I have no idea what phrunky means. Is it someone who calls people while intoxicated (phone plus drunky)? A fat linguist (phonics plus chunky)? An Egyptian sprinting from Louisville to Lexington (pharaoh plus runs plus Kentucky)? Probably not. But given that Phrunky is the name of the record label founded by DJ Ty Tek, it probably is an attempt to…
There’s something to be said for being in the right place at the right time. But if you’re a funk-hip-hop outfit based in Kansas City — like local boys Pomeroy — you might as well scratch both off your wish list. Building an active fanbase on the less-than-glamorous Midwest bar and club circuit is typically easier said than done —…
Oh, no. Please, no. Not another capable yet unimaginative, eager-beaver pop-punk (boy) band with visions of heavy MTV rotation dancing in their heads. Oh, yes — and this one’s called Goldenboy, and its members determined to sound as much as possible like a slick, sixth-rate Green Day while hanging out their girl troubles and trying to hang onto their precious,…
Nobs sort of makes sense, which is better than just plain old making sense. This guy is a mess, spewing out verses for us to sift through, making anti-war proclamations and crying over cancer, then insisting that he blendered that pussy from solid fruit to a purée. The fact that Nobs is strictly indie means gangsta shit is largely replaced…
Although San Francisco improv duo the Yellow Swans deserves the “electro-noise” label often used to describe it, the imaginative CD-Rs, tapes and vinyl the pair has released since forming 3 years ago isn’t limited to long-form teakettle skree. The Swans’ palette encompasses gnawing, shortwave mayhem; dental-drill screech studded with coughing amps; guitars made to howl like broken sector alarms; and…
Too much emo hits like prom at a Christian high school — pleasant enough, but dead below the waist. Even at its crunching, heartfelt best, the lack of that roll that used to hang with rock can leave it watery. Taking Back Sunday thickens it up. Not, unfortunately, by disdaining cliché or figuring out why bands have bass players but…
Forget how critics initially jumped all over Mastodon with hysterical praise. The band actually earns it with Leviathan. Quite simply, this album is the hot buttered nuts at the metal county fair. Mastodon has earned acclaim for incorporating thrash, metal and Southern rock but has previously sounded stiff shifting among styles. Now the group’s influences have truly blended; each new…
Leftover Crack vocalist Stza sings as though he’s severely constipated. This may not literally be the case, but figuratively, there are a few bugs up his ass — Clear Channel’s stranglehold on radio and concert venues, cops he wants to kill, globalization’s perils, and so on. But, see, there are probably more political punk bands slinging this Rancid, three-chord slop…
How you doing tonight, Omaha? You’re a great crowd, Lee’s Summit! Are you ready to get crazy, Des Moines? Thank you, Djibouti, and goodnight! Uh … come again? One of those exclamations doesn’t quite fit, does it? I mean, why would any self-respecting band play in Lee’s Summit? Oh, and I guess Djibouti is kinda strange, too. The tiny African…
Santa-Cali-Gon Days is a bizarre title for a festival in a town full of — Spinach Festival, anyone? — bizarre festivals. The name is a Sesame Street fusion of syllables from Santa Fe, California and Oregon – the trails that originated in Independence — and the festival is filled with entertainment, including the Cowtown Cloggers and the gay square dancers…
Never mind that Starbucks put one of her songs on its Hear Music Sampler 10. Never mind that she has been nominated for four Grammies or that she has appeared on every other movie soundtrack released since 1998. Gillian Welch is not a star. But she might be as big as a roots singer-songwriter can get while remaining true to…
It takes a hell of a lot of nerve these days to throw around terms like frantic and chaotic to describe your own music. And it takes way more than the obvious, attention-getting spaz shtick for Bad Acid Trip to live up to the name. Luckily, this art-damaged mix of thrash, noise and theatricality has equal doses of Primus…
Texas songwriters might now be categorized by what type of tattoo is hidden under their pearl-button shirt sleeves — or how far away from the university keggers they’ve traveled. San Antonio-born Pat Green, twice nominated for a country Grammy but still rarely heard on country radio, has put in his quiet mileage. Lately he’s taken a few hits for trading…
As the curtain falls on a certain Vermont phoursome, few would argue against the notion that things just ain’t what they used to be. Only a decade ago, the Dead was still truckin’ down the road with Jerry at the wheel, and Phish was still just the right size for its cozy little bowl. Now, as rock rags like Relix…
Limbeck hails from Orange County, but the band has already established itself as a local favorite. It probably doesn’t hurt that the OC quartet’s latest album, Hi, Everything’s Great, was recorded at Black Lodge and produced by Ed Rose. It also doesn’t hurt that Limbeck’s Web site features scads of photos of the foursome chowing down at local eateries such…
These New Hampshire losers have been pop-punking it for more than two decades, through more lineup changes and Ramones grave robbery than is strictly healthy. Graying singer-guitarist Joe Queer (Joe King) — a fortysomething acting like a teenager addicted to girls, beer, rough vocals, icky metaphors and acting the fool — is the driving force behind the Queers. His three-chord,…
Every baseball person knows the drill. You have a young, versatile phenom, someone with dazzling fundamentals who’s been working his way through the system for a few years. Still, the player needs that one more something — say, the ability to pull an occasional ball to the opposite field. To help him develop, you protect him. Maybe you pencil him…
Hey, the Melvins are celebrating their twentieth anniversary this year! According to modern gift-giving tradition, that means the trio is supposed to have some platinum coming its way, right? A platinum album for its latest effort, Pigs of the Roman Empire, would be très appropriate, no? Pfffffttt. Fat chance. The closest the Melvins might come to that precious metal is…
Moviegoers who know the tides of recent Brazilian history will likely get more from Hector Babenco’s new prison movie than the rest of us. In Carandiru, the filmmaker tells us little about the society beyond the walls that helped shape the violent yet carefully ordered world within them. On the other hand, this is a deeply engaged citizen artist at…
In Victorian England, 40,000 novels were published every year. Of the few that have endured, perhaps none is more worthy of a film adaptation than Vanity Fair, if for no other reason than because it’s a chore to read. At 850 pages, with frequent excursions into unrelated subjects or expendable characters (Thackeray, like many Victorian novelists, published serially and…
Heaven forbid: I want to thank the Pitch staff for the recent articles pertaining to the church (Tony Ortega’s Kansas City Strip, August 12; Kendrick Blackwood’s ” Ministers Hate Fags Too ,” July 22). However, I am writing out of extreme disgust of the way these so-called Christians handle themselves. I heard a quote once, which couldn’t be closer to…
Take My Picture! Threads Off the rack and on the town. Harpo’s, 11 p.m. Tuesday College girls in heels totter across the cobblestone patio while a frat pack mobs the bar, ordering trays full of Dixie-cup-sized beers. The Pitch’s fashion expert, a straight guy named Bud, calls this a “cultural epicenter” — the perfect place for straight-from-the-catalog sightings of his…
Twice now, Kansans have propelled much of the debate over Senator John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Most recently, former Senator Bob Dole questioned whether any of the injuries that earned Kerry three Purple Hearts had actually caused the candidate to bleed. Yikes, Bob. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that you invited Bill Clinton to Kansas and the two…
When you’re an 18-year-old blonde in Lee’s Summit, getting out of a speeding ticket is so incredibly easy. Buying drugs is even easier. But it takes a special talent to get out of a ticket and buy drugs at the same time. As Laura tells it, she was doing 55 in a 35 mph zone, just like she always does,…
