On the Minus 5’s self-titled, seventh album, Scott McCaughey, singer, guitarist and ringleader of bigger names (Peter Buck, Jeff Tweedy and John Wesley Harding), sounds like a clinically depressed painter whose only medium is decorating birthday cakes. His sweet, detached voice repeatedly addresses themes of drinking, death and regret in the native language of weightless ’60s pop, party rock and…
Kansas Citians tend to take things for granted, especially when it comes to some of the city’s most well-known mainstays. (Whether you realize it or not, barbecue in almost every other part of the world tastes like boiled cow with ketchup on it.) It’s not surprising, then, that Koufax — that ubiquitous piano-pop outfit from nearby Lawrence — often gets…
Last year, Wakarusa brought even bigger acts than the year before. This year, in addition to the big names, there’ll be a lot more smaller ones, thanks to Battlerusa, a series of 18 shows at which bands compete for a spot in the third-annual Wakarusa this June at Clinton State Park. Spearheaded by a tie-dyed-in-the-wool collective called the Loyal Family,…
Jimbo Mathus After the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ implosion in 2001, the band’s co-founder, James “Jimbo” Mathus, returned to his Mississippi roots, literally and figuratively. Following up the thread of blues he’d explored with the Knockdown Society on 1997’s Songs for Rosetta, Mathus began to till the dark Delta soil of his youth. His subsequent three albums have mined a grimy,…
Doe Who says you can’t go home again? Rapper Doe and his Upset Records family are trekking back east to the prairie of Kansas, his home until his family headed to Denver in 1996. Although Doe, CEO and “it” man of the Upset label, now resides in the Rockies, his Kansas roots are evident in the Bay Area gangsta-rap language…
After Richard Buckner parted ways with San Francisco’s country-roots band the Doubters, he developed his true niche as the lonely, brooding troubadour he is known and loved for being today. His morose, downtrodden music is influenced by the Texan approach to roots rock. But the biting, edgy lyrics are more alt country than true-blue country and western. Buckner, who resembles…
With their rapid-fire subversive stabs, Asylum Street Spankers are like a Family Guy hootenanny. This Austin, Texas, outfit has devoted entire albums to irking the easily offended. Spanker Madness skewered the war on drugs, and Dirty Ditties lived up to its title, producing “The Scrotum Song” (It’s my wrinkly, crinkly bag of skin). Not all of their antics stand up…
All hail “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” That slice of ’70s-meets-’90s mass-market rock was a nice break from the sour-faced caterwauling of the “alternative” years. But Lenny Kravitz has far outstayed his welcome, and now he has debased himself for Absolut vodka. For slapping on the chaps and walking the street, we pronounce a fatwa! Now, we do not…
Armed only with a case of Budweiser, some spliffs, a few Air Wick candles for ambience and a passing knowledge of contacting the spirit world gleaned from Ghost and Witchboard, four friends and I joined hands around my dining-room table as the clock approached midnight on Friday, January 13. “Shabooh, shoobah, shamma lamma ding dong … we summon you, Michael…
She Wants Revenge’s Justin Warfield and Adam Bravin have been on the music scene for more than a decade. The Los Angeles DJs and producers had crossed paths many times, but only recently did they find a way to turn their love of American soul, break-dancing records and ’80s music into a tense, percolating amalgam of guitars, beats and electronics…
Nestled in a loft on Union Street among the quiet, austere warehouses of the West Bottoms is musician and actor Laura Frank’s studio and performance space, the Pistol Social Club. The place has no bar, no TVs, no neon beer signs, no countertop video games, no cigarette marketers. There is, however, a giant toy six-shooter hanging over the entrance, as…
The Peanut downtown on Sunday nights is hip-hop heaven. Scratch DJs take turns at the decks while a constant parade of B-boys and B-girls rocks the floor, making jaws drop and bargoers bounce vicariously, wishing they could bust out moves like that. Featured MCs take the mic, rapping lyrics that stoke the positive vibe. The only people who feel…
Martin city: Regarding C.J. Janovy’s keen commentary on Katheryn Shields’ bombastic diatribe at the St. Stephen’s MLK celebration (Janovy, January 26): I was there! Oh, geez; it was awful and appalling, and I, too, was embarrassed for all of us honkies in the audience. Groundbreaking, historically monumental social justice work; imprisonment; being shot down in cold blood — all of…
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. Should U.S. troops pull out of Iraq? Hell, yeah. They done went and got what they was looking for, so get the hell out of there and pay…
Kansas City, Missouri’s dedicated police force is so good at tallying stats on homicides — how many there have been and how the number compares with those of previous years — that pretty much anyone on the street can tell you the city’s murder count. Solving them? Well, they’re still working on that. But while we overload on homicides, on…
Wal-Mart obviously knew how to make its managers feel at home this past weekend when they gathered for their annual meeting in Kansas City. The second floor of Bartle Hall had been transformed to look like the inside of a Wal-Mart, complete with yellow smiley-face signs. Aisles held everything from toiletries to TVs. On gym-style bleachers in the center of…
At first, the Tupperware party was just another random event on a Pitch reporter’s night off. The gathering was in a three-bedroom apartment just east of 51st Street and Troost, a beautiful space decorated with orb-shaped rice-paper lanterns, red-shag area rugs and a sexy leopard-print couch. The host, Angie Rosete, was attending the University of Missouri-Kansas City and needed a…
