The Post-Rockist

Huzzah! The 2008 Riverfront Times Music Showcase is upon us! Ladies and germs, feast your eyes and ears upon the magnificent, stupendous, astonishing line-up of town troubadors, warblers, and aspiring legends converging from all corners of metro St. Louis for one day, and one day only! Ring the bells! Wave the flags! Blast the trumpets! This event is one for the ages, and not to be…

Huh? Oh, you’re not buying it? Ahem. Well then, let me start over. I admit it’s a little difficult to get excited for an event with a title as quaint as “Riverfront Times Showcase”; it conjures images of job fairs, where you half-expect the bands to be lined up in little booths handing our fliers and demo CDs to aimless undergrads. At least in Detroit the local paper named their music fest the “Blowout,” which has a little more zing! bang! pow! to it (Not to mention it was four days long, none of those days being a Sunday. C’mon, St. Louis, step it up). So far, the reaction I’ve gotten from friends about this little shindig have ranged from, “A local music showcase? Wow, sounds like a blast. I’d love to go but I’ve got to, uhm, iron my socks. All day. Sorry,” to “Meh, it’s just the same few bands that play every year.”

I get this creeping feeling that the Showcase audience will consist entirely of other bands, their girlfriends, and myself. Nevertheless, I remain cautiously optimistic in hopes of a better turnout. After all, I’ve only lived in St. Louis for less than a year now, which hasn’t been nearly enough time to make me feel jilted and jaded toward the state of local music. (I’ll give it another year before I, fingers crossed, find indisputable proof that So Many Dynamos, the Bluebird, and the RFT are engaged in a secret sexual tryst/malicious cabal determined to overhaul all St. Louis media and poison the milk in our schools’ cafeterias to turn the children into goth indie zombies. Or whatever it is they’re supposedly up to. Jinkies!)

As strange as it may sound, I really am excited for the Showcase. Twelve-plus hours of the best live music St. Louis has to offer — a lot of which I’ve seen already, but most of which is going to be brand spanking new to me — condensed into one easy serving. Plus, it’s dirt cheap. Based on who I’ve already seen, who I’m hoping to see again, and who I’m hoping to see for the first time, I’ve cobbled together the following hour-by-hour unofficial Post-Rockist itinerary:

Epic battles among hawk-creatures may or may not occur at the Showcase.

1:00 - The Livers (Duck Room)
2:00 - Jon Hardy & The Public (Main Stage, outside Vintage Vinyl)
2:30 - Rum Drum Ramblers (Market in the Loop)
3:00 - The 75s (Market in the Loop)
3:30 - Gentlemen Auction House (Main stage)
4:00 - Wooden Kites (Market in the Loop)
4:30 - The Feed (Duck Room)
5:00 - Vandalyzm (Main stage)
5:30 - The Monads (Market in the Loop)
6:00 - Victoria (Main stage)
6:30 - Midwest Avengers (Elvis Room)
7:00 - Family Affair (Elvis Room)
7:30 - Either Target Market (Cicero’s) or Wormwood Scrubs (Pi)
8:00 - Jumbling Towers (Cicero’s)
8:30 - Rockwell Knuckles (Elvis Room)
9:00 - No clue whatsoever… there are way too many good bands playing this time slot. Maybe the Said the Gramophone darlings Jumbling Towers will put on a set so blogtastic that I won’t be able to drag myself away, so I’ll stay put for the Bureau. Or maybe I’ll go see Rockwell again after all, and stay for more Gotta Be Karim. But then again, Theodore’s back at Vintage Vinyl, the Sex Robots will be doing their thing at the Delmar Lounge, and let’s not forget Blind Eyes (the power pop band nominated for Best Garage Band) at Halo. Maybe I’ll head over to Pi early and catch the end of the Grace Basement set. Fuck. Maybe I’ll just get a burrito at Chipotle.
10:00 - Bad Folk (Pi)
10:30 - Museum Mutters (Delmar Lounge)
11:00 - Quief Quota (Delmar Lounge)
11:30 - Earthworms (Elvis Room)
12:00 - Bunnygrunt (Delmar Lounge)
12:30 - 7 Shot Screamers (Halo)

Monday’s gonna suuuuuck.

So many bands, so little time. Will I be sufficiently rocked? Will I be seeing the “right” bands? Who cares!

I have no idea if this schedule will hold together. Inebriation, laziness, and peer pressure aside, it’s going to be tough to see all the bands I want to see. Either every band in every venue is going to go on the exact time they’re scheduled to play (unlikely), in which case my attempts to catch multiple sets in the same time slot will be greeted with more sound checks than actual performances. Or else every venue is going to get slightly off schedule (more likely), in which case the bands I do see will be entirely random. Dammit, RFT, haven’t you ever heard of staggered start times?

But that’s what you gots to deal with. You’re either gonna like the line-up, or you’re gonna hate it. I happen to think it’s tops. It’s like a day-long, trial-by-fire introduction to St. Louis, and a pretty decent one at that. The RFT blog team has the full scoop on the official line-up, as well as blurbs and mp3s of every band nominated for the 2008 RFT Music Awards. I’ll just be chucking peanuts from the sidelines.