Here’s a photo of the of the old Kopp farmhouse on Henry Ave. in Manchester as it stood circa 1893:

Kopp Farmhouse circa 1893

In the early 1860s, my great-great grandfather, Charles (Andreas Heinri Carl) Kopp, bought this house and 16 acres on Henry Ave. in Manchester, Missouri. This house, located at 650 Henry Ave., is still standing today, although it has been extensively remodeled (see below and more photos on Flickr). His daughter, Elizabeth, was born here in 1867. This picture was taken ca. 1893/1894.

Left to right: Charles, grand-daughter Annie (Anna) Schroeder, 2nd wife Clementina (nee Weidner), Elizabeth Schroeder (nee Kopp), and a boy that might be his stepson, Charles Steinmeier.

And here is a photo I took of the very same house earlier this summer:

The same house as it appears today.

Check out this video of the installation of three new 9′x6′ Barack Obama paintings designed by renowned underground artist Shepherd Fairey on the side of The Royale Food & Spirits on S. Kingshighway.

Richard Rodriguez created these paintings “to do my small part to get Obama elected president…”

See the set here.

Kudos to Steve & Richard for getting this done!

When was the last time you saw this sort of outpouring of support for *any* presidential candidate?

If you like taking photos of live bands, please consider sharing them with the GaragePunk.com Flickr Group! Preferably trashy, primitive rock’n'roll of the garage, punk, surf, rockabilly, R&B varieties… Keep in mind the name of the group, please.

Here’s a good idea of what we like:

King Khan

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Doubleday Publishing had a broadcasting division. They owned stations in several cities: Denver had KHOW, Minneapolis had KDWB, Detroit had WLLZ, Washington D.C. had WAVA, New York had WAPP, and St. Louis had KWK (which, by the way, had been a prominent St. Louis R&B station in the 1960s).

Doubleday had purchased KWK in 1976. At the time, their frequency was dark. A flood had damaged the transmitter three years earlier. When they did sign on in November 1978, they began as Top 40. One year later, they (as well as other Doubleday stations) shifted their format to AOR, and added an FM. KWK’s tightly focused format proved very popular for several years, until CHR regained popularity in 1983.

What was unusual about this station was that both KWK AM and FM had separate AOR formats (not to mention the fact that AOR was a rare AM format anyway). They did a morning/afternoon drive simulcast, but they had different jocks at other times of the day.

KWK-AM featured a two-hour program called “Freeform,” which aired six nights a week. The show included a mix of new wave and progressive rock cuts.

I had been a fan of KWK in the late ’70s/early ’80s and listened to it probably more than I listened to KSHE-95. I was aware they were also broadcasting on the AM dial but I didn’t mess with that much since the signal was pretty weak and it sounded so good in FM, anyway. Why bother with AM, right?

John Hutchinson

Well, sometime in early 1983 my world was turned upside-down by the discovery of a nightly radio show on KWK’s AM side called “Freeform” that was hosted by a British DJ named John Hutchinson (”Hutch” would later go on to be the board op for David Lee Roth’s shortlived syndicated morning show in 2006). I stumbled upon this show one night while I was bored and flipping through the AM dial, just goofing around, basically. The funny thing is, I had the tape running while I was doing this…

But before getting more into that, a little background: Prior to hearing that show, I was your typical teenager listening to typical teenage rock and pop of the era, mostly the stuff that I’d hear played on the FM side of KWK… my favorite band throughout junior high (ya know, “middle school” as they call it now) was ELO and I also had records (and 8-tracks!) by bands like Foreigner, Queen, Blue Oyster Cult, AC/DC, REO Speedwagon, Rush, Judas Priest, Bowie, ZZ Top… you name it. I also loved ’50s and ’60s rock’n'roll and would often listen to (and tape record) songs off of the oldies station. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Creedence, Kinks, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Doors, Monkees, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. I’d listen to Casey Kasum on the local Top 40 station and would make my own lists of songs that I liked, and run out to Peaches and buy the 45s… mostly early ’80s new wave pop hits by bands like Bow Wow Wow, Felony, J. Giels Band, The Vapors, The Waitresses, Wall of Voodoo, Missing Persons, The Tubes, The Fixx, Thomas Dolby, The Stray Cats, The Romantics, Romeo Void, Berlin, Blondie, The Cars… you name it. Looking back, I’m not sure why but I just never seemed to be exposed to any of the really early punk or new wave music that was making such waves internationally from around ‘77 through ‘82. It’s probably because I had other interests (baseball, girls, my silly coin collection, etc.) and I’d be one of those late bloomers when it came to going headlong into music.

Once I did get clued into the fact that there was something else out there aside from the bland and predictable AOR that I’d been listening to for so many years, I could usually find some of this stuff at Peaches, and would take chances on full-length LPs that had that new wave look about them (Devo, Adam & The Ants, Sex Pistols, Robert Gordon, X, B-52s, Joe Jackson, Fabulous Poodles, Gary Numan, XTC, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, Ramones, Elvis Costello, The Polecats, The Knack, Split Enz, The English Beat, etc.). This was before the days of challenging college or independent, public radio (for the most part), there was obviously no Internet and it was also before we had MTV. Jet Lag Magazine and a few other local punk & new wave fanzines had been in print for a couple of years, but it would be a while before I would know of their existence. Luckily, I didn’t live very far from KYMC, and I discovered that station (at the time with a power output of just 10 watts - barely covering a ten-mile radius around the West County YMCA) around the same time and that, combined with the aforementioned discovery of “Freeform,” greatly increased my interest in this exciting new music and also my desire in wanting to host a radio show of my own, and it wouldn’t take me long before I was on the air myself at KYMC, spinning, of all things, ska and reggae! (It wouldn’t be until my senior year of high school that I would hear hardcore punk for the first time, thanks to friends introducing me to bands like the Circle Jerks, Fear, Minor Threat and the Germs.)

Anyway, so here I was, a very musically curious 17-year-old kid hungry for something, ANYTHING different or unusual. I was already sick to death of the typical ’70s arena rock that I’d grown up listening to, so I would turn on the radio on my Zenith boom box and go up and down the radio dial, first FM, then AM, in search of whatever interesting stuff I could find. That’s how I discovered this show on KWK AM 13.8 with a host that was playing this great mix of new music without regard to your typical radio format boundaries. Punk, pop, new wave, rock… all on the same show, and a commercial station at that. Talk about a breath of fresh air! I was hooked. I made many tapes of this stuff that I’d hear on the radio, but unfortunately only kept a couple of them. I still have several tapes of my shows on KYMC and may put together a couple podcasts of that stuff in the near future… we’ll see.

Below I have a link to an MP3 that was ripped from a cassette tape I recently unearthed in my basement. I had obviously stuck the tape in the deck, hit record, then started scanning the dial for something worth taping. That is when I happened upon “Freeform”… you can hear it right there on the tape, flipping through some stations, then settling in on KWK, fuzzy static and all (the station had a pretty weak signal). The first song I heard was Sting’s version of “Tutti Frutti” from the newly released Party Party soundtrack. It sounded decent, so I kept the dial on the station and continued to record much of that show. After that I listened religiously. John Hutchinson was responsible for introducing me to a lot of artists I’d never heard before, and played others that I’d only heard on KYMC, heard about from friends at school, or had seen the records in the shelves at Peaches. Within a few months I had been transformed from being your typical ’80s teenager into a full-on punk/new waver.

So with that, I present for you, KWK Freeform, circa January or February 1983. As I mentioned before, KWK’s signal was a little rough when I recorded it, but I think you’ll enjoy this one:

Download MP3

I did some further digging online recently and found a couple of other recordings of the same program from a few months earlier that someone else had put online. I downloaded them, re-ripped the files in mono (for a much faster download) and added them to my Blip account, too. These are from October 22, 1982:

PART 1 | PART 2

Enjoy!

Are there any out there? Well, if so… PLEASE call the brand-new GaragePunk.com 24-hour voicemail line at (815) 301-3813. Leave a comment, request, stupid joke, your favorite chili recipe, goofy noises… I don’t care, just CALL!! The cleverest of the clever may just get their message heard on an upcoming episode of Savage Kick! Instant fame, incredible happiness, a new feeling of self-awareness and UNDENIABLE fortune awaits just around the corner for anyone that dares do this… and I know that some of you just MIGHT BE crazy enough to pick up that phone and call, so here’s your kick in the ass… DO IT!!

Thanks, from the bottom of my mitral valve prolapsed heart…

OK, I have to admit that this wasn’t the original idea I had when I decided that I would keep my Barracuda and seek out a more fuel-efficient daily driver, but I really wasn’t expecting to find a decent diesel-powered car for less than $10 grand, that is, until I started browsing eBay very thoroughly this past Sunday morning (when I should’ve been out working in the yard). Ever since first learning about biodiesel back in December 2005 (thanks to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code podcast), I’d wanted a late ’80s/early ’90s Mercedes-Benz 300D. These cars are amazing, and indestructible. Originally selling for upwards of $40 grand, they’re very nice mid-size luxury cars with lots of bells and whistles you just won’t get in a VW Jetta or New Beetle TDI. Plus, those engines last forever… it’s not uncommon to find people driving them in excess of 500,000, 700,000 and even a million miles… seriously! So that’s what I had always been looking for… it’s just that none were to be found anywhere near St. Louis. So, I decided to expand my search radius from 200 miles around St. Louis to “any distance” and suddenly there were several of them to check out, and I’ll be damned if the first one I clicked on wasn’t a real beauty:

My new baby

The $8,999 Buy-It-Now price seemed reasonable enough, I thought, especially if I could get it cheaper in the normal bidding process. I read the information presented thoroughly, looked closely at the included photos, and emailed the seller a couple of times with questions. I also took advantage of eBay’s AutoCheck option, which came back with perfect scores, jiving with the information the seller had provided.

The auction only had a little over 5 hours left, so I knew I would have to make a decision on it that day. The car (sorry, “auto” as MB owners insist on using) was located just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so buying it would also mean I would have to fly to Philly and drive it 860 miles back home, easily a two-day adventure. But I had never seen a 300D with under 100,000 miles on eBay, especially one that I had any chance of fitting into our budget. So after thinking on it long and hard, investigating airline ticket prices, etc., I took the plunge and placed my bid via eSnipe (highly recommended!) and set it at just over $7 grand, figuring that would be as high as we would want to go on a car of that age. The bidding rose a bit during the day, getting as high as $5,100 about an hour before the end of the auction, so my bid was good enough, eSnipe successfully placed my bid 7 seconds before the close of the auction, and I got the car for the seller’s reserve at $6,799. YES!!

So I’m pretty jazzed right now. I’ve already made the deposit, spoken to seller on the phone, booked my flight to Philly (just $79 plus tax on American Airlines… not bad!) for Tuesday July 29 and also booked a cheap motel room for my return trip in Zanesville, OH that night. I’m all set. I’ve also been getting more information on biodiesel from the St. Louis Biofuels Club and have located several recommended local auto shops that specialize in Mercedes. Hopefully the 14-hour journey back home will go smoothly (loudly, but smoothly), and I’ll be able to get this new baby fueled up with biodiesel in the near future. I will keep you posted!

The guys on the Early Valiant & Barracuda Club’s email list convinced me to keep it. Admittedly, that didn’t take much convincing. So, time for a Plan B. Will keep y’all posted.

It’s all about Kicks… SAVAGE KICKS! 70+ minutes of rock’n'roll included this time out as Kopper lets loose with an entire set of stuff dug up from the Podsafe Music Network as well as some ’60s classics and other stuff mixed in for good measure. Listen for cuts from bands like The Flakes, King Louie, the Horribly Wrong, the Hydeouts, the Chocolate Watchband, Los Hories, Chants R&B, the Separates, the Loons, Digger & the Pussycats, the Manikins, the Real Kids and lots more… Tune in and get your kicks.

DOWNLOAD MP3 | SUBSCRIBE

Well, it looks like I’m probably going to have to sell my ‘65 Barracuda. I just don’t have nearly enough time to dedicate to fixing it up like I would like to, nor can I really justify the money it would take to do that. And with the rising gas prices and the poor gas mileage it gets, it just isn’t practical to drive anymore. As it is, I’m putting $30+ of gas in it every couple of weeks, and I’m basically only using it to drive to work and back every day (a 10-mile roundtrip). So I’ve decided that I will need to get a more fuel-efficient daily driver, and I’m seriously looking for a diesel-powered car that I can run on biodiesel (used vegetable oil). Probably an early 2000s VW Jetta TDI (preferably a wagon) or a late ’80s/early ’90s Mercedes-Benz 300D Series. Depends on what I can find and how quickly I can find it. I also need a car that is easier to take my son places. The Cuda has no seat belts in the back, so my son has never been able to even go for a ride in it. I originally had plans on yanking out the back seat and installing belts back there, but like most everything else with that car, other things (house projects, repairs, vacations, bills, etc.) have taken priority. Anyway, this is just a post to let everyone know that I’m seriously considering selling it at this point and will entertain any serious offers. I bought the car for $3,300 in 2002 and have invested a good amount of money in engine work, brakes, wheels, tires, maintenance, etc. that I would like to make at least a little money on it, but I’m not sure what I would ask… it badly needs a paint job as the paint on it now (it was repainted at some point, probably the mid-’80s) is faded and peeling near the gas cap. Some very minor body work, too… very minor dings here and there, but nothing serious. It has virtually no rust, but there is some creeping in here and there if you look closely enough. So if anyone is thinking about buying a very nice, original ‘65 Barracuda (it has a Slant 6, by the way… very strong and runs great) that has never had the sideview mirrors installed (the only one like it that I have ever seen without sideview mirrors as it originally rolled off the dealer’s lot), by all means let me know. I’m also interested in hearing what anyone out there thinks I should set as my asking price… $3,500? $4,000? I wouldn’t go more than that, I don’t think. Thanks.

One of the original reasons I decided to support Barack Obama for President:

Click here to Digg it.

It’s really annoying when some people (especially conservatives and Libertarians [same diff?]) say things like “Supporting net neutrality is supporting the regulating of the Internet and we should not let the government get involved.” This is like saying the First Amendment regulates free speech by “forcing” it. One of the legitimate roles of the government is to protect the free expression and trade of public information. This cannot be done by turning a blind eye and ignoring the whole situation or by somehow thinking the same thing can be accomplished by some corporation (as Republicans and Libertarians may have you believe). The only merit to this argument is we need to make sure net neutrality is done right, with no loopholes for corporations to sneak through.

Without net neutrality, telecoms will be able to implement a tiered Internet that pushes out small websites, and the open and free Internet as we know it will soon be gone.

Vote Obama ‘08.