StLJN Saturday at the Movies: Downtown Trio - "Stanford Avenue" and "U City Blues"

This week, we're featuring a couple of homebrew videos from St. Louis' Downtown Trio, seen here performing their original fusion-style jazz in "Stanford Avenue" (above) and "U City Blues" (below).

Keyboardist Mike Silverman, his brother Rob on electronic drums, and bassist Matt Bollinger have been playing together since their teens, and as a result have acheived the kind of interplay that you just don't find in a group of guys playing standards at a pickup gig. The DT has developed their own repertoire of original compositions over the years, as well as a couple of alternate identities. They perform as The Fan Band every Sunday night on CW11's live sports broadcast The Fan Show, while their "Bach to the Future" project reworks classical melodies for a modern electric instrumental context.

Both of these clips were shot at the Pageant in 2005 when DT opened a show there for the Rippingtons. Non-St. Louisans should know that the title of "U City Blues" refers to the band's hometown of University City, which is located just to the west of the city of St. Louis proper, and has a number of streets named after famous institutions of higher learning, including "Stanford Avenue".