Doug Wright likes his social misfits. With Quills, for example, the playwright adapted his fascinating play about the Marquis de Sade into an equally fine screenplay humanizing the man whose name is synonymous with putting pain on the sexual menu. Wright’s last project was even more beloved. (It’s tricky loving a sadist.) A pile of transcripts from interviews he…
Affluenza! High praise goes to director Mark Ciglar and the bountifully gifted cast of James Sherman’s smart, tart comedy about the poisonous effects of having too much money. Sherman’s choice to write the show in rhyming couplets, à la Moliere, is distracting only until the ear gets used to it — then it becomes damned clever. Of the uniformly winning…
Roberto Juarez: They Entered the Road How we choose to memorialize the dead often has something a little, well, dead about it. Monuments and plaques are fine and dandy, but how do they give us any clue about someone’s life? Roberto Juarez attempts to answer that question in this collection of five paintings, each one titled in tribute to…
Stones Throw 101 marks a milestone in Chris Manak’s built-to scratch career as Peanut Butter Wolf. Conceived at a time when Dre, Snoop and Tupac seemed to have the left coast on lockdown, Manak’s Stones Throw Records has become a veritable halfway house for up-and-coming DJs, MCs and ’70s funk recidivists. “I started out as a response to a lot…
Okkervil River (Jagjaguwar) It might seem counterintuitive, but a new release by an adored artist isn’t always cause for celebration. As followers of Prince and Guided by Voices know, prolific performers inevitably sacrifice some degree of quality for quantity. Okkervil River is showing some of these saturation-syndrome tendencies. Since 2003, the Austin, Texas, outfit has issued a brilliant full-length, a…
The year 2004 was a good one for Buckners. Bill Buckner — the infamous ball-flubbing Red Sox first baseman —received a pardon when his former team finally won the World Series. And Richard Buckner, one of the most disturbingly depressed performers of the past decade, no longer seems to be phoning in his lyrics to a suicide hotline. Oppressive angst…
Conor Oberst has never lacked ambition. The 24-year-old has been recording music since he was in the womb, and his ability to write songs at rapid pace would dizzy Bob Pollard. Oberst has catered to his various musical longings with various musical projects, whether playing with Bright Eyes, the Desaparecidos or as part of one of the assorted other collections…
When we met Pink Martini artistic director and pianist Thomas Lauderdale after the 10-piece Portland, Oregon, group performed with the Kansas City Symphony two years ago, he handed us a couple of CDs that became our bread and butter. The first was a mix eclectic enough to crash an iPod (a Kenyan folk song performed by the Muungano National Choir,…
When combined, hardcore punk and swirling psychedelic pop can create panic-inducing acid trips. So it’s best not to blot with Scatter the Ashes, even if the group’s dark-side-of-the-Floyd instrumentation feels like an intriguing invitation. This Nashville quartet injects frantic drum fills and jagged noise into serene soundscapes, and, after a few listens, the combustible combination makes a strange sort of…
No one can accuse Duke Robillard of resting on his laurels. For nearly 40 years, the legendary guitarist has been moving from band to band, slowing down just long enough to cement a group’s place in history and pick up an armful of awards before continuing on his merry way. As a founding member of Roomful of Blues and later…
Brooklyn’s the Forms may have released its debut, Icarus, back in 2003, but the band’s low-carb emo aesthetic is a perfect fit for these calorie-conscious times. At a trim, muscled 18 minutes, Icarus delivers the melodic, dynamic nutrition that sweater collectors need to make it through the workday without adding pounds. Soaring-comet guitar choruses, leashed riff-raff tight as a pair…
Every few years, a new ancient voice arrives on the scene to rev up the same ol’ authenticity debates and stale Billie Holiday comparisons. Last year, it was Jolie Holland’s turn for both scoffs and well-deserved year-end best-of citations. Holland shares a label (and some vocal inflections) with Tom Waits, and her press clippings include reasonable comparisons to early Lucinda…
There’s an air of genuine rapport that comes with each of folk singer-songwriter Greg Brown’s songs, a mix of small-town charm and Midwestern sensibilities that renders that artificial division between performer and audience as ridiculous as a speed limit sign on a gravel country road. With a simple, stripped-down approach to his work, Brown continues to paint himself as a…
Queensryche’s recorded output has sucked for 10 years, arguably longer. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because the Seattle prog-metal outfit’s current setlist includes an intensive re-creation of its career-justifying 1988 concept album Operation: Mindcrime. For those unfamiliar with the plot, Operation: Mindcrime follows street urchin and heroin addict Nikki, who becomes an assassin for raving megalomaniac Dr. X. Nikki falls…
“Fuckin’ a” may be the most wonderfully ridiculous expletive around these days. Is it self-censorship of that unutterable a? And what the hell is the a, anyhow? If it stands for the not-all-that-offensive ass, then why not just say effin’ ass? Perplexing. But given that the Thermals may be the most wonderfully ridiculous punk rockers around these days, it’s fitting…
Pink Floyd fans are pissed, and rightfully so. Someone has slapped the black tar out of their beloved heroin anthem and given it the Frankie Goes to Hollywood treatment. But let’s face it — songs cautioning the dangers of smack are a total buzzkill, and the good folks at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences know it, which…
In a decision that will cause both joy and heartbreak, Anything But Joey has announced its decision to split up after nine years. To many, ABJ was one of the hardest-working, most consistently entertaining live bands on the scene, filling regional nightspots with a decidedly estrogen-soaked, sorority-girl fanbase. Others derided the quartet’s faux-punk sonics and gel-boy image. ABJ began as…
I’m a big fan of proclamations. I can’t say I care much for the Proclaimers — I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more to be the man who never heard that fucking song again — but proclamations kick serious buh-buh-buh-booty. Simply put, they make plebian ‘clamations — claims, declarations and the California Raisins included — their…
Blue Collar Distro isn’t something you’d expect to find in Eudora (or Kansas, even). The company’s business model — given the experience, age and lifestyles of its 15 employees — is not something that theoretically should even work. But somehow, despite some less than mature antics (say, building a ramp for the employees’ miniature motorcycle in the middle of the…
You have to hand it to Sean Penn. After being pilloried in the press for visiting Iraq under Saddam’s reign and torn apart by house cats in a puppet movie, and having made himself look even worse by writing a moody “open letter” to Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone based on an offhand remark they made in…
Over a three-month period in 1994, machete-wielding Hutu tribesmen in Rwanda hacked to death 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children. News reports, including film footage of the unfolding carnage, were broadcast around the globe. In the face of such unremitting acts of inhumanity, the world community did nothing. It wasn’t the first time society had turned a blind eye…
Baby mama drama: I am a regular weekly reader of the Pitch. I understand that you guys are very tongue-in-cheek and that humor plays a big part of the Pitch, but I have to say I found the cover totally and utterly offensive (KC Strip, “Stork Club,” January 13). A woman died, a man is now a single father, and…
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, showing us all that what we learned in Sunday school really does matter. Dear Jimmy: I keep hearing about these schoolteacher women who get caught having sex with their students. Seems like the television always has some story about these teachers facing all…
Last November, residents who lived near the corner of 24th Street and Cyprus Avenue were celebrated as heroes. Rachel Riley and her neighbors were hailed by The Kansas City Star for their yearlong series of marches, which were credited with all but stopping a dismal series of crimes. In less than two years, 19 black men, ages 15 to 24,…
