February 25, 2008
At the Bluebird
Cold weather is cold, internet suffers. No blogs, no excuse. I apologize for lack of inactivity. (AT&T of STL, thanks for taking a week to fix my internet.)
The music scene in St. Louis is great if you like jazz, I've discovered. Not so great if you like local bands, it seems. Blueberry Hill seems to bring in a variety of musical acts, but I don't like the color blue and hills make it are hard to get my bicycle up...
There used to be a lot of hole-in-the-ground places to see local bands (consisting of those dern punks!!!) that practice in garages and annoy the neighbors. There’s a few here and there. (Don't get me wrong, ya'know, I guess I'm just too picky about my venues.) My taste in music is varied; my iTunes library will suffice as enough evidence. I have a lot (too much) of punk, indie and metal music, the type of music I will always love. The type of music that was the staple of those now-extinct music venues.
Recently, I was notified of the existence of an indie/pop/r&b band which has a Webster graduate in it. That graduate is in charge of booking for a fairly new music venue called The Bluebird. (I still don't like the color blue, but birds are a-okay.) The bands that play are sometimes famous, sometimes local. I can't wait to see a show there. I want to see Gentleman Auction House, the band consisting of a few former Webster students and an alumni, but I have a birthday party to attend that day. I’ll catch a live show later.
I've listened to all that I can on the Internet, and I can say that I will be supporting them in any way I can. My first contribution is to provide a sample mp3:
http://www.tellallyourfriendspr.com/media/music/gentlemanauctionhouse/1-the_book_of_matches.mp3
My next contribution is to probably buy their CD, wherever I can find it, whenever I can find it.
And here's the tl;dr version. (Translation: Too long; Didn't read.)
Check out the The Bluebird, 2706 Olive Street, for concerts of alternative music. 18+ venue and attached to Beffa's Restaurant.
Check out Gentleman Auction House if you want to support a band of local kids (young adults?).
it seems like just yesterday that this blog was poking fun at ours for not knowing what the Bluebird was. Then we broke the story
I'm glad you discovered the Bluebird, which has pretty well turned into a regular fixture. And I actually had class with Michael Tomko (the webster alumnus you spoke of), and didnt realize this until after I found out i liked them.
It was shortly thereafter that there was a dearth of news this last summer about new music venues around Saint Louis. So I hate to dispute this, because I guess their newness doesn't really make them hole-in-wall venues as much as bare bones concert halls. (i'd link the articles i'm citing as sources, except the network won't let me comment with links to our site because it's "questionable content). Hopefully with bands like GAH and So Many Dynamos, this music scene will fill the seats of these many new venues...
hi. i'm the RFT music editor.
our blog is linked with my name. we have plenty of info about where all the shows are going on -- and about what gentleman auction house is up to.
the local music scene -- indie, punk and metal especially -- hasn't been this vibrant in years. besides the bluebird, check out the following venues:
*off broadway
*2 cents plain
*cicero's
*lemmon's
*way out club
*the gargoyle at washington university
and especially the billiken club at st. louis university (in the student union), which is bringing insane amounts of indie rock to town -- and having locals open up.
we do a concert calendar (in fact, just did one this week) that compiles a ton of shows coming to town, local and national. bet there's something you'll like! march is great, because we get all of the bands coming and going from SXSW.