Nancy

At some point in 1981 my girlfriend Pam moved to Milwaukee to join a theater company. I would commute by train once or twice a month. We carried on our relationship for another year before she fell in love with one of her directors.

There was a great music scene in Milwaukee and Chicago but it seemed that all of the bands were using drum machines instead of drummers. This made for very boring theater.

There were a lot of parties there and I had a blast. I loved the theater crowd because the women were beautiful and the men were gay. There was a serious shortage of heterosexual men.

It was at this time I moved into Lafayette Park with a woman named Nancy Theodoro. My friend Sharon had just moved out and introduced us. We would spend hours talking in the kitchen and once my cat walked in with Nancy's bird in his mouth. The bird survived but a few weeks later my cat died of kitty leukemia.

Nancy was a recovering alcoholic but loved to throw parties. She bought her favorite booze and had me drink it. She was a hypochondriac and was always heavily medicated. One evening I came home from work around 3:00 in the morning. A naked woman came screaming out of Lafayette Park. She had just been raped. I brought her inside and it became clear she was mentally retarded. I gave her my bathrobe and called the police. There must've been at least 12 police officers in the apartment. At some point in the morning after they left it occurred to me that I had lost my robe. As I was about to go to bed Nancy walked out of her room, rubbed her eyes, smiled and said, ”good morning roomy” . She could sleep though anything on whatever medication she was on.

She has since died and I always thought she would have been a perfect case for the headstone that read, “I told you I was sick”.

I remember a stranger walking in to one of our parties. We were tripping at the time. The stranger found a corner, sat on the floor, pulled his hat over his head and fell asleep. He had what looked like bird shit covering his hat. We began to panic thinking he had wandered in from the highway. We were finally told he was the Chuck Auger’s landlord. The splotches on his hat was paint.

I don’t want to get tedious but Nancy was a fascinating woman and she deserves more than one installment. I’ll have more about her.

Debaliviere Part 2

Now that I’ve given a rough picture of the adult world around Debaliviere I thought I’d share a few personal memories.

We lived in a 6 family on Kingsbury and I was 2 to 6 years old.

Everyone’s back yard was solid ground coal ash from the old furnaces. This black soot just seemed normal. The milkman would stop in the alley and give the kids a block of ice. We’d drag it under our giant steel back steps, find a rock to break it up with, and eat it like the pieces were popsicles. My mother couldn’t figure out why my brother and I always had worms.

The kids ran the neighborhood.

I thought black kids were anatomically different from white kids. Their penises were uncircumcised. I noticed this when we peed in the gangway.

Six white horses led the Kennedy funeral procession on TV.

I made a personal vow to become a super hero watching superman. I didn’t grow out of that until I was 12.

“Oh how I hate you, you alligator bait you” and other great 78s played on my dad’s record player. On the other end of the spiritual spectrum my mother was listening to Prokofiev’s Stoneflower Ballet, Kurt Weil, and odd assorted folk music.

My dad’s closet was full of Coke bottles filled with homemade beer. He had an impressive crown cap machine that made it possible. His friends later told me his brew tasted like piss.

One day 2 older kids abducted me and locked me in a coal bin in their basement. They told me if I tried to escape their trained eagle would peck my eyes out. At the end of the day they took me for a walk in their back yard on the end of a leash. My mother happened by, grabbed my arm and dragged me home scolding me that it was way too late to be out playing. I brought this up years later and she was horrified.

Wash U. students used to show movies on a white-washed billboard in the alley behind our apartment.

I begged my mother to buy a horse. We could keep it in the basement.

The Boogie Man lived next door and in spite of the fact that we lived on the third floor, I knew a killer on stilts was in the gangway throwing knives through windows.

My father was a teamster working for Brunswick. We had bowling pins and all kinds of souvenirs. My brother and I had pajamas with luminescent scattered bowling pins. We’d hide under the blankets just mesmerized by their glow. This was the paint that turned out to be so radioactive. We used to burn the pins as fire wood in a cabin we had in the country. More on that later.

My first school was Hamilton. I don’t know if they still do this but in those days the school had sexually segregated playgrounds. I walked to school by myself the first day and wandered into the girl’s side. They all made fun of me and I wondered why there were only girls at school. I even got in the line and came in on the wrong side.

All the St. Louis city schools had thorn bushes out front. Bullies at every school I went to would stab the smaller kids making school life unbearable. What were the elders thinking?

I read somewhere that one possible cause of childhood obesity is the fact that parents have gotten overprotective, paranoid of the evils lurking outside. As a result kids stay inside watching TV and get used to a sedentary lifestyle. At six I could take a trolley car or bus downtown to the library and the driver would make sure I got off at the right stop. My son is 13 now and I’m not sure I’d trust him to do that!

Debaliviere

In the late 50’s early 60’s my dad would occasionally take me to the space he lived in before I was born. It was a giant loft space they called The Garret and it was over the Woolworth’s at the corner of Debaliviere and Delmar.

He had lived there with Bob Koester whose record store “Delmar Records” was just downstairs and Paul Schueltz. Paul was a painter and bassist. They rented it from a painter named Bill Fett.

The Garret was filled with half finished canvases, washtub and stand up basses, World War II audio equipment, and a thousand empty or mostly empty Falstaff and Stag bottles. My father was famous for leaving the last inch and a half of beer at the bottom of his bottle. I don’t believe there was even a separate space in the loft for a toilet.

Paul was a prolific painter and I still have quite a few of his canvases, including a portrait of my father.

There was quite a scene on Debaliviere in those days. The other end of the strip from Delmar at Pershing was the famous “Stardust”, a burlesque club that featured Evelyn West and her $50,000.00 treasure chest insured by Lloyd’s of London. I always wondered if they were insured against gravity.

Although Nick Jakovac’s bar on Manchester was known for Jazz (this is where I had the personal solo performed for me by Chet Baker) Nick played cello in a Tamburizza band at a Greek bar next to The Stardust. His son Knez is still active in the St. Louis music scene and I run into him occasionally.

Koester moved his store to Chicago, renamed it Delmark Records and started a respected Blues and Jazz label.

Iggy Pop mentioned living in Koester’s basement in his autobiography “I Need More”.

When I was 20 Tracy Wynkoop and I stayed with him for a few days. He took us to really hard core Blues clubs on the south side. We listened to the funniest stand up comedy recordings I’ve ever heard in his studio. They were from the 50s and too blue to ever be released. He also showed us movies in a private theater setup he had in his home.

Years later, after I married, I took my wife and a couple of friends of hers that live in Chicago to visit Koester. He seemed impressed that I had become an avid skydiver. He took us to a Jazz club, got drunk and compared me unfavorably to my dad. I think he really loved him and probably still hadn’t gotten over his death.

There will be more on this I hope. So much for keeping my entries short.

Pershing

My next installment was going to be dedicated to Laclede Town. I wasn’t thinking there was a whole lot I could have observed before I was six years old. Then I started thinking and memories started flooding in. I now realize this is going to take quite a bit of research.

Before I lived in Laclede Town I lived in the Skinker-Debaliviere neighborhood. There was a thriving Beat/Burlesque scene happening. I actually remember a lot of it so I’ll come back to this subject later.

In the meantime I’d like to go through my transition from my Wuxtry days to the Broadway Oyster Bar in the 80s.

Between 1980 and 1983 I lived in a huge six family flat on Pershing behind Talayna’s. I lived there with my girlfriend Pam and another couple, Kent and Sherry.

These were the days before cable television had come to the city. It was already in the county however. Across the street (Skinker) was University City. We’d go to Blueberry Hill to watch MTV and believe me in their first year it was good television.

Kent turned me on to a few new bands including Nigerian Juju rocker King Sunny Ade and early U2. I wasn’t crazy about hair styles at this time but I loved the music. I had finally cut my hair myself. Now my hair is long again!

One afternoon Pam called me at Wuxtry. She was hysterical and in tears. The police had barged into our house with a warrant. She said the house was full of cops and they were tearing the place apart.

Kent had been bartending at a popular Clayton bar that featured live music and sports on a big screen TV. An undercover agent spent 6 months getting to know Kent.

Apparently the agent asked Kent to score some cocaine for him. This actually was not such an easy thing for Kent to do. The charges were finally for Sports gambling and sale of an imitation controlled substance. I don’t think Kent really knew the person he bought it from, he was just doing a favor for a friend. At the trial I believe the cop apologized to Kent.

All charges were dropped but in the meantime there was a great fund raiser. Everyone showed up and we all had a blast.

Anyway it was a big scandal and Kent lost his job. The funny thing was I had 4 hits of LSD in the freezer the raid had missed.

Kent went on to own his own very successful bar and is currently involved in some off-shore venture. Nothing ever could keep him down.

In 1982 I lost my job at Wuxtry. Dan Holt had a beautiful wedding at Forest Park’s Jewel Box and moved to L.A. to become a movie makeup artist.

I applied for a job at the Broadway Oyster Bar. Soulard entrepreneur and legend Bob Burkhardt had just sold it to a couple that became good friends of mine, Dennis and DJ. I’ll print their last names after I get permission. I think Dennis knew my dad as a poker buddy. My band used to go in for beer after rehearsals.

It has just been pointed out to me that my blog would be better if my entries were shorter. Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated. I’m juggling historical accuracy and personal impressions but I’d like it to be entertaining.

Punk Rock in St. Louis

This is a subject I’ve been putting off for a long time. It’s just seemed too huge a task to even scratch the surface of the St. Louis Punk/New Wave scene of the late 70s early 80s. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. A lot of folks are gone now.

In 1976 I was living in Soulard with Tony Patti and my brother Patrick. We shared a 3 room flat and had 2 large dogs. Rent was $50.00 a month and we never seemed to be able to come up with it even though we were all working. We lived over a store front that was being used for revival meetings.

We raged through chemically enhanced music marathons that included King Crimson, Captain Beefheart, Roger Ruskin Spear, McDonald & Giles, The Beatles, Funkadelic and many others.

We loved listening to Jockenstein ranting over his Parliament collection on East St. Louis’ WESL. One of the great local radio stations.(Boy do I miss them!).

One day Tony came home with The Ramones first record. I thought it was a put on with songs like “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue” and “Beat on the Brat”. I had no idea it was just the beginning of one of the most important genres of the record industry.

I moved back to the Central West End and started working at Wuxtry. Blondie’s first album came out. Dan Wall (Wuxtry’s first owner) and I went to a small club in the Bevo Mill area called River Daze. We saw a spectacular 45 minute Elvis Costello set. My friend Marge was also there. “What was that all about”? she asked. I was totally sold.

A whole new music scene was beginning to build. We had great rags like the short lived Noise, everybody's favorite Jet Lag, Carrie Lindsey’s NoisyPaper, and Reverb. There were tabloids like Metro that I believe predated Interview. Tony wrote a brilliant essay about cockroaches in Metro. The Riverfront Times was just starting out too.

There seemed to be a renaissance of art. John Linton produced 2 plays – “Mall Children” and “You Look Egyptian, Dear”. I remember being in a small theater in the basement of the Chase Park Plaza and laughing as Mort Hill introduced “You Look Egyptian, Dear” by waving at the audience and calling it his “New Wave”.

Jet Lag would print any review we submitted, no matter how lame. I sent one in that made absolutely no sense at all. Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for John the Mailman and Steve Pick!

Carrie Lindsey and Timothy Tyme published an issue of NoisyPaper with a flexi-disc insert of my band Earwacks. Eva-Tone, the people that manufactured the disc, took it upon themselves to censor our punk rock song “Ronald Reagan”. The word fuck appeared 3 times but they beeped the song 4 times. One of the words was fun. Timothy Tyme’s great response to this was the quote, “We’ll have no fun under Ronnie’s rigid rule”.

The Reagan era fueled the fire for a lot of us . The book “Fire on the Mountain” was published with an inside look at the revolutionaries in the hills of Nicaragua. What a fiasco. Charlie Langrehr wrote a song called “We Don’t Want a War in El Salvador.

We were all getting a tremendous amount of press from all of the media outlets.

We were finding all kinds of alternative venues like bowling alleys, VFW posts, etc. Who can forget American Legion Post 555 off of S. Kingshighway?

Everyone was doing regional tours of all the college towns complete with a pre-show interview at the local radio station. This always packed them in.

Alan Kalina booked us opening for John Cale at the Casa Loma Ballroom. We partied with the band until dawn in a swimming pool a friend owned. Alan also booked The Oozkicks as the opening act for Iggy Pop.

A Who cover band named The 6 O'clock News changed their name to the Strikers started playing Ska and got involved in the "Sid and Nancy" movie.

As far as indie records go, I think The Dinosaurs were the first. Dominic Schaeffer and I saw them at Wash U's Gargoyle. We heckled the band calling them the "Dinah Shores". Their front man Bob Rueter thought it was funny and we became friends. He let us in on the details of producing our own record and soon everyone was doing it.

Bands I remember off the top of my head were The Raymillands, The Felons, The Strikers, The Dinosaurs, Antimation, Blammo, White Pride, The Zanti Misfits, The Murder City Players, The Philosophic Collage, Max Load, Brown & Langrehr, Dear John, The Welders, Trained Animal (my favorite), and let's not forget Jambox and The Oui Oui Twins. I'm sure there are many others and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, leave a response and I'll update the list.

I just spoke with Tony and it seems to me that this topic will require several entries. I’ll come back to it soon!