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Review by Sean Carswell for Razorcake Magazine, Issue #13, April/May 2003
Jason Pankoke of MicroFilm wrote a review of this movie that inspired me
to hunt down a copy for myself. Shortly before reading Jason's review,
I d watched a recent movie about an underground rock scene, and the
movie drove me nuts. It was so self-congratulatory and insular, and
the kids interviewed seemed so naïve that I started to feel like I needed
an antidote to that film. After reading Jason s review, I thought I d
found the antidote. I knew that I was holding STL 2000 up to some
pretty high expectations, and I also knew that part of me felt like the
flick didn t stand a chance against my expectations, but I requested a
review copy, anyway, and had the video in my VCR within an hour of
getting back from the post office. And, to my surprise, it lived up
to my expectations. This is a pretty fucking rad movie.
STL 2000 covers a year of the punk/hardcore/rockabilly scene in
St. Louis. In the spirit of making a time capsule, this movie starts
and ends at a New Year s party. In between, we meet local bands,
hipsters, zine guys, writers, club owners, and disc jockeys. The
interviews cover what seems to be a fairly broad cross section of the
underground music scene in St. Louis. Not everyone interviewed has
horribly intelligent things to say, but, to filmmaker Matt Meyer s
credit, he does get them talking about a variety of topics. Some of
the people interviewed lament the death of punk rock, some celebrate its
vitality, some pine over the loss of the good old days, some look
forward to the future, and a lot of them have very level-headed, lucid
insights into underground culture. Two of my personal favorite points
were the interviews with Phil Motion Sickness and the two owners of the
punk club Creepy Crawl. Phil s interview was interesting not only
because he explained the madness behind publishing a zine, but because,
when he explained the madness, I recognized the look on his face as the
same look I get on my face when I explain why I drive myself nuts
working on Razorcake. But Phil always seems to have a good
attitude.
It comes through in Motion Sickness and it comes through in his
interviews. The Creepy Crawl guys are interesting because one of
them, Shannon Hill, is preternaturally laid back and open minded, and the
other guy, Jeff Parks, gives the most dead-on description about the
difficulties of opening a business yourself that I ve ever seen. He
describes what it takes to open a venue and covers everything from
finding a spot to getting licensing and permits to basic accounting, and
it s priceless when he tells you to figure out how much money you re
gonna need and double it, to figure out how much money you expect to
make and cut that in half, and to be prepared to get screwed; the key is
to just keep from getting screwed too badly. It s been a long time
since I ve seen anyone that honest in an interview.
Perhaps the most jarring thing about STL 2000, though, is the
pacing. It s remarkably slow-paced, especially in relation to the
music it covers. In the first few minutes of the movie, Meyer films a
poorly-attended basement show featuring the band Wreckless Angels.
The show is moderately entertaining, but it s not exactly what you would
call a high-energy set. After about a minute of watching the
Wreckless Angels play, I realized that Meyer was going to stick with them for the
entire song. It made me feel a bit restless. I felt like he should
just get on with it. Then, I thought about it more and decided that
Meyer shouldn t just get on with it. I realized that this was
probably the only time I was going to watch this band, and I had the extra two
minutes to spend listening to a whole song. So I relaxed. I
listened and I watched the moderately entertaining set and I ended up really
digging the song. At that moment, I decided that the movie wasn t
paced too slowly. The problem was just that I was used to movies being
paced too quickly. I ve grown accustomed to the rapid fire editing of the
music-video era where images come and go so quickly that you can t
really look at anything. Meyer, on the other hand, seems to feel as
if no one really gives St. Louis a fair chance, so he makes sure that you
get enough information to give it a chance. And I really appreciate
that.
For the most part, the bands covered in the movie are pretty
solid. None of the bands left me feeling like I had to rush down to
the record store to pick up an album, but I am keeping most of the bands
names in mind when I flip through the Razorcake review pile and through
the seven inch sections of my local record stores. All of the bands
are worth the few minutes spent covering them. One curious thing about
the bands, though, is that Matt Meyer is in the St. Louis pop-punk band, The
Ded Bugs, and Meyer s film completely ignores his own band. Meyer
takes the anonymity one step farther and pretty much eliminates himself from
the film. With the exception of one bit at the very end, Meyer never
lets himself be seen or heard in the film. He lets the film and the
people speak for themselves. It s very respectable. By the end of
the movie, I really admired the tenacity of the bands, the clubs, the fans,
and everyone else in the St. Louis music scene.
I'm so entrenched in punk rock that it s easy for me to forget
that punk rock scenes don t thrive everywhere in the US. There are so
many good shows and so many good bands in LA that I tend to forget that
the rest of the world isn t as privileged as I am here. But I come
from a small town in Florida where punk rock barely exists, and I ve spent
years having to drive to Orlando to catch snippets of touring acts and
local bands that just don t have a chance. I tend to forget about
that, though. Watching STL 2000 helped me to remember what it s like to
struggle to have any kind of scene at all. It s good to remember
that. It helps give me perspective. Maybe that s what I enjoy most about
this film.
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