As a result, books line almost all walls of the bungalow, books of all sizes and types, books on nearly every subject under the sun and not a few under the moon—everything from mass-market paperback reprints from the Doc Savage pulp magazine bought new for 35 cents three decades ago to Professor Otto Pfleiderer’s Primitive Christianity in four blue hardbound volumes. Some of these books can even be seen despite related magazines, comics, newspapers, and miscellaneous files also cluttering the bungalow; some of them, furthermore, I’ve even read.

Frederick's Music Lounge is closing (supposedly) after tonight. The club is a fixture in St. Louis and has been for many years. Its owner, Fred Friction, is the kind of musical character that you cannot make up (unless, perhaps you are Tom Waits) and is becoming a rarity in this day. Many local bands and an impressive handful of national acts owe their maiden voyages in St. Louis to Fred. His awesome little club will be missed and mourned. The Sports Desk did a fine piece on Frederick's three years ago, and on the last day of Frederick's we pass it on to you. The final show tonight features Two Cow Garage from Ohio, an exact and perfect choice for the final go of an institution.

FROM THE PLAYBACK:stl ARCHIVE: Now, on the eve not only of the first anniversary of Cash’s death but also of a Sotheby’s auction of property from his and June Carter Cash’s estate—in New York this September 14 through 16, the gavel will fall on 773 lots ranging from a pair of Carter Cash’s girlhood shoes (Lot #1) to an unthinkably white tuxedo of Cash’s (Lot #611) to a pair of harmonicas the Man in Black used in Boston on his last concert tour (Lot #747)—my thoughts perforce have turned once more to a topic they’ve avoided for a year.

Something like a smile curls his lips, and his gaze, in its focus, borders on the ferocious. He has mad eyes, in fact, and that’s apt, really, because he is mad, mad about music, a circumstance that becomes apparent when he steps to the microphone and starts to sing: “Now I taught the weepin’ willow how to cry—”

FROM THE ARCHIVES: In any event, in the days immediately following Thompson’s death, various members of the PlaybackSTL staff meditated on his legacy on our nonpublic Yahoo! Groups forum. Columnist and career gadfly Byron Kerman, for instance, touted Thompson as a singular stylist; book editor Stephen Schenkenberg, meanwhile, reported that he had just reread passages of Thompson’s work sans epiphany.

In the spirit of seasonal vacuity—the irresistibility of which, obviously, will hinge on the masochistic inclinations of a given reader—this column outlines the merits and demerits of the five nominees in what the academy designates as Field 8, Category 42, “Best Country Album”...

What follows weighs the merits and demerits of the NARAS’s Field 8, Category 42, “Best Country Album”: CDs from one star of the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives, an act generally characterized as bluegrass instead of country qua country, actress Kimberly Williams’ hubby, the distaff representative of the so-called Muzik Mafia, and Mrs. Garth Brooks.

Designed for maximum impact without descending to popular but simplistic devices like mock grades.