According to a tipster to STLMedia, 100.3 will soon kill the Christmas music and move to a new format for the area: All 80s and 90s music, aimed squarely at those Gen-Xers.

Says the tipster…

CONFIRMED. GEN X RADIO COMES TO 100.3. MUSIC OF THE 90′S AND 80′S AIMED AT GEN X. EXPECT STUNTING AND A LAUNCH RIGHT AFTER FIRST OF THE YEAR. THE ARCH IS SCREWED.

We love this idea.  The only time we listen to the radio these days is when the Point is doing one of their “Wayback Weekends” full of 90s music, so if 100.3 wants to make a whole station out of that idea, we can’t wait.

I mean we still aren’t really going to listen to much radio…but if we forget our iPod, this station finally sounds like a decent music alternative.

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Actually, it didn’t take much digging to confirm the tipster.  It will be called The Sound, here’s their site, soundstl.com, which is un-shockingly horrible.

Also, to add a little bit of radio intrigue to this news it appears former head honcho of Bonneville stations 106.5 The Arch and 101.1 Movin, Jules Riley is returning to town to take on her former mates as the new PD of The Sound and possibly z107.7!

Its little secret that Jules was against the move that made 101.1 from dance music (Movin) to sports (101 ESPN) and left soon after loosing control of that frequency.  Now she is apparently back and in control of more or less the same two properties with The Sound going right after the Arch and z107.7 a more modern, and more popular, version of Movin, only with the more unstable ClearChannel.

If you give a rat’s ass about radio, this could get interesting.

If you don’t, then it won’t get any more interesting than this.  Fair warning.

We’ve been through this all before…

Last year it was MOVIN 101.1 that finally had the life-support plug pulled on it and switched to Christmas music in October, and now its 100.3 KATZ thats flipping the switch to Christmas music a little earlier than we all would prefer.  So two years in a row, the majority of St. Louisan’s are left scratching our heads as to why on earth you would want to play Chrismas music this early.

There are two reasons for this, so allow us to break it down for you.

Reason Number One: It allowed you to get a jump on the ratings

As of just a few months ago, the radio ratings system used “diaries” for listeners to tell the ratings people what they listened to.  The problem is that most people wouldn’t put in “105.7 The Point” they would put in “rock” or “alternative” or “country” so stations are allowed to stake claims on these keywords.  For holiday music, the staking process boiled down to a race: Those that start that music first get the keyword.  So when 101.1 started Christmas music last year in October, it got to stake it’s claim to the keyword “Chrismas” so that even if some reindeer sweater wearing grandma was actually listening to Y98’s Christmas music, but just wrote down “Christmas music,” 101.1 got the point.  Trickery at it’s finest.

However, in July a new ratings system came to town that is more or less a pager that people wear and it does all the tracking of what you listen to with codes embedded in the radio signal.  I’m not 100% sure how this effects the keywords, but we would think that means they are gone, which also means the only real reason 100.3 is switching to Christmas music so soon is…

Reason Number Two: It’s a Cheap Time Filler

You hear a lot of DJs on the “Christmas stations” do ya?  Nope.  You don’t pay a soul…hell you don’t even need to keep the lights on in the booth!  Playing Christmas music for a few months is a super cheap way to kill the time.  Step 1: Lock someone in a room. Step 2: Tell them to make a schedule of all the Christmas songs you have rights too. Step 3: Repeat it until the new year.  Step 4: Change the station.

It happened last year, its happening this year, and it will happen again.  But do any of the actual public like it?  Doesn’t seem that way.  Most people we hear from hated it last year and hate it this year.  Right or wrong, people get stressed out about Christmas and when you remind them its coming earlier then they would like, its not going to make them happy.  Add to that the fact that, on the whole, Christmas music sucks donkey dong and you have yourself a recipe for a lot of people dumping on your station.

Doesn’t matter to the stations though.

Maybe that kind of thinking is why less and less people listen to the radio these days…

Punching Kitty grabbed the camera and followed the brewery smell to Benton Park and the Blues City Deli’s street festival.

It was packed and a good time seemed to be had by all!  Check out the video we put together below of some of the photos.

Saturday we went to go checkout PlaybackSTL’s music festival that took place in the Loop this weekend.  This was the most interesting thing I saw:

One might think its weird that you would go down to one of the more fun areas of St. Louis to see a music festival and you hear no music, see any signs of a festival, but instead just see a scary, chain smoking clown, but that’s apparently the way PlaybackSTL wanted it…a secret music festival.

The idea of the festival is a good one.  Get a bunch of bands, both local and outside, and get them to come play and in the process highlight both good new music, and some of the great University City venues.  However, they missed the part about letting people know about it.

Seriously.  I came to the Loop Saturday afternoon to see how it was going and check out some of their panels on different topics that could help young bands.  I knew it wasn’t a good sign when I got a parking spot with no problem.  It got worse from there.  The streets weren’t any more filled than a usual Saturday, and to my shock…no stage, no bands playing outside, no music at all.  None.  So I head in to Cicero’s, where the panels are to take place.  Once again I have to check my phone to see if this is the right day/time. There were maybe 10 people in the place and the panels were tucked away on that back stage with the door closed no less.

As you can see, the panels weren’t even close to full, despite the streets being full people that had no idea any of this was going on!

I don’t understand this at all.  Why bother having a music festival in the Loop if you aren’t going to bother using that great street atmosphere?  I asked around and I heard the same thing from a few people: The organizers thought a free, outdoor stage would take away from wristband sales.

Yes, thats a moronic way to look at it, and if thats how you feel, go do the damn thing in St. Charles, but whatever at least there was some sort of thought put in to that decision.  What about the decision to not promote the damn thing at all?  No one had an answer for that, but I did talk to several people that had no idea whatsoever that the festival was going on!  Well done.  To make matters worse, the best show of the night at the Pageant, featuring several great local acts, wasn’t even a part of the PlaybackSTL line up!

I’m not taking away anything from the bands, which I hear many of them felt guilted in to playing, rather than actually wanting to, and I’m not taking anything away from the panelists.  They all did great work, its just too bad PlaybackSTL didn’t give them the support and audience they deserved.

Last year’s attempt was much better.  There were people in the streets, a stage next to Vintage Vinyl, and a feeling of an actual festival.  This year it felt like a secret club meeting.

I do hope they do this again, and I hope they do it right the third time around.

Kyle Turley was traded to the St. Louis Rams in March of 2003, which seemed to set in to motion a series of crazy crap for Turley: injuries, a battle with then head coach Mike Martz and then more injuries that resulted in him leaving the Rams and having a short stint with the cross-state Chiefs.

What’s Turley up to now though?  Music.  Country music.  Good country music.  [Editor's Note: You have no idea how hard that was for us to write that!]

We caught up with Turley to talk about his music, and what else he is doing these days.

Punching Kitty: We aren’t country fans by any stretch, but we have to admit, your new stuff is great.  In particular, the song “Flying Helmets” [Editor's Note: If you don't get the title, watch this.]

Kyle Turley: Thanks brother!…I’m glad you dig it, I’m just trying to make music that represents me all around. My influences growing up were pretty wide ranged, from Jonny Cash to Slayer. I’m not really trying to copy anybody with my album, it’s just me is all I can say. The songs up on my myspace now are a good representaion of what is to come with my full CD but I have been working my ass off and playing alot around Nashville and the influences keep coming with all the talent here. I can tell though that the songs to come on the full length are going to wake some people up.

PK: The song “Flying Helmets” is going to get some people talking for sure.  You even drop the f-bomb on Mike Martz! (Listen to the song, in its entirety below!)

KT: The title of my album is ‘Anger Management’ ( they made me go to it after I threw that guy’s helmet) and I have alot to get off my chest from the crazy life I was able to live being in the NFL. My music is about real issues dealing with real people and situations life has delt me both good and bad but just a whole lot of truth and a bit of wisdom I gained along the way. Music is the best form of anger management I could have ever prescribed for myself…

PK: Anything else you want to let people know about?

KT: I am donating 100% of download sales of my song ‘Final Drive’ to www.gridirongreats.org, it’s about a bit of my own life but I wrote it about all the guys who have suffered from Traumatic Brain Injury from contact sports and the Military.

Thanks to Kyle Turley for taking the time to talk with us, but a screw you also goes to Turley for actually making a non-crap country song and no longer letting me say “I hate country.  Its all crap.”

You can listen to the full song “Flying Helmets” in the video below.

The RiverFrontTimes’ DailyRFT has Jeff Smith’s resignation letter, plus about 300 other posts about Jeff Smith.

JoeSportsFan.com has video of my personal favorite Busch Stadium beer vendor showing how the pros announce what they are selling!

Who loves the bad economy?  Libraries of course!

Speaking of libraries, apparently you can masturbate in them!  Who knew?  Not me!  I mean there are some computers that I think are pretty covered so I mean its wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but…look, I mean who’s to say what constitutes masturbating anyway?

The PlayBack STL Music Festival line up was just announced. (via @philberger)

This is a little old being as it was posted in October of last year, but I just ran across it today and its a great little piece shot in the Loop about a street musician named Bryson Gerard.  I know I’ve seen this guy sitting in front of Vintage Vinyl from time to time, and I’m guessing many of you have too.

The page for this on Current is here: current.com/items/89393462_street-musician-st-louis.htm

I know its been about 4 months since the NIN concert in St. Louis, but I ran across this footage, and figured I throw it up.

[ The image associated with this post is from Flickr user lindsaypoo. Its a great photo, and her screenname makes her sound sexy! ]