We’ve formulated a theory in our explorations of the KC bar scene that more random, entertaining shit occurs at suburban, out-of-the-way watering holes. A recent Wednesday night foray to The Fox was no exception. We heard that its midweek karaoke session was drunkenly raucous. So, naturally, we were all over that like Clinton Portis in a costume shop. We assembled…
Taking Freddie Mercury’s “Keep Yourself Alive” mantra to heart, Kansas City’s house music audience just won’t give up the ghost. And Kabal fuels that longevity drive. Don’t fear the stereotypes about Kabal — it’s neither particularly exclusive nor dangerous. (This is Kansas City, people.) Granted, thuggish types sometimes gather upstairs on weekend nights, but if that makes you uncomfortable, head…
In the early ’70s, Rodd Keith was a deadbeat dad who fled his Pentecostal life in Michigan for Hollywood. There, he regu-larly devoured PCP, claimed he was “God’s chosen,” and composed hundreds of song-poems — cheaply recorded pop tunes produced by sleazy, low-rung recording companies that placed advertisements in the back pages of magazines so that ignorant, amateur poets would…
Phil Spector’s legendary “Wall of Sound” is the inspiration for this massive, engrossing collection of early-’60s girl groups. The record producer’s best-known sides are absent, but it’s amazing to hear how creatively energizing his hits were during a brief period usually disparaged as a downtime in “rock’s maturity.” Among the standard swooning sob stories born of ’50s doo-wop and the…
In December’s Vibe, Mary J. Blige said that even though she’s comfortable revealing her abs in photographs, “I ain’t giving you titty, nipple, pubic hair or damn near clitoris.” That’s certainly the most colorful quote from a public figure this year, but Blige’s comment actually runs counter to the nature of her career, in which she has aired love’s dirtiest…
The Strokes were labeled the saviors of New York City’s rock-and-roll scene when they oozed out of hipster enclaves (and, er, prep school) in 2001. But in the years since, all of the tricks that made the fab five so exciting — snappy hooks, half-drunken confessions of love or lust, Velvets-meet-AOR riffs — began to sound as tired as the…
There’s a lot of exciting traditional hip-hop going on in KC. And then there’s Bacon Shoe. This trio — consisting of an MC (Lethal D) who raps about sex and disease, a hype man (‘Toine) who shouts out the number of beers he happens to be holding and calls himself “the cocktopus” (because I got eight dicks), and a guy…
The Golden Falcons Another rawkin’ multiguitar Texas band, Dallas’ the Golden Falcons, flies into town this week. But rather than bounce power chords off folks’ skulls, these guys seem intent on saving indie fans from the post-hardcore blues. All dirt and snarl on their early demos, the Falcons have grown into an octet that grinds together robotic postpunk, hardcore…
In local-band time, the seven-year-old National Fire Theory is getting pretty close to retirement age. But with a newly released full-length, Blackout Days, on GreyStitch Records and a West Coast tour just around the bend, it seems like this is one band that’s just getting started. Since forming in 1999, the KC quartet has been on the same musical, if…
If Depeche Mode staged a hostile takeover of Coheed & Cambria — which we’re not suggesting, mind you — the result might sound something like San Antonio’s the Panic Division. The young quintet’s debut, Versus, is a satisfying amalgam of emotive mall-punk, prog-rock ambition and metallic aggression. If you’re not listening closely, it’s easy to dismiss the band as another…
A stellar example of Web-savvy name-making, A River Forth has accumulated more than 2,000 documentable fans before releasing its first album. Instead of waiting for studio samples, the Lawrence-and-Topeka band smartly posts excerpts from its live shows on its eponymous MySpace profile page. No images of the group’s members appear on the site, but it’s not because they’re shy: Singer…
Bastard pop has become an international phenomenon over the past few years, and inexpensive, easy-to-use software has given anyone with a computer the ability to become a mash-up producer. Based in the Netherlands, Mashculture offers a stag- gering archive of some of the most bizarre blends and remixes from across the globe. The Silence Experiment’s Q-Unit album stitches together 50…
Stephen Pedersen is really tall. He’s also been in Cursive and the White Octave, and he now fronts Omaha’s best rock band, Criteria. Oh, and in a move we’re sure gave his student loan office a coronary, he quit his job as a trial lawyer last year to support the band’s stellar Saddle Creek debut, When We Break, full time….
All the protests and petitions finally paid off: Bush is gone. John Bush, that is, the polarizing former frontman for the admirably persistent thrash outfit Anthrax. Bush’s decade-plus reign (1992-2004) makes up the influential group’s second chapter, marked by compositional maturity and decreasing commercial relevance. Operatic squealer Joey Belladonna presided over the Bronx band’s arena-packing Monsters of Rock pre-Bush years….
When the band finishes its last song, a woman at the end of the bar speaks up. “It’s like a sustained orgasm,” she says. A Wednesday night at Davey’s doesn’t seem like the typical time or place for women to be comparing blues to great sex. In fact, how often does that happen anywhere? Kansas City should rejoice because, for…
The walls of Anodyne Records are starting to bulge a little. Not literally, of course. The label’s home — hastily stashed in a near-abandoned West Bottoms red-brick-and-mortar, teetering above three stories of gangplank stairs and creaking plywood doors — seems like it could collapse in a stiff breeze. But that’s not why. Not at the moment, anyway. The inside, its…
Moviegoing sports fans have had ample opportunity in recent years to pick and choose their favorite miracle — Shoeless Joe Jackson emerging from the tall corn, Rudy suiting up for Notre Dame, Rocky going the distance with Apollo Creed, the U.S. hockey team taking down the Russkies. Now comes Glory Road, the story (more or less) of the 1965-66 Texas…
Over the centuries, the legend of Tristan and Iseult has fueled the derring-do of King Arthur, aroused Richard Wagner’s operatic thunder, driven poets as diverse as Shakespeare, Tennyson and Edwin Arlington Robinson to the heights of passion, and helped stock the back streets of Manhattan with companies of leaping Jets and Sharks. The complex cycle of tales, largely from…
See Mayor Kay’s MySpace page at www.pitch.com/downtown-diva/. Categories: News Tags: Columns, MySpace Inc.
Picket fencing: Read Eric Barton’s December 22 Kansas City Strip. Want you to know there is more going on in the Christian church besides the conservative right and the liberal left. If you’d like to know what a great number of theologically traditional and politically progressive Christians are thinking, you can subscribe to the free e-zine at sojomail.com. The idea…
Hip-hop MC Priceless Diamonds describes herself as a “boss bitch” who grew up boosting clothes and turning the occasional trick. She’s no angel, but she’s got advice. So listen up, y’all. What’s your New Year’s resolution? For one, to step my game up in every area of my life. Meaning closing deals, finishing books and making deadlines. Work out three…
Johnathan Wendel is a cold-blooded killer. He plays violent, first-person-shooter video games better than anyone in the world. The genre may have apocalyptic undertones — such as Painkiller’s story of a man killed in a car crash, trapped in purgatory and charged with stopping an unholy war — but the objective is simple: Kill the other guy more often than…
According to Occam’s Razor (Elite Entertainment) Black Books: The First Complete Series (BBC/Warner) The Chumscrubber (DreamWorks) The Constant Gardener (Universal) Dead Poets Society: Special Edition (Touchstone) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Bueller . . . Bueller . . . Edition (Paramount) The Flash: The Complete Series (Warner Bros.) The Gambler (Time Life) Hawthorne Heights: This Is Who We Are (Victory) Hustle…
There’s an oft-repeated urban legend about Dragon Quest’s popularity in Japan: So many gamers ditched school and work to play that the government decreed that future releases had to take place on weekends. In reality, there’s no such law, but as with most myths, the message rings true, even if the details don’t. Dragon Quest is indeed huge in…
