In building the rock musical Joan the Maid from the life of Joan of Arc, the new Princess Squid Productions is electrically charged about the girl and her fans and foes. The troupe’s members throw caution to the wind, pretending that her exploits are occurring in a media-saturated present while remaining true to her past, and they pray that it’s…
Sometimes a perfectly good album is ruined by a casual remark. For instance, the finger-snapping high time once offered by Swedish pop band the Concretes was lost to me forever after someone pointed out that the group’s vocalist sounded like SpongeBob SquarePants. So, Devendra Banhart fans, stop reading here if you want the spell to remain unbroken. Fair warning dispensed,…
Phish typically views studio sessions as opportunities to pull tour-tested material into some semblance of order, so Round Room represents a marked departure. With twelve new tunes selected from a pool of twenty and recorded in a fistful of days after only a few weeks of practice, Round Room was intended to be raw, loose and immediately intimate. In another…
When Ben Gibbard and Chris Walla began recording the songs that would become the foundation of Death Cab for Cutie’s full-length debut, few could’ve predicted that the pair would go on to be regarded as the Morrissey and Marr of the neo-indie school. But these eight-track basement tapes, which showcase Gibbard’s gift for melody and Walla’s layered production, were surefire…
Space-age wonder woman Missy Elliott travels back in time on Under Construction, which includes several unaltered old-school hooks and a minimally manipulated cover of Method Man’s “Bring the Pain.” Yet for all its golden-era hip-hop nods, the disc still sounds futuristic. Elliott’s clipped delivery seems to come from a post-apocalyptic world in which a silence-is-golden civilization rations syllables, leaving humans…
New Jersey, a mythical wasteland of shopping malls and toll booths, would seem to be the perfect breeding ground for hardcore punk. Indeed, many an act has claimed the state’s desolate backdrop as an inspirational source of angst, but not Blind Society. It’s fitting, really, that the group shuns that cliché, because it has a long history of contrarian…
As depicted in Barbershop, inner-city haircut-and-beauty establishments can be havens for amusing antics and serious social bonding. Ace (3404 Main) is such a place, a community fixture where Danny Murray has been cuttin’ heads for 55 years. But unfortunately, life behind the scissors isn’t all civil-rights-leader baiting and good-natured apple-juice swiping. On December 27, this master of the clippers…
His fans already know that Kevin Mahogany is one of the greatest singers in the world. With any luck, the live recording he’s cutting this week as part of the ongoing Jammin’ at the Gem concert series will alert the rest of the world to the fact as well — even those who don’t ordinarily describe themselves as jazz fans….
They’re crawling out of the woodwork these days, young hipsters with acoustic guitars and notebooks filled with half-formed songs and fully plotted album concepts. Itching to find a place for themselves among all the David Grays and Howie Days, they dream of catching a high-profile patron’s eye. Dave Matthews seems to have the Midas touch, tapping one aspiring artist…
There is a blatant lie on the cover of Full Feature’s latest album, One for Your Health, which lists the disc’s contents as 93 percent rock music, 7 percent sweet ass. Seven percent sweet ass, maybe. But there’s not quite 93 percent rock here, for the equation also includes white-boy hip-hop and pseudo-funk. Full Feature live is a phenomenon that…
The unfortunate thing about art rock is that it rarely rocks. As good as Gong and Can were, the groups’ natural aversion to rock standards made their music inaccessible to everyone but music nerds. But freaks and geeks alike can take pleasure in Chicago’s Oh My God, a trio that uses only an organ, drum kit and occasional bass…
When the Rollins Band performs, frontman and namesake Henry Rollins generally swaps onstage patter for brutal musical statements. But when Hank leaves the band at home for his annual spoken-word tour, you can’t shut the guy up. With topics free-ranging from Spinal Tappish road tales to gone-awry romances and even the frightening contents of his morning breakfast, Rollins covers everything…
This spring, Richard Thompson will release his first album in three years, The Old Kit Bag. The unusually long layoff is in part the result of Thompson’s departure from his previous label, Capitol. The revered guitarist and songwriter is another of the prestige acts who have had trouble securing major-label backing in recent years, though Thompson has always operated…
In the past few years, touring underground rap acts have struggled to attract attention in Kansas City. Artists such as the Roots and Mystikal languished at Memorial Hall gigs that felt like poorly attended school dances in a sterile concrete gym, where the cavernous empty space swallowed bass lines and absorbed the crowd’s cheers. The Coup released last year’s most…
When New York’s Interpol formed back in 1998, the band members knew little about one another. Daniel Kessler met Carlos Dengler in class at New York University and invited him over to play music. When Kessler ran into a casual acquaintance named Paul Banks, he asked him if he’d like to sing in the new band — without knowing whether…
The Bakery might be the quintessential student-musician living space. The 11-foot-by-11-foot bedroom studio houses everything from Miles Bonny’s mattress to the midnight-hued Dell computer that stores his music. Well-worn Nikes and overripe T-shirts compete for space with boxes of Tuna Helper, bags of Lipton Alfredo Broccoli and an oversized jug of bargain-brand lemonade — helping to explain the Pepcid…
In A Guy Thing, Paul Morse (Jason Lee) has a terrible problem. He’s all set to marry the take-charge, raven-haired beauty Karen (Selma Blair, thanklessly playing second fiddle as usual), but late in the game he finds himself also falling for her free-spirited blond cousin, Becky (Julia Stiles). It’s always nice to see a story that average moviegoers can relate…
I believe I may have a first sentence,” murmurs Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman — yes, really) to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), commencing labor on her fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The year is 1921, but the book’s heady emotional content will ripple dramatically through the lives of other depressed women in succeeding decades. At least in theory. Welcome to…
Score!: I just finished Greg Hall’s “SOFA Awards!” (January 2), and it was very entertaining. I’m glad he got an extra page in the Pitch to stretch it out a bit. Good stuff! I sure hope he doesn’t get a migraine transposing Neil Smith’s pidgin English. Will KCTV Channel 5 send Neil to a speech pathologist in the off-season? Jack…
It’s finally here! 2003! The year of Kansas City! After sitting idle during a decade of economic prosperity that sparked urban growth nationwide, the City of Fountains is ready to make its move. And just to show all those pansy cities that flourished the easy way (we’re looking at you, Dallas), Kansas City will make its civic strides in the…
Three years ago, an irresponsible pet owner’s loose chimpanzee made the news by attacking a teen-age girl near Erotic City, the sex shop and strip club on East Truman Road. Shortly afterward, Jackson County Animal Control Officer Ray Campfield paid his first visit to Dana Savorelli. Savorelli’s 10-acre property on the outskirts of Greenwood is home to forty monkeys, a…
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s up to you whether to act on it, but you should know ahead of time that an opportunity like this might not arise again in your life. So hear me out. All right. What if I told you that your days of listening to that rusty old muffler are…
It never occurred to us that the farm-team concept could be applied to bars. But after checking out Tasso’s, the Greek restaurant at 84th and Wornall, we couldn’t help but think of it as Have a Nice Day Lite. The Royals have the Omaha Royals, the San Jose Sharks used to have the Blades, and the Chiefs had the 49ers…
Ninety years ago, a seafood restaurant at 8th and Walnut called the Morledge Fish & Oyster Restaurant had a separate dining room for ladies so they didn’t have to eat an aphrodisiac like oysters with strange men looking on. My friend Jennifer — who found The Buffet at the Ameristar Casino (see review) to be without any sex appeal whatsoever…
