Photo by Chase Macri of some Vegetarian Chili I made for New Years

I bought three shirts on Monday, January 2nd. My family—namely my parents, sisters Melody and Katelyn, Aunt and Uncle, and my grandparents on my mother’s side (those on my father’s side are dead)—also bought me various clothing items as Christmas presents this year. Some shirts, a heavier military style jacket in navy, some leather shoes that look like Chuck Taylor’s but aren’t, a ski cap; all of which maintain their original thread count, are as bright as the day they were sewn, and are, most importantly, new.

New clothes have a baptismal affect on me. Their newness is a fresh start, a clean slate and the ability to think of and define myself as someone I was not only moments before. To consider who I am, what I believe and what that means. Are these the clothes of the old me? This cut, this color, this pattern, and this combination is the fashion of the person I want to be. Forget the former things baby, and check out the new sneaks.

Inevitably, when the new year approaches the question of “resolutions” arises. I seldom think very long about my answer to this question and somehow I’m always surprised that it is asked.

“Do you have any new years resolutions?”

I respond, “Hmm, not that I’ve thought of but maybe I could…”

These hip-shot resolutions last about as long as I consider the question. In the past, I’ve tried adding to my schedule some humanitarian volunteer work, playing guitar every day, writing a song-a-week (with lyrics and even singing!), regularly attending morning prayer services, and (that is until lent of recent past) vegetarianism several times and not one of those resolutions ever did stick as a consistent or meaningful part of my life. They were lofty ideals that sounded good at the time but were never motivated by a realization of some existential truth or an emotional, life-changing event. They were pretentious. They were prayers of lead tied to balloons of hot air.

The new clothes are a similar façade. They’re only new for so long, eventually becoming one with the rest of the wardrobe. And the “new me” fades just as the dye in the clothes after a thousand washes. Then I search again for another renewal, a second and third and fiftieth baptism. My problem is these fabric baptisms are the same as my new year’s resolutions: the direction of the change is backwards.

I imagine myself doing all these lofty and righteous things and I like how that person looks on the outside, so I try to make my outside resemble that person. Take on his clothes. Resolve to do what he does. But I don’t consider the cost of believing what he believes. In years past, I tried on vegetarianism because I wanted to lose weight. I wanted to look better, sexier, and more attractive with the rational that eating more veggies would be healthier than the pork and bovine I had enjoyed. That translated into a few days of suffering through meals of salads, cans of green beans and peas, dipping baby carrots into peanut butter before finally binging on a double cheeseburger with bacon. I actually like eating those veggies! But the superficial motivation for restricting my diet was chasing after the wind. As the preacher says, that’s vanity, bro.

My most recent foray into vegetarian living, as is any drastic lifestyle change that is worth a damn, was this time motivated by something more significant than waistline. Modern meat production in this country is anti-Christian. It is unethical, dehumanizing and unsustainable from every means of measurement (social, economic, environmental, psychological, etc., etc., etc.) Without telling the sordid tale here, because other people have already told it better than I could (Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals”, the documentary Food, Inc. are two examples), I can no longer look at a hamburger, a strip of bacon, or a chicken breast without wondering if the cow my burger came from lived in a cage in which it couldn’t turn around, or how many antibiotics the pig had taken to combat the rampant disease that spreads from the close proximity the pigs are inventoried, or if the chicken was slaughtered after its legs gave out from the immense weight he was engineered to grow (which assumes the chicken spent much of its life standing to begin with!) I used to put this in my body? This is “food”? And I used to eat these creatures? I can’t avoid thinking about that anymore. I can’t block it out of my mind and ignore it. I cannot, as I paraphrase Foer’s paraphrase of Franz Kafka, “choose to forget.” It isn’t right. These are not the animals slaughtered in The Garden, and weren’t those animals begrudgingly killed to begin with?

We worry so much about the pollution our industry and our cars emit and how it is accelerating climate change in the world, but did you know that animals accounts for more CO2 production as our machines? According to Scientific American “It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone’s lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.” All so I can eat a hamburger that costs $1. How is that sustainable? Meat is so easy and normal and commonplace and I imagine many feel it is a basic right but I have no idea where that meat came from, how that animal was treated, who killed it or how it was killed, who processed, packaged, and shipped it to us, and that lack of intentionality, that hip-shot thinking, is literally killing us. I can’t pretend that the problem doesn’t exist anymore. All the excuses I kept were childish and immature. I can’t say no any longer. I’ve changed. I am baptized.

I didn’t resolve to eat vegetarian. I didn’t imagine this different version of myself in these animal-loving clothes or as one who joined PETA, or took part in animal activism; my beliefs were shaken by the truth and a vegetarian is who I am now. It isn’t a phase. It isn’t something I am trying on for size. It isn’t something I’m doing to appear sexier. It’s just the facts. A stream popping up in the desert. A path in the wilderness. Behold, all things are become new.

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.
—Franz Kafka, while admiring fish in an aquarium

Photo Damian Strohmeyer/SI

In sports the cliché goes “may the best team win” and that cliché is often the expectation. However, unlikely things happen all the time in sports like when the underdog Dallas Mavericks swept most experts pick to win it all, the Los Angeles Lakers, in the second round of the NBA playoffs last year. The Mavericks continued on to win the Larry O’Brien trophy, beating the Miami Heat. The Heat beat the Mavericks in the Finals in 2006 and the dominant narrative during the series was the Mavs revenge and power forward Dirk Nowitski’s chance at redemption and greatness.

In sports journalism there is always an accompanying narrative no matter how closely it actually relates to the two teams playing. In the weeks leading up to the National Football League Conference Championships games, the narrative of the New England Patriots season was “Redemption Road.”

In an all-football mailbag and on his podcast the B.S. Report, Grantland’s Bill Simmons said the Patriots on a path to “extinguish every awful memory” from previous post-season defeats. They took care of the New York Jets, a team who beat them in last years Division Championship game, twice during the regular season. They defeated the Denver Broncos, a team that had their number twice in post-season appearances past and, most recently, the Pats put away the Ravens at home in Foxboro (the Ravens knocked the Patriots out of the playoffs in 2009 at home.) The icing on the cake for New England is Super Bowl XLVI will be held in Indianapolis Colts’ stadium. The Colts beats the Pats in the Conference Championships in 2006-07 season.

The only team that could make their salvation complete would be a rematch in the Super Bowl with the team that beat them in Super Bowl XLII: the New York Giants. Well, it seems to be 2007-08 all over again as the Giants narrowly edged out the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 in overtime. The Giants will be facing the Patriots in the Super Bowl for the second time in five years.

For Giants’ fans, and the journalists who write their narratives, a rematch of Super Bowl XLII isn’t very interesting. The Giants beat the Pats earlier this season in a game that eerily resembled the Super Bowl game with the Pats leading by 3 late in the fourth before quarterback Eli Manning completed two passes to Jake Ballard that were carbon copies of the David Tyree’s “Helmet Catch” and Plaxico Burress touchdown in the back of the end zone to seal the game. ESPN NFL East columnist Dan Graziano echoed what Giants’ fans were really hoping for: “a rematch of Super Bowl XXXV — the one for which the Giants’ fans will want revenge.” The Ravens crushed the G-Men 34-7 in that game. Unfortunately the narrative for the game in two weeks has swung in New England’s karmic favor.

While the narrative certainly favors the Patriots to win it all in Indianapolis, another sports cliché has to be considered: “that’s why they play the games.” We’ll see if the Patriots can get the last monkey off their back or if the Giants can bring home another Super Bowl upset.

David Butler II/US Presswire

Photo by Chase Macri

On January 12-14th, the bands Jack Buck and Coward set out across the midwest to play four shows in three days. The tour, entitled the “Home Turf” tour, went through each of the three cities the members of the bands live: Kansas City, Columbia and St. Louis. The below video shows live and candid footage of the bands throughout the three day tour.

For their EP My Heart Is The Eastern Horizon, the Nashville band Clemency decided to release each of the EP’s five songs individually a month at a time as singles, a tactic bands are increasingly exploring. But what makes Clemency unique is each single was also released as a music video.

“We’ve never really shot videos before,” says Jason Watkins, lead vocalist and guitarist of Clemency. “We were like ‘What if we shot a video for every song and release them as singles?’”

The band wrote the music and the screenplays for each of the songs, and videographer Joey Williams filmed and edited the videos. The band released the first single “The Wild Wind” on June 27th to Youtube and iTunes and repeated that process every month until each video was out. Watkins was happy with the results:

“Each video got a couple thousand plays in the first weeks,” he says. “They each topped out at like 5,000 or whatever. We were really pleased as an indie band that doesn’t have a lot of marketing push.”

Clemency are a truly independent band without a record label or access to significant capital to market their music. Beyond promoting with social media, the band used Google Adwords to get exposure:

“Our whole strategy was to put $500 dollars towards marketing for each video,” Watkins explains. “We ended up doing Adwords and different marketing through Google. They had taken notice of what we were doing and the attention we were getting and a representative contacted us and said ‘I think there’s some things we can do to maximize exposure.’ We had one more video to release. So we worked with Google and the video ended up having 73,000 plays in one week. In one week!”

With the success of the videos, and the responses the band has received from fans via Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and in person the band hopes to continue a similar method for promotion in the future.

“It would be kind of hard to sustain; making a quality video for every song you write. But I think it could be done. It’s ambitious, but I think we’ve proved to ourselves we can do it. And if you do it well you can be known as the band that does that. ‘Oh, that’s the band that does videos for all their songs.’”

“My Heart Is The Eastern Horizon” was released digitally on January 3rd and can be downloaded from iTunes. The EP will be available physically at the band’s CD release show on January 11th at The Rutledge in Nashville, TN. Clemency’s videos can be seen on their Youtube page.

Video of Kevin Harris performing at Floating Labs

Floating Laboratories is one of a crop of new underground, do-it-yourself venues hosting alternative, experimental and noise music in St. Louis. Most of the events are spread through word of mouth, or announced via blog posts on sites like Josh Levi’s Flood Yr Face blog (check out an interview with Josh Levi here).

Several such noise and experimental musicians and also a folk guitarist from in and out of town played Friday, December 16th at Floating Labs and it felt nostalgic to fellow St. Louis noise musician Travis Bursik (of the duo Ou Où). “Shows like these remind of when I was living in Ann Arbor, [Michigian]. DIY venues, BYOB, very intimate settings and everyone who’s here is here for the right reasons.”

Floating Labs tend to feature musicians who create their music from samples, loops and synthetic instruments as opposed to traditional band instruments like guitars and acoustic drums. To the uninitiated, this kind of musical production is perceived as random button pressing on keyboards and computers. Bursik is annoyed by this perception: “A lot of the time people don’t understand that we’re not just messing around up there,” he says. “Everything is very meticulously planned. There’s a lot of editing yourself involved too, you’re not just releasing everything because less than half of what you do is good.”

Video of Ryley Walker performing at Floating Labs

The word “success” can mean many things. It can be measured by the level of income an individual makes a year. It can be shown by owning a house, a car, by having a certain prestige in your field or title at your job. For musicians, “success” could be having a record deal, going on tour, having a single on the radio. For Josh Levi, success is more about inspiring people than anything else. Levi is a St. Louis musician, music writer and concert promoter and has been involved in the music scene for nearly a decade. He promotes local music on his blog, Flood Yr Face, and both online and in print for the entertainment, arts and culture newspaper the Riverfront Times. On top of promoting and writing about music, Levi also plays guitar in nrml ppl and performs as a one man experimental noise band under various pseudonyms.

Levi had a chance to talk about how he measures success outside of the mainstream definition in the above audio interview. The photos of Levi below were taken at Floating Laboratories in St. Louis, MO.

Photo by Anthony Ryan Tripoli

Michael Gerhardt is a unique individual. Bassist of Jack Buck, a St. Louis, MO based hardcore noise rock band, Gerhardt has played in bands for more than ten years. Starting in high school punk bands, Gerhardt has played guitar, bass, drums and lead vocals in groups of all styles and is still a wellspring of musical ideas. His bandmates describe him as a “riff machine” as he seems to have an endless supply of bass lines and guitar parts in stock. In the video below, Gerhardt explains why he prefers bass to guitar, how he got into “heavy” music to begin with and shows off his tattoos. He also plays a few riffs.

David Wolk of Cranky Yellow | Photo Chase Macri

“Overall I’d say I was just relieved. To have had the experience, and it was awesome, and being able to just kind of move on from there.”

As previously reported on this site, last we left David Wolk he had decided to shut down Cranky Yellow, his arts and crafts “junk” store, art gallery, performance and events space. After running into various troubles with city ordinances, and not receiving the help he expected from local government officials, Wolk took a new job, closed his shop, sold or gave away most of his products, cleaned and repaired the storefront, and moved his home from the apartment above the store to another a few blocks away. He did this all in a month. Relief is one thing Wolk felt, but it wasn’t the only feeling Wolk had.

Packing up what was over three years of your life in a single month, and letting go of what was your passion is intense. Wolk describes it as “Crazy, I guess. It was awful. Which is why I gave most of the stuff away.”

Despite the tumultuous circumstances surrounding the move, Wolk is glad things have settled down. “It’s totally a relief. I think it will feel even better once the new incarnation of Cranky happens and it’s transitioning to the next point,” Wolk says. “Everything will have settled into place.”

That reality, the next chapter in the story of Cranky Yellow, is coming very soon. Wolk again, “Two weeks ago I said ‘It’ll be any minute now’ I was going to launch the new website but I haven’t been able to invest as much time as I need to get it all finished up.” The site is coming together slowly and Wolk is still optimistic saying the site could be live as soon as two months from now. In the meantime, Wolk is appreciating the break.

“My sanity has gotten better. I feel so much better than I did. I guess I couldn’t realize that when I buried underneath everything, but now that I’m not—I feel lighter.”

David Wolk describes some of the things he plans to sell on the new Cranky Yellow site once it launches in the video below.

Fifteen years is a long time to be doing anything. It is an especially long time for a band. On Friday November 18th, The Conformists celebrated fifteen years of playing music together. Despite the joyous setting, the evening was also bittersweet as the bands vocalist, Mike Benker, feels that fifteen years is enough for him. The band explains their feelings on Benker’s departure and moving forward in the above video interview.

The above video is an example of basic video storytelling that describes the songwriting process of the band Jack Buck. The bands songs are melodically disharmonic and rhythmically complicated, and their assembly involves more counting than it does feel initially. The video shows the band working through their songs and was shot in the bands practice space in St. Louis, MO.