All Bands From St. Louis Suck.

Waaaaay, waaaay back in the dark ages, when I was a young lad and twee, working as a music geek at KCOU at Mizzou, I would frequently opine that all bands from St. Louis sucked. Can you blame me? From the hilariously awful The Eyes (you know them as Pale Divine, which was an even worse name) to the howlingly bad The Urge...it was just pure junk. Especially when compared to cross-state rivals. Kansas City had The Bangtails and The Pedaljets. Springfield had Fool's Face and The Morells/Skeletons. Even our college town had interesting stuff from folks like East Ash and the criminally overlooked St. Monday.

But St. Louis? Sucked. Sucks. Musical graveyard.

I stuns me then to say that a St. Louis band might be about to put out one of the best records of 2006. I'm even more shocked to admit that all the guys in this band are actually older than I am. Ok, Patrick, the drummer, probably isn't. He has kids though. So emotionally, yeah, he's ancient.

The band is called Finn's Motel. Maybe if you lived in The Lou during the late '80's you remember seeing a promising band called The Finns. Or The Finn Brothers. In both bands you had a guy named Joe Thebeau doing his thing, and nearly succeeding in making something memorable.

For whatever reason, The Finns never made me swoon. Finn's Motel, on the other hand, have me playing the four songs they've released to date over and over and over again. Thankfully, all four songs are available via their myspace page. I defy anyone who truly loves great rock and roll to lisen to "Concord Village Optimist Club" or "Dramamine For Engine #3" and not be bowled over twice. That Joe Thebeau is now getting dangerously close to 40 never enters the equation. This just doesn't sound like old guy rock. In fact, there's a liveliness--a vitality--here that makes so many younger acts sound utterly fraudulent.

If you live in St. Louis, Finn's Motel will do their debut gig of sorts at Off Broadway tomorrow, August 25th. I'm hoping offers of free steak and expensive bottles of wine will lure them to the east coast in the fall. I'd kill to see these guys live.

The Best Song Of 2006.

Last year, I put The Knockout Pills, and their crazy-ass retro punk album "1+1=Ate" in my top ten of the year.

I figured I'd never hear, or care to hear, from them again.

And so but imagine my surprise when I was bored the other day and headed over to their myspace page. Click that link, and then tell the Myspace player to play you the song "Parting Gift".

Yeah.

Yeaaaaaahhhh.

If Wayne Kramer or Iggy Pop ever joined the Monkees and took a whack at "Pleasant Valley Sunday" with the amps cranked to 12 and the tempo ratched through the roof, it'd sound like "Parting Gift".

I'd guess it's a new song, since I don't have it on either of the full length albums the Pills have released. All I can say is, if these Tucson rock gods can put together an entire album that comes even within a few miles of "Parting Gift", they'll have made the greatest rock album of the last few years. This is the rock, kids. Trust us.