In the years since the Civil War ended, the battle of North vs. South has apparently evolved from muskets and uniforms to rock music and haircuts. This weekend’s anniversary of Quantrill’s Raid adds fuel to the fire with North Versus South, a 3-day festival of country twangers, soft singer-songwriters and pop-rock outfits from Minneapolis and Austin. Mike McCoy, formerly of…
Polly Apfelbaum Like any good artist, Polly Apfelbaum makes complex work. But it is also dazzlingly beautiful, which in the past has caused some snooty art-world folk to dismiss it as mere décor. “People don’t want you to deal with beauty,” Apfelbaum says. “I was interested in the decorative arts. I was interested in the everyday. Screw you. If it…
I know that it’s all for the greater good, but whose genius idea was it to schedule major construction at the Nelson and the Kemper at the same time? The entire interior southeast wall of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is covered with a temporary wall of whitewashed plywood and plastic sheets, blocking off the Sally Kemper Wood and…
If August is this slow next year, I’m booking a flight to Edinburgh, Scotland, or New York City to take in their annual fringe festivals, where this year’s theatergoers are besotted with such loopy fare as Armless, a black comedy about a man determined to saw off his upper limbs, and Believe in Me — A Bigfoot Musical. Last…
Some birds have all the luck. Those would be the ones that perch near the deck of Hesse McGraw and Cobi Newton’s house just north of 39th Street in Kansas City, Kansas. While other winged ones are off digging for worms or tirelessly pecking at tree trunks, these birds eat like kings from a designer bird feeder, courtesy of —…
In between building beats for Lawrence’s Archetype and slinging sandwiches for Yello Sub, Jeremy “Nezbeat” Nesbitt managed to find enough spare time over the past 3 years to create a collaborative album with an exciting cross section of local talent. We haven’t heard From the Huge Silence yet, but judging from Nezbeat’s previous work and the artists with whom…
When people describe a band as “diverse,” they usually mean that the band has trouble focusing on what it’s good at. Instead, it ends up “branching out” into “groundbreaking efforts,” à la Spinal Tap’s “jazz odyssey.” But the Velvet Teen manages to present a diverse array of sounds on concise recordings on which the experimentation is welcoming. The California…
The Asylum Street Spankers ride the line between genuine love for roots music and parody of it. The Austin, Texas, troupe uses banjo, fiddle, saw, acoustic guitar and haunting female vocal, but the presentation isn’t exactly typical. In fact, the Spankers are about as subversive as folk gets. Especially when lead eccentric Wammo has the microphone, uttering all manner of…
If politics makes for strange bedfellows, state-fair concerts make for the kind of shacking up that sickos pay good money to download. Take the final three acts at the Missouri State Fair’s Pepsi Grandstand. First night: Switchfoot, a San Diego-bred, “we rock hard but we’re spiritually sensitive, dude” foursome, paired with the deep, dark rock of Earshot. Second night: Country…
What’s a rocker to do when his formerly successful side projects head south creatively? For Lou Barlow, the answer is: Sweep the plodding memory of the last Folk Implosion record under the rug and dust off Sebadoh, the indie idol that made lo-fi a way of life for a generation of slackers in the 1990s. After reuniting the band for…
It’s just as well Lollapalooza was scrapped; we didn’t even make the damned thing’s itinerary. No, the palooza we get is Y’allapalooza, a 100 percent y’allternative-free country-music marathon headlined by Tracy Lawrence (pictured) and Clay Walker. Considering the two haven’t made real waves in a decade or so, it seems strange that either would score top billing when the future…
Russell Simmons makes things happen. In the ’80s, the record mogul pushed hip-hop out of the ghetto and into suburban stereos. In the ’90s, he blazed a new trail with his Phat Farm urban clothing line. Whether it’s HBO programs, magazines or his various philanthropic pursuits, Simmons gets what he wants. And now he wants the hip-hop generation to get…
It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 6 years since the overplayed, sing-along sounds of Fastball cascaded from our stereos. For real? Was I out of my head? Was I out of my mind? STOP IT. How could I have ever been so blind? SERIOUSLY, KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF. The band had two big radio hits — 1998’s “The…
It’s official: Tsunami Bomb frontbabe Agent M is the most crushworthy female in showbiz. Sure, she’s a raven-haired beauty, but she also has a name that sounds like a James Bond villain and a sirenlike voice that stretches far beyond the usual punk-rock boundaries. M and the rest of T-Bomb caught the underground’s ear with the masterful full-length The Ultimate…
After the sugary rush of the New Pornographers’ first two records, the solo exploits of the band’s primary songwriter, A.C. Newman, seem somewhat anemic at first. But what Newman’s recently released The Slow Wonder really represents is a chance for his songwriting to catch its breath and sigh. Despite moods as blue as its AM hooks are sublime, the perfect…
PD: How does Projekt Revolution differ from, say, Ozzfest? JS: Ozzfest is the metal fest. Everything is so … serious. On this tour, it’s like a giant party. There are so many groups playing so many different styles. But everybody just has a good time. We have barbecues by the bus, jam the stereo, toss around a football. Any epic…
Mr. Dinsdale: This is your conscience speaking. Yeah, it’s been awhile. You’re probably wondering where I was during the egg-beater incident at that brothel in Guadalajara. And why, you ask, was I nowhere to be found during that situation with the salad tongs and canola oil at the orphanage in Baton Rouge? My bad. But let’s not point fingers. This…
Best Pop The Get Up Kids Best Rock Reggie and the Full Effect Best Male Vocalist Matt Pryor (the Get Up Kids, New Amsterdams) Best Female Vocalist Angela Hagenbach Best New Act Ad Astra Per Aspera Best Live Act Reggie and the Full Effect Best Electronic Namelessnumberheadman Best DJ/Dance Paul DeMatteo Best Jazz Wild Women of KC Best Hardcore/Metal Salt…
A metal band is sitting here talking about subtlety. About understatement. About holding back. A metal band. Restraint has never been among metal’s most celebrated virtues, and Truth Cell is not immune to the allure of a good lyrical hard-on. But the resurrected Lawrence band imbues its “crushcore” music with a poise rarely found among the violent thrashers of its…
In an unprecedented coup, the Pitch has obtained classified documents detailing the government’s investigation into Linkin Park’s third annual Projekt Revolution tour. In light of the Patriot Act, high-ranking officials concerned with any gatherings that might reek of cultural rebellion have ordered government scientists to assemble — through any means necessary — a group of the most notable revolutionary scholars…
A good friend likes to say that there’s only one kind of great pop song — the song that someone had to create. All that counts is that the song is performed without guile and without pretense. The Shins — guys who wear their pet sounds and rubber souls on their shirtsleeves — make music like that. Their albums sound…
As a reviewer, it can be very tempting to want in on the ground floor of a phenomenon, to say you were there first when some low-budget feature with a nifty premise made its festival debut, only to be picked up by a big studio and turned into a national phenomenon. It’s even more tempting to play the contrarian,…
Dare to care: After reading Tony Ortega’s KC Strip (” Johnny on the Spot ,” August 5), I went to Westport the next night to check out Johnny Dare’s bar for myself. And yes, Mr. Ortega was right — there are very few young blacks in Westport. But I beg to differ on why. The young black males and females…
Cool or Embarrassing? Do you really want to know about some gangsta shit? Outkast asked that crucial question on 2000’s Stankonia. But Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline doesn’t want you to get your gangsta shit from public libraries. Kline has made sure that 33 album titles won’t be among those included among the discs that Kansas libraries are to receive…
