Retros pt. IV

Word was getting out about the punk scene in St.Louis. Well, at least other news was slow enough that people were looking for things to write about and some would stumble upon accounts of the punk scene and it would raise their antenna. They may have heard about the goofiness that went on in England and think, "oh cool, I could break this underground anti-social movement story happening right under our noses." Well, the initial notice was regards some "radical" behavior. Steve Pick, Duwan Dunn, George Dunn and myself (if there was someone else, I can't remember) showed up to protest outside KSHE radio that they were refusing to play punk (or alternative or new wave or whatever you want to call it now) music. While KSHE was no longer the top-rated radio station in ST.L, it was still an influential beast at that time. And for all the experimenting and ground breaking that FM radio used to do, by the time the late seventies rolled around, all the dj's were pretty ensconced in their persona's and very resistant to change. They were especially resistant to something that was critical of their behaviour, which punk (especially US punk) was very much so. If you can imagine an entire body of music from the early 70's to the mid 80's being ignored by popular radio, you can start to get the gist of what was going on in radio back then. All of these radio stations that sought out "new" music and challenged the status-quo in the late 60's, hid behind those very same discoveries and avoided any further "discovery" of the newer musical trends that were just cracking out of the seed in those days.
Anyway, I digress...The four of us protested/picketed across the street from KSHE. We had signs, marched around up and down the sidewalk. Probably hardly even noticed. But, we had one "in." Steve Pick was interning at a local newspaper and had some connections. Elaine Viets was a rising star at the St.L Post Dispatch in those days and decided to do a story on us.
The article consisted of the four of us with supplemental interviews with Dave Thomas of Cool Jerk. By my inclusion, the Retros were also featured in a photograph. Unfortunately, we had no upcoming gig to capitalize on the notoriety. But, publicity is publicity and it didn't hurt to get the pic and the mention. The funny story on that is when the photographer (Karen Elshout) showed up for the first photo session at our rehearsal space. While I'm sure it was interesting, with the porn posters (prominently displayed above one of the doorways) and junkiness of the space probably didn't present a good background. Subsequently, we got called down to the Post studios and had a photo shoot downtown. It was not a great photo but, it got published. I remember we were like little girls, trying to decide what to wear. Photo reproduction being what it was in those days, it turned out pretty low quality in the paper regardless of our preparation.
I've yet to scan that or some other articles from that period.

Later...more gigs, more media