon the Road