If you can imagine three women in corsets and gloomy makeup, plying away at cellos to provide the soundtrack for an Edward Gorey book, you can envision Rasputina. This "pseudo-classical positive-goth cello band," as its Web site describes it, has been around for eleven years. Founder Melora Creager, who has played with Nirvana and dozens of other rock acts, has a wicked sense of humor, having recorded such songs as "Gingerbread Coffin," "My Orphanage," "Kate Moss" and "At the State Fair with a White Trash Sucker"; and albums titled Transylvanian Regurgitations, My Fever Broke and Thanks for the Ether. (Creager often introduces her songs with bizarre, lewd comments about Mary Kate and Ashley, Howard Hughes, Rollerblades and Satan, too.) Live the nightmare at an in-store concert by Rasputina at 4 p.m. at Euclid Records (601 E. Lockwood Avenue, free, 314-961-8978) and when they open for Belle and Sebastian at the Pageant (8 p.m., 6161 Delmar Boulevard, $25, 314-241-1888).
Thursday, November 6
These days everybody has a fancy title. In the spirit of "sanitation engineers" (garbage men) and "high-impact pugilistic assault technicians" (bullies), local musician Eric Hall has become "an electro-acoustic soundscape architect." In this one instance of grandiose verbiage all the highfalutin terms are justified. Hall's one-man-and-a-cocoon-of-electrical-equipment shows require sound generators, effects boxes, samplers, captured ham-radio frequencies and the occasional use of a thumb piano. Hall manipulates this potential cacophony into towers of sound that rise and fall in beautiful cycles. It is most fortuitous that local indie-punk band The Floating City is also on the bill, as Hall's aural skylines will thus have a neighboring suburb on the outskirts. All this musical town-planning gets under way at 8 p.m. at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center (3301 Lemp Avenue, 314-771-1096, $5).
Friday, November 7
After a successful series of shows at their Washington Avenue nightclub-district space, Margie Newman and Alan Brunettin of Urbis Orbis are moving a few blocks east to 419 North Tenth at St. Charles Street. The debut show at the new gallery, Along These Lines, features drawings, sculptures and photographs by local artist and gadabout Jeff Miller. Miller continues the locomotive theme he worked out not long ago at Atomic Neon (blurry, nighttime photographs of trains and related sculpture) with a new series expressing the idea that "each of us is a manifest train, hauling railcars of our own design." Stop by tonight's free artist's reception between 5 and 11 p.m., or drop in sometime before November 30 to see Miller's work (314-406-5778, www.urbis-orbis.com) and the new gallery.
Saturday, November 8
There's a definite therapeutic value in stringing beads onto a necklace or bracelet. Once you discern the order the beads must follow, you begin the contemplative, patient, one-at-a-time process of stringing them and enter that creative fugue state. Before you know it, you've turned out a chest of homemade jewelry, and you're so calm you could teach the Buddhists a thing or two. Today's Eye Candy Bead Exposition (10 a.m.-3 p.m. on the third floor of City Museum, 701 North 15th Street, 314-963-1790, $7.50 includes Museum admission) offers 25 vendors selling jewelry, jewelry-making tools, supplies and enough beads to make designer glass-bead rosaries for all of South City. Look for four interactive demo areas on glass bead-making, wire-wrapping, cord-based jewelry construction and accessorizing with beads. Guest jewelry creator Cindy Jenkins will be signing books, too, and there are door prizes every hour.
Sunday, November 9
John Lennon, the saucy Beatle, continues to hold sway over the imaginations of people who weren't even born during his lifetime. For most of his fans, Lennon's music is the primary draw, but his work as a visual artist is also acclaimed by those in the know. We mention this because Come Together, a traveling show of Lennon's artwork, stops at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza (7730 Bonhomme Avenue, 314-863-2398, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.) Friday, November 7, through today. The press kit for the show touts Lennon's drawings as "creative masterpieces situated between free drawing, caricature and illustration." The masterpiece assessment probably depends on your level of fan interest, but these limited-edition lithographs and prints (signed by Yoko Ono and marked with Lennon's own chop) do offer new insights into his family life. All of the works are available for purchase, and the suggested $2 donation for admission benefits EnergyCare, a nonprofit group providing energy services to low-income families. Very working-class hero, indeed.
Monday, November 10
Tapas makes you feel like royalty -- a kitchen produces dozens of perfectly synergized dishes of food, in miniature, so you can try a bunch of them during a single meal. If you can't leave a meal of tapas satisfied, you probably need to broaden your tastes (or drink more sangria). The Blue Water Grill celebrates its fifteenth anniversary with Flying Saucers Charity Night, an evening with a menu-ful of gourmet tapas from 5 to 10 p.m. (343 South Kirkwood Road, www.bluewatergrill.net). A percentage of the evening's sales goes to Camp Rainbow for seriously ill children. Call 314-821-5757 for reservations.
Tuesday, November 11
It's been a couple thousand years since people have had enough gumption to marshal an army of workers to toil unto death just so they could erect a pyramid. Seems people today would rather go for the pre-fab construction that sprouts up overnight than drive able-bodied men for twenty years just so's everyone would know that "Khufu was here." But who's laughing now? Archaeologists continue to discover new data about the lives of the Egyptians, and no one seems to know anything about who built all those Stuckey's along the interstate. Tonight, the area chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America presents a free slide talk by Dr. Steven Harvey entitled "New Insights into Egypt's Last Royal Pyramids: Discoveries at Abydos" at 8 p.m. at the Saint Louis Art Museum in Forest Park (call 314-432-3900 for info), and you can bet there won't be any pecan-log revelations in the presentation -- or will there?
