Pale Divine was the biggest band in St. Louis in 1991. They seemed to be on the verge of mega-stardom. Then they signed to Atlantic Records and were doomed ever since. Signing to a major record label can be a blessing or a curse, unfortunately, nine times out of ten it’s a curse. The band was busting out of their St. Louis seems and made an absolutely brilliant record called Straight to Goodbye.
I remember being a teenager in St. Louis at this time and you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing or hearing about these guys. Although I never did get to see the live show, I did see singer Michael Schaerer several times and I’ve watched guitar master Richard Fortus in Love Spit Love, Honky Toast (I fucking loved these guys by the way and I saw them play in a bowling alley in New York City, actually ON the bowling lanes. They were bloody brilliant!!!), The Dead Daisies and of course Guns n Roses.
I’m not going to go down the rabbit hole of the entire history of the band as I couldn’t do it any better than this article did here a few years ago. With that being said, I made a trip to my hometown of St. Louis a couple of weeks ago and the band did a surprise show for a friends B-day. Tickets were free and only available through the band members. I was lucky enough to get a pair of tickets for my first night in and it was absolutely epic.
Even though I really only know the songs from the debut record, Pale Divine filled a good two hour plus set that was incredible. All the “hits” were included along with carefully selected covers and a few rarities. Even though I didn’t see the band in their heyday, I’d find it hard to believe that they were not as good as if not better on the stage that night at the Delmar Hall. Bravo Pale Divine, you guys still got it. Now if we could only get that fucking record on Spotify so I don’t have to dig out my cassette tape to relive the glory.
