In his cutting new play Bee-Luther-Hatchee, Thomas Gibbons raises probing questions about the human need to connect with art. But he also issues a warning about making assumptions when it comes to the artist’s intention. The pain of being tricked can be sharper than a serpent’s tooth. In this Unicorn production, Bee-Luther-Hatchee means about the same thing purgatory means…
Local alt-rock trio Overstep embraces all the requisite ingredients of the “Kansas City sound”: jagged guitar phrases, hiccuping backbeats, roving bass lines and a singer who wouldn’t know the meaning of nuance if he had a dictionary. Guitarist and vocalist Adam Stotts’ angular six-string passages can’t begin to compensate for his pained yowling. Alex Organ is an overactive drummer, filling…
With their minds on their money and their money on their minds, major-label musicians have been stooping to new tactical lows in the ongoing effort to hinder online leaks of unreleased product. Would-be pirates who tried to download new efforts from Eminem and Linkin Park were treated to “digital decoys” that continuously looped a frustratingly small portion of the song….
Like fellow Astralwerkers the Beta Band, A Band of Bees’ Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher operate in the hazy zone between electronica and rock. Previously, the Isle of Wight duo forged excellent organic funk in various outfits for Holistic Records. A Band of Bees is a more eclectic, song-oriented venture; but even though it’s more accessible, something special has been…
Though born and raised in Centralia, Illinois, blues guitarist Corey Stevens has called California home for more than twenty years. He couldn’t have picked a more appropriate locale. After all, Hollywood thrives on the myth of identity and the art of reinvention. Stevens entered the Southern California dream machine as a wet-behind-the-ears novice and emerged fifteen years later as a…
Featuring String Cheese Incident drummer Michael Travis, guitarist-drummer Xander Greene and hammered-dulcimer master Jamie Janover, Zuvuya is a unique instrumental trio that combines the fanatical energy of the jam-band aesthetic with a liberal dose of world-beat mysticism. The result is an inspired effort on the part of three musicians dedicated to the daring of experimental live performance and the intuitive…
The Neville Brothers — Aaron, Art, Charles and Cyril — haven’t released an album since 1999’s Valance Street, but the legendary New Orleans outfit hasn’t lost a step when it comes to performing. The Crescent City foursome remains a formidable live unit, despite the fact that the members’ collective age hovers somewhere north of 200. Although the brothers didn’t record…
Fans of abrasive music can seem like drug addicts, always looking for a harder dose to satisfy their fix. When down-tuned seven-string guitars, three-drummer attacks and German digital hardcore no longer get the heart racing, it’s time to seek out something even crazier. The Blood Brothers’ Burn, Piano Island, Burn is set to redefine the extreme music landscape the…
Drummers: Who needs ’em? The All-American Rejects’ members refused to twiddle their thumbs during their search for the perfect percussionist. Instead, they wrote songs to the beat of a drum machine, which ended up filling in for the flesh-and-blood variety on the duo’s self-titled debut. The guys know how to take starry-eyed adolescent angst and wrap it in crazy pop…
Perhaps the best free evening entertainment in town, the Blue Room’s Blue Monday Jams showcase the skills of top young players while also spotlighting the bandleading abilities of established masters. Each week presents a new challenge for the apprentices and a fresh stylistic template for audiences. This Monday’s session should be especially supercharged, with Westport Art Ensemble making a…
This charity-concert collision of seemingly disparate Lawrence acts — Get Up Kids, Approach and DJ Not a DJ — isn’t as strange as it might seem. The Kids are the area’s best-known rock act, capable of winging over to Japan or Canada whenever they feel like playing out-of-town shows. But the lauded quintet is in good company with hip-hop…
Although plenty of songs have used canned helicopter to propel their prefaces (we’re looking at you, Aldo Nova), few, if any, have actually incorporated the monster sonics of a fully operational U.S. Air Force attack plane. Using digital equipment, “Sonic Force” co-composer Dwight Frizzell captured the full range of motion of two A-10 Warthog crafts, from their cacophonous takeoffs…
Hey, did you hear that KKFI 90.1 is becoming a Christian talk-show station? Yeah, this right-wing radio magnate named Paul Gardener had money to burn after an estranged former dignitary from Nigeria funneled millions into his bank account. Kinda sucks that all the local shows got canned — well, Country Jesus still has its slot Thursdays at 10:30 p.m.,…
Be it a rabbit’s foot or a treasured guitar pick, it’s not unusual for musicians to bring lucky charms and other talismans into the arena. But when Lamb of God’s Chris Adler takes the stage, he’s often toting his drumsticks in a barf bag. “There’s nights where nine or ten songs in, I get really dizzy because of the stage…
On March 10, during a London concert, Dixie Chicks leader Natalie Maines prepares to introduce the trio’s No. 1 country hit, “Travelin’ Soldier.” Part of that introduction includes an off-the-cuff, unspecific criticism of George W. Bush, who at that moment appears more determined than ever to wage war in Iraq. “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States…
Eddie Murphy has long since tired of Eddie Murphy parts. Before he began parodying himself in Bowfinger, he accepted high-paying roles in low-rent movies that neutered the character he had carefully honed before he was even 25. He spent most of the ’90s in movies — The Distinguished Gentleman, Beverly Hills Cop III, Metro, Holy Man — written for “an…
Just to admit this up front, my concept of the ideal musical comedy involves Bryan Adams and Dave Matthews garroting each other onstage with their own guitar strings. Nonetheless, even viewers with a more centrist appreciation of the genre may feel disappointed by this friendly new folk-music curiosity called A Mighty Wind. God love Christopher Guest for being unrelentingly…
Bed, bath and beyond: Allie Johnson’s “A Nasty Rumor” (April 24) needs clarification. Apparently this was a slow news week for the Pitch, as the actual event happened on August 10, 2002. Reports indicated that it was a stripper party that fronted for an AIDS fund-raiser. The party allegedly turned into an all-out orgy. There were several complaints verbalized to…
Coffee is no laughing matter at the Economic Development Corporation. As Kansas City’s business-pimping partner, the EDC hosts various 8 a.m. meetings at which some of the area’s biggest players swap wit over cups of java. Some take sugar, some take cream; all of them work to make Kansas City gleam. The EDC’s mission is simple: Attract businesses to Kansas…
The search is on for Waco Carpenter. He is a short, crew-cut white man reportedly last seen wearing an old laminated badge and hitting up ATA riders for money to run his homeless shelter. Except that he no longer runs a homeless shelter. The people who live there say he’s just on the run. Carpenter was in charge of a…
Last week: Like too many other kids from Kansas City’s urban core, Marcus Leach was drifting toward obscurity at Kansas City’s “academically deficient” Central High. Then he found his future in a game of endless possibilities — only to find his greatest victory stymied by a fifty-year-old Missouri rule. Marcus Leach has a plan to end racism. And if…
We have a somewhat embarrassing admission to make: We know very little about wine. Oh sure, we know we like Rieslings and Merlots, we’ve been to winetastings, and we’ve had many a Bridget Jones-type girls’ night, in which we’ve gotten absolutely snockered from bottles of Chardonnay and cheap champagne while snarfing Ben & Jerry’s and other guilty delights. When it…
My friend Jeff insists — straight-faced, as it were — that gay men invented the Sunday brunch in the 1970s so that “friends could gather over a late, late breakfast, hungover from the night before, to compare notes on who they had picked up at the bar.” Sorry, Jeff, but the late, great journalist H.L. Mencken had long since reported…
In “The Yellow Bird,” one of my favorite short stories by Tennessee Williams, Alma Tutwiler, the daughter of a prim preacher, finally rebels against her father’s Victorian restraints and takes up smoking, drinking and swearing (not to mention bleaching her hair). She also takes up with dozens of lovers in this morality tale gone awry: The town’s good girl goes…
