Losers, Crybabies and Unsettled Souls: Republishing a love letter to St. Louis from the early '00s
Discussed: Astroboy, DJ Needles aka James Biko, Eli Winter, In Soo's moo shu, King Louie's, YHWH Nailgun, Tadao Ando, MLK Blvd., potential, history, playgrounds.
I wrote the following 21 years ago when I edited the Riverfront Times’ annual ‘Best of St. Louis’ issue. Five years later I abandoned St. Louis for Los Angeles. Another fifteen years and I’m in Columbia, Missouri — and closer to St. Louis, both literally and figuratively. This little intro recently came up in a conversation and it feels like a good time to republish it. I’ll add that potential, which I tout as one of St. Louis’ selling points, is cheap, and worth absolutely nothing without the grit and determination to transform said possibilities into reality. And: a moment of deep, deep silence, followed by a set of deep, deep house, for Andy “Astroboy” Ford. Forever the best.
Losers, crybabies and unsettled souls love to blame St. Louis for their frustrations, as though something as nebulous as a city could be held responsible for a human being’s unhappiness. “Everything would be better if I were in (enter name of hipper city here). There’s so much more action there. I’ve got my choice of two dozen vegetarian restaurants, hundreds of international markets. Amazing shows every night! A rock scene. An art scene. House and techno scenes. An amazing theater scene. Hotter guys. Sexier ladies. Get this: (insert trendy city here) has a store devoted solely to Japanese incense!”
And yet these same unsatisfied souls have never been to a production by the Black Rep, have never been to Lo when Astroboy’s spinning house, never grooved to the Hot House Sessions at the Delmar, never rocked with the Fantasy Four at Lemmons. They haven’t experienced the sublime joy of In Soo’s shrimp moo shu. They’ve never listened to the amazing DJ Needles on Q95.5, don’t even know what the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is, let alone that Tadao Ando’s creation has been touted as one of the most important new American buildings of the decade. Nope, they’ve never cruised on a Saturday afternoon down Martin Luther King Boulevard, as revealing a St. Louis history lesson as there is, have never sneaked onto a downtown roof — which isn’t that hard to do if you pay attention — at 5 a.m. with your honey and watched the sun rise between the legs of the Arch.
The losers await something, some other place, some “better” place, tapping their toes, blindfolded, while they save cash to get the hell out of this ’burg.
That ain’t living. That’s waiting. And when you’re waiting for something, you’re living for nothing, because you can’t touch the future. You can’t caress the flowers in Shaw’s Garden, can’t truly appreciate the PaintLouis graffiti wall due south of the Arch, can’t smell the aroma of Grandma Petty’s Warm Apple Walnut Cake wafting out of the King Louie’s kitchen.
We, the winners, live in St. Louis. We zip to work on the backstreets and vary our routes because there’s probably a stunning Victorian manse right around that corner and there might be another glorious deco façade a few blocks up, buried at a dead end. We stumble upon forgotten St. Louis masterpieces every day as we hunt for potential, which is dirt cheap in St. Louis. That boarded-up building would make a fantastic lounge, and it’s for sale for $60k; that old doughnut shop would be a perfect coffeehouse. Jeez, it’d be great to throw a party in that warehouse. Get the number.
We’re looking, eyes agaze and hearts ablaze, because we know it’s here and that kindred spirits both known and unknown also understand the secret of St. Louis, appreciate the tension between St. Louis’ past and its future and understand that St. Louis has never been so wide open as it is now, right on the cusp of the 100th anniversary of the 1904 World’s Fair.
If you wanna go, don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out; it just opens more doors for those of us who are staying, those of us with the creativity to accept the challenge to build something.
Our St. Louis ancestors willed us a playground, a laboratory, a canvas, a recipe, and then they left. It’s ours now, and in this issue we celebrate the opportunities we’ve created in their wake.
-- Randall Roberts, editor, “Best of St. Louis” 2002
Over the past half-decade, the Houston-born, Chicago-based instrumental guitarist and writer Eli Winter has issued a series of solo albums and collaborations. I first saw him perform last year, when he did a sublime afternoon set leading a trio at the Columbia Experimental Music Fest.
His most recent album, Eli Winter, came out last year on the consistently inventive label Three Lobed Recordings and features contributions from what press notes call a “murderer’s row of peers and contemporaries.” They include Cameron Knowler, Yasmin Williams, David Grubbs, Ryley Walker, Tyler Damon, and jaimie branch.
Like kindred spirits William Tyler, North Americans, Marisa Anderson, and other contemporary six-string explorers, Winter taps into the rich vein of genre-blurred experimental instrumental music that connects folk and free jazz, Americana and esoterica. At times lovely, grounded, and pastoral, at others cascading through space like an untethered satellite, Winter’s work feels both steeped in the past and aimed at the horizon.
For In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi, I asked Eli to recommend five records, old or new, that he’s been liking. I knew he’s a writer, too — he’s written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Economist, and Chicago magazine — so was obviously hoping he’d deliver. He did.
Winter on NY band YHWH Nailgun: “Ignore whatever people are paying other people to say about music in New York right now. This is the best band in the city. And they’re only getting better.”
Welp, Andrea Moed nailed it in 1997 when she wrote a quick prediction about “The Future of Music” for a special issue of CMJ New Music Monthly. Titled “Vocal Shredding,” the brief piece predicted the rise of J Dilla and the oblong sound, and correctly called Outkast’s influence on rap’s evolution.
Back when the first Onyx single, "Slam," came out, I remember thinking as I watched these crazy bald rappers screaming rapid-fire in my face on MTV, changing cadence and volume at will: "these guys really shred." That is, to my AOR and free jazz-honed ears, they were doing with their voices what a sax player in Naked City or a guitarist in King Crimson would do with his instrument. Onyx had hinted at the potential of a move toward arrhythmia in hip-hop, and since then other rappers have picked up the hint, with Busta Rhymes the most bold and memorable. In the next few years, the instrumental parts of records — both in hip-hop and outside it — may follow suit. Some singles will take a cue from Outkast's "Elevators," playing with our minds and booties with beats that are just a shade off. The same audiences that have gotten increasingly tolerant of noisy, fuzzy sounds in hip-hop will be able to get used to rhythms that don't fit perfectly together and beats that sound all but arbitrary. Rhythms may go similarly haywire in the electronic and dance music worlds, with the erratic, broken-down-machine-made compositions of Aphex Twin as the prototype. ANDREA MOED
I’ll actually be doing a deep dive on this CMJ issue in an upcoming installment. Until then, here’s the Top 75 from that issue: Feb. 1997.
When you base your love on credit
And your loving days are done
Checks you signed with love and kisses
Later come back signed “insufficient funds"
Can you get to that?
— Funkadelic
Omg. I was just looking up as I not infrequently do just to scout for evidence of people, places, and times that meant something to me that was never identical but always reciprocal and earnestly sincere. In a way that is not possible for this human flawed woman at home in Louisville. But in the mid-90s to the end of that decade going to "parties" (NEVER ever "raves" unless some problematic actual authority was asking too many questions.)
Louisville to Nashville, Louisville to Columbus, Indy to Chicago, Nashville to Memphis, then the schools of Central Indiana, Bloomington, Muncie, LaFayette. At least twice I got to "help" provide a less stressed conduit for communication between my friend driving the illustrious Astroboy from Bloomington to the Indy Airport. It may or may not have helped my friend drive less distracted. I doubt it was in any way fun to listen to my bouncing back and forth from paralyzing social anxiety, to psycobilin amazement, to rolled out joint cracking and the most random of non sequiters.
Lol, I'm telling you it's impossible to describe but actually I don't think so. And he was always kind, in a way that was not necessary for him, but that most people across the Midwest in that scene were with good intentioned admirers etc.
I was so sad to realize that I only finally found out his trajectory likely because it was stopped too early.
But I loved reading about how you felt about St. Louisville back then. I understand. I am curious, how do you feel about it now? No judgement, genuinely just want to know. Louisville as I loved her isn't a place that can be visited by anyone who was never there back then. Straining to try hurts worse than just accepting how lucky I was to be into music, dancing. parties, etc at that place and age. Most people maybe get a few great nights out, I guess? Honeymoon? Vacation? But we were really lucky.
🩶🩶🩶