TUE 2/8 In America, two of the most incendiary topics are race and politics. Farai Chideya tackles both on a regular basis with her books; her talk-radio show; her Web site (www.popandpolitics.com); and as a commentator for CNN, MSNBC and BET. On Tuesday at the Penn Valley Theater (3201 Southwest Trafficway), Chideya discusses her 1999 book The Color of Our…
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…
August Wilson’s Two Trains Running opened here last week with a production that could alternately be titled Three Hours Running. Though it’s crisply directed, beautifully designed and vividly performed, the play just doesn’t justify a length going on 200 minutes. Since 1982’s Jitney, Wilson has been documenting the black experience in America by penning a play about each decade…
Carlos D, the beloved bassist for Interpol, hardly needs to pursue a career as a DJ. He could easily pursue the typical bass-player lifestyle: Get smashed onstage because everyone’s watching the singer, fondle someone backstage, vomit behind a dumpster, pass out in the bus. But little Carlos can’t seem to stop — or sleep. And, by all accounts, he gives…
I’ve got two stories about the first time I heard that voice, that voice, that voice coming out of Lyle Lovett’s mouth. There is the cool, laid-back, stuff-of-legend story. And then there is the story that makes me sound like a friggin’ idiot. The cool story is this: Hot day. Pressure cooker. Heat-rash-in-fragile-places hot. Shaded porch. Old-style radio, the kind…
Hardcore breakdowns usually share songs with clear, confident female vocals about as often as supermodels show up at Rush concerts. And yet, Flee the Seen, which alternates its crushing slow-down segments with sickle-sharp melodies, combines these elements in combustible fashion. Kim Anderson’s strong, smoky singing soars over jagged riffs, dense drumbeats and her own staggered bass lines. Guitarist R.L. Brooks…
Behind the Geto Boys’ corpse-fucking, race-baiting cartoon cannibalism lurk rap’s most compelling storytellers. The trio breaks down into surprisingly vibrant, vulnerable personalities. Scarface, a diagnosed manic-depressive with suicidal tendencies, alternates street-life stories with disturbing diary entries. Willie D, a slow-drawling brawler, hides straight-razor social commentary in rotten-apple rhymes. And Bushwick Bill, a dwarf who lost an eye during a suicide…
Is it any wonder that today’s biggest emo lyricists — Eminem, Anticon’s Dose One and Atmosphere’s Slug — began their careers as battle rappers? After all, the constant personal needling at the hands of opposing MCs had to make them acutely self-conscious of their flaws. Headshots: Seven compiles a series of Atmosphere’s early releases, when, in Slug’s own words, he…
It’s tough to make a record about weariness without wearing everybody out. Before the Poison, as resigned and lost as anything Marianne Faithfull has done, avoids exhaustion by pairing her with rockers P.J. Harvey and Nick Cave, two rare icons with as much soul mileage as Faithfull herself. Poison is a tribute to Faithfull’s ravaged voice, an instrument with the…
After making an indelible impression with 2002’s seismic Source Tags and Codes, Trail of Dead appeared poised to deliver a pretentious follow-up. When Worlds Apart opens with an “Overture” that includes an operatic choir and an ostentatiously ominous piano melody, it seems as if this track will be the first float in a pompous parade of three-part suites, flute solos…
I’m not a violent person, but I really wanted to stab Wallace Cochran in the trachea with a ballpoint pen. Cochran had never done me wrong. In fact, I was quite taken with the warbling folk music he performs with Drakkar Sauna, less for its endearing old-timey aura than for inspired song titles such as “Very Much Alone Part 4:…
Super Bowl festivities seldom showcase hard-rockin’ acts. And after last year’s Janet peekaboobie fiasco, it’s even less likely that event organizers will book Cannibal Corpse or Pungent Stench, lest people enraptured with watching men brutally cripple each other might have their virgin eyes and dainty ears offended. Heavy Frequency, the Kansas City online metal magazine, has corrected this oversight. Instead…
James McMurtry is hamstrung in the studio. Indifferent production saps his hard-edged story-songs of their power, and his average album comes out somewhere between a book-on-tape and some folky compilation from those bores over at No Depression. Live, though, his gifts have no place to hide. His guitar stings with more grit than twang; the band kicks so hard you’d…
Oklahoma is not just the inspiration for a hit musical anymore. What once was considered a barren wasteland is now, well, a barren wasteland that somehow produces wacky orchestral-pop progressives. Aqueduct is one of these diamond-in-the-rough projects. Reedy-voiced singer David Terry rejoices in brightly tinted drone-pop, sitting on the edges of jubilant triumph and nervous breakdown. The band’s new album,…
There usually isn’t much incentive to attend numerical-milestone gigs such as a band’s 100th concert. But Namelessnumberheadman took awhile to reach the century mark, playing sparingly over the past four years, and it’s ready to celebrate in style. In addition to constructing a stellar lineup (Ghosty and hip-hop heavyweights Approach and Sounds Good open), NNHM has compiled a free, one-time-only…
There are five reasons why the Asylum Street Spankers will rule the world someday: (1) The Austin, Texas, outfit melds a multitude of venerable musical styles into a satisfying sonic gumbo. (2) The Spankers kick serious booty in concert — and they don’t need amps or a PA system to do it. (3) ASS has more red-eyed odes to sticky…
The Holidome in Lawrence becomes an ersatz country fairground (minus the port-a-pottie tragedies) for one weekend every winter with the Free State Music Festival, perhaps to the consternation of weary turnpike travelers. But you won’t find a more bangin’ Holiday Inn for miles around with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, singers of the sweetest harmonies in bluegrass, and local groups the…
OK, jam-electronica may officially have become a fad since Sound Tribe Sector 9 played here last fall. (We’re not sure, though, because we at the Pitch like to stay away from trend-watching music rags as much as possible.) Fad or not, it hardly matters. Why? Because innovators of individual styles transcend trends. So don’t shoot the messenger — it’s not…
Dear Diary: Hey, it’s me, Andy Jordan, the singer from Matchbook Romance. Long time, no talk, but so much has happened to us since I last wrote. First, we’re becoming famous! Can you believe it — us, a little old band from Poughkeepsie, New York? We have over 27,000 MySpace.com friends! People with screen names like “onethousandtearsxx” and “*sO cuT…
In the past decade, Springfield, Missouri, beat-blender DJ P has arguably mixed more incongruous ingredients than any other working turntablist. On Uneasy Listening, his collaboration with Z-Trip, P made Public Enemy bring the noise to Naked Eyes, Sting walk in Nas’ footsteps and Phil Collins dance with Del. DJ P’s most recent release release, Suck My Mixx, maintains the format:…
Buried deep within the headquarters of Interpol — the global police organization based in France — our Pitch spies found an extensive dossier on New York City’s most notorious scenemakers, Interpol. This highly classified folder falls under the rubric of the agency’s commitment to preventing, detecting and suppressing crime. More specifically, the files contained within detail the red flags that…
How does Mike Leigh do it? While the years pass, film fashions come and go and Hollywood churns its commercial pap, Leigh makes his films, tracking the intricacies of the lower-class English family with the patience of a man cutting diamonds. So what gives? He must know he has something good on his hands. With Vera Drake, his latest…
For some time now, the Strip has been hearing a lot of carping about the new addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. So last week it took a trip to midtown to see the thing for itself. Since 1999, the fancy expansion has been turning one of the most recognizable places in Kansas City — the neoclassical building with…
