Big Ideas, the second foray into folk-rock from local singer-songwriter Joel Kraft, is both authentic and refreshingly hard to pin down. Kraft’s songs, for the most part, fuse clean, inventive harmonies to partly cloudy lyrics. The album opens with the upbeat “Something’s Got to Break,” a number that smacks of Jonathan Richman’s touch and throws a trumpet into the effortlessly…
Hip-hop owes a lot to LL Cool J. He’s been in the business for more than 20 years, churning out memorable hits such as “Goin’ Back to Cali” and “Mama Said Knock You Out.” Sure, his acting career might have taken a nose dive since his debut in Krush Groove. But we forget all about Deep Blue Sea and…
Southern Missouri’s Domino Kings practically invented our region’s roadhouse loop, playing rowdy little sheds and sleepy small-town joints that didn’t even know they needed a band. In the early years, the Kings orbited the rockabilly-honky-tonk axis, but the addition of a second guitarist (or third, if you count drummer Les Gallier’s six-string interludes) and singer Stevie Newman’s radio-ready voice and…
Pinback Pinback’s most recent album, Summer in Abaddon, is more than a year-and-a-half old, but it speaks volumes about the state of indie rock — and how a bit of subtlety and ingenuity can still raise eyebrows. Whereas its counterparts pile distortion onto heaps of four-chord guitar, Pinback — Armistead Burwell Smith IV, Rob Crow and a squad of rotating…
If you haven’t heard of Gnarls Barkley, you will soon. Earlier this month, the collaboration of DJ Dangermouse and Cee-Lo stepped into a brave new world with the psychedelic soul single “Crazy.” The song made history as the first to reach No. 1 in sales based on downloads alone. The duo’s album, St. Elsewhere, won’t be available in the United…
Kawabata Makoto, the high priest of Japan’s Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno, conducts English-language interviews via e-mail with the help of a translator, and that’s appropriate. After all, his livelihood is founded on translation, albeit of a very different sort. “My music is something that I constantly hear from the cosmos,” he writes, “and I merely re-create it…
When hardcore punk rockers the Movielife dissolved in 2003, frontman Vinnie Caruana said goodnight to the 3,000 fans who had shown up to say goodbye and, two days later, found himself working demolition on a construction site back home in New York. Now he leads indie-punk outfit I Am the Avalanche. And for Caruana, the road from Movielife to where…
I first met Joe McGuire on April 8 at the big concert in Lawrence called Day on the Hill. His older brother, the well-known Kansas City DJ Oz McGuire (aka Señor Ozgood), had given me a CD that Joe made under the moniker Pleasuremaker. Funky, sexy and steeped in Latin and Brazilian sounds, Afro-beat and hip-hop, the jams on the…
In the song “Garageland,” a tribute to penniless, scrappy garage bands on the Clash’s first album, Joe Strummer sings: Back in the garage with my bullshit detector/Carbon monoxide making sure it’s effective. There’s one garage band in midtown Kansas City with a fully fired-up bullshit detector. Only, unlike the Clash, this band isn’t trying to avoid BS. Rather, 30 Minute…
Shorts weather: I read with much pleasure, front to back, the April 20 issue of the Pitch. The KC Strip piece on the Westar Energy fraternal board members was on the money. The “Enron on the Prairie” tag is very fitting. The picture spread on the immigration protests was thoughtful; hopefully you can follow up with an in-depth article about…
I thought this was so funny. That cheesy quote that I see every where that says “Find a guy that calls you beautiful instead of hot.” Don’t get me wrong I like the quote, but this is just really funny. Enjoy … Find a guy who calls you hungry instead of a pig when you want order McDonalds @ 3…
An advance copy landed on our desk last week of Davy Rothbart’s Found II — his hilarious second collection of lost, tossed and forgotten items from around the world. On page 54, we discovered an open letter from a desperate Lee’s Summit resident. “Jenny” had left a bachelorette party early — her bachelorette party — to ride some married…
Alien Irony We’ve come to equate Mill Creek Park as the official territory of liberal war-protestin’. So it was a little jolting last week to see a massive wad of people holding American flags, clustered in a cheering throng around the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Kris Kobach. The law prof urged everyone to “annoy” their state representatives until the lawmakers…
Kay Barnes soaked under a thick blanket of luxurious bubbles in the spa at her Briarcliff home. Her delicate feet were propped up on the end of the tub, while Julio, her personal nail technician, sanded them gently with a lavender-scented pumice stone. Barnes had picked out a new color of polish, a deep but vivid power-red called A-Rose at…
Your meaty narrator misses Steve Chamraz. Back when he was still in town, reporting for KCTV Channel 5, Chammy spent several days in a rented house in Independence with vigilante volunteers from Perverted-justice.com. These were guys who trolled Internet chat rooms pretending to be underage girls, talking dirty with local men who eventually knocked on the door of the Independence…
Danni Boatwright, Tonganoxie, Kansas Survivor: Guatemala Best-known: for winning the million-dollar prize Last spotted: as a sideline reporter for the Kansas City Brigade arena football team Brandon Bellinger, Manhattan, Kansas Survivor: Guatemala Best-known: as ninth person eliminated from the show Last spotted: ranching in Manhattan Jermaine Jamison Richard Branson’s Rebel Billionaire Best-known: for being booted in the fourth episode for…
It’s Friday afternoon in Lee’s Summit, and about 50 mostly untalented Midwesterners have assembled in one place. They’re in the holding tank at RSVP, a mini-film studio off Independence Avenue. They wear numbered stickers on their chests so that the producers don’t have to learn their names. Execs from Denver-based Starz Studio are casting a new reality TV show…
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Be/Non engages in pre-show ritual cleansing. TONIGHT! Be/Non and El Ten Eleven at the Hurricane Be/Non is currently in the studio working on a new album. Bassist Ben Ruth has compared the musical interplay of the band’s current lineup to locking into some kind of ecstatic spiritual plane via the top of his head (in other words, it’s like getting…
http://media.newtimes.com/id/21627/ Jon Yeager “Safely” That’s what I like about this guy, man, he owns it! You know, it’s pop, man. But this dude can sing, and he just owns it! Jon Yeager wants to rock you – safely. Not these words, exactly, but words to this effect were spouted drunkenly in my ear late one Friday night at the Brick….
Oz and Joe On a recent trip to Lawrence, I discovered a magic superfast insta-recipe to get Lawrence kids dancing faster than you can say Gumby in the hizzouuuuse! Take two McGuires, preferably of the Ozgood and Shirtless Joe varieties, mix them with a John Brewer-brand jazz pianist, throw in a couple decks, a couple dudes on bass and drums,…
Marlon Brando sleeps with the fishes. But before the legendary actor died, he worked one last job. Curiously, it was for a videogame. In The Godfather: The Game, Brando attempts to relive his Oscar-winning role as Don Vito Corleone. From the raspy voice to the drooping jowls, it’s Vito, all right. Too bad it’s not really Brando. When the…
Americano (MTI) Before he is due to take a high-powered corporate job, college graduate Chris (Joshua Jackson) heads off with two friends (Timm Sharp and Ruthanna Hopper) to Europe, where they end up in Pamplona for the running of the bulls. There, he encounters one of those saucy Latinas (Blade II’s Leonor Varela) who can turn a man’s world…
A Bigger Splash (First Run) Breakfast on Pluto (Sony) Cross of Iron (Henstooth) Event Horizon: Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Games of Love and Chance (New Yorker) Herbie Hancock: Possibilities (Magnolia) Hostel (Sony) I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (Plexifilm) Kickboxer: Five-Disc Collector’s Set (Lions Gate) The Killing Time (Anchor Bay) Klepto (Magnolia) The Last Drop (First Look) Mother and Son…
