Missouri
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
All-Time Best Band: Uncle Tupelo
All-Time Best Solo Artist: Chuck Berry
Best New Band: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Like a hard-drinking, cockeyed pastor, Uncle Tupelo presided over the shotgun wedding of alt-country and alt-rock, spawning little alt-babies. As you surely know, the band split up into two factions, one of which became Wilco and the other of which became Son Volt. (Note: Uncle Tupelo is often referred to as a Belleville, Illinois, trio, but they really first made their bones in the Missouri clubs of St. Louis. So sorry, Land of Lincoln.) | Few have the rock-and-roll résumé possessed by guitar legend Chuck Berry: tax evasion, armed robbery, a Mann Act prostitution rap, and the innocent-sounding videoing of gals in the ladies’ bathroom of his St. Louis-area restaurant. Oh, yeah: he also invented rock and roll. | The delightful, harmony-laced power pop of Springfield’s Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is pleasing in inverse proportion to the cutesy, irritating quality of its six-word name.
Video: Uncle Tupelo
Video: Chuck Berry
Listen: Uncle Tupelo, "The Long Cut"
Listen: Chuck Berry, "Sweet Little Sixteen"
Listen: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, "Think I Wanna Die"
