With most rock bands, experimentation extends only to the limits of the vocalist’s versatility. The players could range from fey indie pop to death metal in a single song, but without a style-appropriate singer for each form, such genre-jumping sounds like gimmickry. Instrumental bands operate without such restraints. They can turn repetition, a source of endless annoyance in ad…
Peelander-Z will probably outlast the five minutes a band typically gets in Japan before the next pop star is churned out for mass consumption. This band doesn’t just put on a show — it sets up a goddamned 12-ring circus. Musically, the band executes a playful style of punk rock that sounds like a less-serious Ramones, say, if someone…
It’s hard to argue that ’80s hair metal isn’t an unabashed camp genre, but take away the tasteless trappings — spandex-and-leather combos, makeup, vaguely gothic imagery, babes in leotards and leg warmers doing high kicks and all that kitschy rubbish (in other words, strip it down to the sound) — and what’s left is a fairly natural offshoot of Zep,…
Since 1997, this bizarre, Brooklyn-born trio has been exploring rock music’s unlimited possibilities, and the band’s new album, The Wedding, just may be its most ambitious undertaking to date. Apparently, Oneida built a large music box out of plywood, marine pilings, and saw blades in an effort to channel the obscure 1960s pop band the Left Banke. “We wondered…
Modern experimental music is usually esoteric, with feedback freakouts and atonal vocals scaring away audiences that might otherwise appreciate the artistry. Sonic Youth fans don’t all love formless squallfests such as the one that closed the band’s Uptown Theater show last year, but they tolerate the potential for cacophony in any given tune. By contrast, Lawrence’s Davan uses entirely accessible…
We’re wondering which would be more appropriate — to give this album the panning it deserves or to expend less effort and simply type several column inches of hahahahahahaha. Well, we should probably go with the former, at least until we run out of energy, because that’s what we’re paid to do. So, here goes: Josh Peterson, bass player…
Unique among celebrities who have achieved some measure of their fame through a sex tape, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee doesn’t come across as a total idiot when he speaks. You’d think he would know that there are better ways to merchandise his reality show, Tommy Lee Goes to College, than with this derivative pop-rock record. The expensive-sounding production throws…
Missy Misdemeanor Elliott is quite a piece of work. Not only has she devoted her lauded career to proving that she can be overweight and sexier for it (as well as very, very active in bed); she also has used her videos to turn otherwise forgettable rappers into surreal sci-fi heroes, and dancers into wall-crawling, Matthew Barney-worthy creatures. Elliott’s syle…
The neo-soul crowd suffers from the Wynton Marsalis problem: They’re better appreciators than they are creators. All those years of carrying on about how great the music used to be has kept Marvin on malt liquor posters, but it’s done jack shit to help the young lions shift units. At first, Leela James seems in this bag — her disc…
Downing’s Grill & Bar in Kansas City, Kansas, occupies a building that was a scrubby fast-food joint back when fry cooks wore paper hats. A year and a half ago, Travis Downing transformed the place from an abandoned dump to an attractive neighborhood bar and grill. And for the most part, things have gone pretty smoothly. The convenient location,…
All hail Lester Bangs! Bow down to the chosen critical few who light our way through the caverns of music. For there is an upstart we have let slide for far too long, but who we will indulge no longer. Source magazine, here is your critical fatwa! Source, you have been called “the Bible of hip-hop.” Well, there was plenty…
When the Pitch last spoke to ex-Daybird Jon Yeager in late April, he was looking for significant capital from an unnamed investor to launch the local label to which he had signed. Often, this sort of scenario doesn’t work out quite the way fledgling musicians envision. But Yeager’s benefactor, Mark Koetting, chipped in what Yeager called “a nice chunk of…
Last Wednesday night, my friend Alexi and I went to the Uptown to see Elvis Costello and the Imposters. After Brooklyn folk quartet Hem played a set as sweet and peaceful as a mother’s touch, nearly lulling us to the sleep of a breast-fed infant — and after we had refueled at the bar — we jumped to our feet…
This country — especially its heartland — needs Rufus Wainwright. He’s sexy, bold, glamorous, a genius of a songwriter and openly gay. He’s the kid in high school sauntering rakishly down the hall with Elvis sideburns and a fashion sense so good he gives even the most thick-necked jocks inferiority complexes — and he’s a consummate pop musician who has…
Once you get past its negligible plot, scant dialogue and near-total lack of action, Gus Van Sant’s elliptical rendering of the final hours in the troubled life of a grunge musician is rarely boring. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but given the absence of such customary cinematic conventions as story and character development, Last Days shouldn’t be half…
The contentedly independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has brought his restless energy to a series of surreal road movies that move nicely along on the strength of rare characters, quirky humor and a willing embrace of chance adventure. These quest stories for hipsters have transported Jarmusch’s fiercely loyal audience from New York to snowy Cleveland (Stranger Than Paradise), from a…
Where the wild things are: In Ben Paynter’s article “Reality Bites (July 28)”, I must point out one likely inaccuracy. He wrote: “Branson picked him to visit Nelson Mandela, and they made trips to Hong Kong, London, the British Virgin Islands, Mozambique and Zimbabwe before Jamison was eliminated in the fourth episode for failing to stay awake during a solo…
Ask the Boss Bitch! Jimmy the Fetus was last seen river rafting with Sen. Sam Brownback, saying he’d be back after a Bible study refresher. But we still need advice, so this week we turn to hip-hop MC Priceless Diamonds, who recently described herself to us as a “boss bitch” (“Tone Death,” July 28). Priceless tells us she’s leading a…
There once was a Kansas farm boy who, at the young age of 24 and unburdened by a college education, made one of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century. Clyde Tombaugh grew up in little Burdett, Kansas, where he turned his curiosity about the night sky and a mechanical gift for building homemade telescopes into a job with…
As the host of more than 250 author events a year, Rainy Day Books brings as much culture to the city as the symphony or the ballet. The Fairway store has coordinated the local appearances of scores of novelists, historians, diplomats and master chefs. A Rainy Day event earlier this year made national headlines when a resentful Kansas City veteran…
A handful of Penn Valley Community College students on a cigarette break are sitting at a picnic bench, talking about the naked guy in their classroom. “I’ve never had a model so proud of his stuff,” exclaims Maria Wilkerson, who has been sketching the guy’s junk in charcoal all morning at the school’s Carter Art Center. “It was the…
We heart Dante Hall, and after meeting him at the Empire Room, well … he can X our factor anytime. Now, we’re not normally jock sniffers. Nor are we really fans of anything that might remotely reek of trendoid clubness. However, we had heard that the Empire Room’s Monday-night Blo party (so called, the ad says, “because Mondays don’t have…
A reader e-mailed last week about the Web site Bitterwaitress.com, which is an indulgent pleasure for anyone who’s ever been treated badly in the service business. The reader, Phillip, said he finds the site hilarious (so do many of my friends), but I don’t make a habit of reading it very often. It brings up awful memories of bad tippers…
I wouldn’t go so far to say that cooking is fun (not for me, anyway), but I never lose my fascination for the mysterious alchemy that takes the most basic ingredients — say flour, yeast and water — and transforms them into a work of art, a perfect loaf of bread. The recipe for a perfect restaurant is more complicated,…
