I hear plenty of people from the New Yorks and Chicagos of the world bitch about St. Louis. St. Louis sucks, they say. St. Louis is lame. There’s nothing to do. Well, in fact there is plenty to do. Start small, start local, and you won’t be disappointed.
Start, for example, with local Phish cover band Riker’s Mailbox and funk-infused rockers Goonamona last Friday at Cicero’s. There is little that can rival watching art being born for under $10. And with jam bands like Riker’s and Goonamona, you can’t find a better place to watch it happen than Cicero’s. It’s intimate without being suffocating, and with no barrier between audience and stage, you can get close enough to see spittle.
The atmosphere at the show Friday night was close and friendly, almost familial. The band members chilled with the crowd before their set, and seemed eager to make everyone feel welcome. Riker’s Mailbox opened their first set with “Suzy Greenberg,” which got everyone in the mood, but in no way was the set era-specific.
They bounced around from album to album, working with old as well as newer material. As a fellow audience member noted, the band has only been together in its current form since early 2000, and have yet to smooth out their transitions between songs.
This was most noticeable in the break between an unusually upbeat, staccato “Water in the Sky” and the mellow groove of “Roggae,” which follow each other on the 1996 album Billy Breathes. On the other hand, the energy and spontaneity the band exhibited jamming “Mike’s Song” into “Simple” proves that Riker’s Mailbox will only get better with time.
After opening their second set with a Bob Marley cover, the band went off on “Chalkdust Torture,” followed by a great jam on “Twist,” leading into “Owner of the World.” This dose of Oysterhead was a welcome reminder that there are plenty of tunes from Phish side projects like Oysterhead and Vida Blue that justify the band’s hiatus. The band wrapped up the set with a sweet “Tweezer” jam, and the lesser known “Loving Cup.”
After Riker’s Mailbox cleared the stage, the crowd was treated to Goonamona, a tight and funky trio whose six years of experience performing together is evident on stage. Goonamona brought out the funk and got everybody (thanks in part to the post-Mardi Gras crowd influx) up and grooving. If you get a chance to see these guys, do. They rock out on a mix of Frank Zappa, Grateful Dead, and various other covers and originals. Maybe it was the energy between the crowd and the band, or maybe it was between the crowd, the band, and the beer, but it was pure fun.

Catch Riker’s Mailbox at the Benefit Show and Auction for the Mimi Fishman Foundation on March 30, and at other “Grateful Grooves” shows at Cicero’s in the U-City Loop.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2002 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.