Best of St. Louis 2006
Food & Drink
Best Rock Club to Die in the Past 12 Months
Frederick's Music Lounge
Drive past 4454 Chippewa Street and sigh. The Michelob sign is still there, as is the sign on the door warning minors to keep off the premises. The name of the original owner, Boettcher, is still etched in the cement faade. Frederick's Music Lounge began as an obscure dive, became what Rolling Stone called "the best, most authentically St. Louis club" in town and may yet wind up a nail salon or Vietnamese restaurant. As a meeting place for slackers, rockers, drifters, dreamers, counterculture drunks and lowlife high livers, it's like won't pass this way again. A documentary film of Frederick's blitzed-out, raucous final days is said to be in the works.
