James Christos isn’t new to the KC hip-hop scene, but his second full-length ought to give him some well-deserved recognition. The producer and rapper’s Bay Area upbringing shines through with synth-laden backdrops and bone-shattering bass lines designed to run woofers ragged. But the beats merely garnish Christos’ flavor on the microphone. Whether his rhyme schemes are laid-back and comical (“Gotta…
Like conscious rappers, rockabilly artists can be off-puttingly strident about their allegiance to old-school aesthetics. The first vocal track on The Silvermen Attack, during which David “Zoop” Coonce rants like a megaphone-amplified carnival barker about “a time when music was real” and the “sounds of yesterday when talent mattered,” is superfluous — this Kansas City quartet’s jukebox rock already makes…
The back cover photo of Planes Mistaken for Stars’ new CD constitutes a musical promise. These Denverites wear their beards, greasy hair and disillusioned countenances like a band that knows what heavy really means. The music on Mercy makes good on the promise. Thick and sweaty, with the heft of a muddy sledgehammer, the album delivers a range of emotions…
Though there is a place in the world for the Beyonces, Godsmacks and Blink 182s, there’s something far more satisfying about a band that knows how to crash genre borders. Fresh out of the gate, local newcomer Nighttime tackles prog, postpunk and metal, often cramming all three into the same song and lacing up the whole thing with atmospheric effects….
What happens when you’ve signed a national recording contract, have a catalog of songs and an unquenchable urge to perform live? If you’re former University of Central Missouri football standout and hip-hop soul man L.A. Maclin, aka Nite Owl, you bankroll your own regional tour through Missouri, Illinois and Kansas, expanding your fan base and giving audiences a chance to…
Be Your Own Pet has been wreaking havoc since its inception in 2003. Back then, it consisted of some crazy-talented teenagers sitting around a Nashville basement. Today, they’re still crazy-talented and adolescent, but they’re out of the basement and on the road. Of course, they had a little help from their families: Lead singer Jemina Pearl Abegg’s dad is Christian…
Humanwine’s songs are often a grotesque take on proletariat life. But so enchanting is lead singer Holly Brewer that lyrics such as Will this dust ever settle/Even better now the sky is bent/I’ve got a stomach full of finger-nails/And another’s femur on my head will propel listeners into believing they’re hearing a vaudeville act. All the band’s songs are…
When Tim Sweeney isn’t manning the decks for the burgeoning DFA Records label, he’s taking over New York City radio waves with Beats in Space. Under the tutelage of famed turntablist Steinski (of Double Dee & Steinski), Sweeney has made a name for himself for his off-the-wall electro-house sets that are as likely to include EPMD or Cat Stevens as…
Jamie Lidell is the sort of person your grandmother might lovingly call a “character,” someone whose eccentricity and intelligence come perilously and gloriously close to madness. In a single sitting, the 33-year-old British singer, DJ and composer goes from discussing Nietzsche to the importance of stage confidence in a lightning-strike stream of consciousness that makes keeping up with him a…
The Hurricane is back. But is this the return of something vital to the music scene, or is it more the homecoming of an old college buddy — a guy you’re friends with on paper (and, let’s say, who writes lame songs to play on his acoustic guitar) but you secretly want to bash over the head with a shovel?…
Click above to listen to “Timeshaker,” recorded by White Flight and remixed by 1,000,000 Light Years. Justin Roelofs (aka White Flight, aka Tito Tyson Tatarino Thoroughgood) has a challenge for you: “Work on relaxing your asshole all day long for one day, I dare you,” he says. “And if you’re going to invest your Andrew Jacksons in something,” he adds,…
Happy New Year? No, thanks: This year, we’d like to raise our glasses to the most miserable midnights you’ve ever rung in. Did the ball drop before your Dick Clark struck? Send us your story by December 1; we’ll print our favorites, and everyone will learn from your mistakes. Tags: Dick Clark, letters
Those CNN folks who came to town for Lou Dobb’s show were lucky to leave town with their wallets. A block down the street from the Uptown sits a seven-story abandoned building squatted by drugged-out stinkers grooving on the joys offered from an arm extension earlier at the adjacent Plasma Services enterprise. Middle class? We who live and work in…
Last week, when KC’s online music forum Argument Machine was taken down, I was reminded that it had introduced me to Little Hits, a local MP3 blog that’s linked to the site. The man behind Little Hits is Jon Harrison, who used the blog to post singles by lesser-known indie-pop artists, frequently from the early ’80s. If it weren’t for…
In March 1964, Bob Hughes was 16 and living with his paranoid and delusional mother, Lolita, in Gladstone. After Lolita claimed that Bob had tried to kill her with an ice pick, he was shipped to the state’s Training School for Boys in Boonville. Bob’s older brother, Don, busted him out, and the duo spent five years on the run…
Dear Mexican: It’s hard out here for a brotha! First, we had to deal with those pieces of shit called the KKK and their supporters. Now we have to deal with the freakin’ Mexican invasion. Now I see why whites fretted over seeing their neighborhoods turn dark when Cleophus and LaKeisha moved in. Now we’re being overrun by Pedro and…
Karl Hockenbarger sat alone in a pew in Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church. His wife and children refused to sit with him on this Sunday morning in June 2005. Hockenbarger remembers listening as infamous preacher Fred Phelps chastised him for half an hour, calling Hockenbarger a wolf in sheep’s clothing and a snake in the grass. Phelps then asked his…
Shavone Banks lays five white T-shirts that memorialize her dead friends across her lap in the front room of her apartment at 82nd Street and Troost. The TV is tuned to the Food Network. It’s 10 a.m., and 21-year-old Banks, dressed in pink sweat pants, has been eating a bowl of cereal. She worked a long night shift at a…
Remember that local band The Sound and the Fury? If not, then you’ve forgotten one of the best hard rock bands to come out of the area in recent years. Although a bit mel-emo-dramatic, the music was hard, melodic and accessible, with a frontman named Jeff Wood who could wail in a way that would make the dudes pump their…
While we all digest the taking over of the House (and maybe the Senate, if that hemorrhoid in Montana will just fucking concede) by the Democrats, along with the breaking news that Rummy may be stepping down, let’s take a break to live vicariously through Mac Lethal, who, with his compadres Joe Good, DJ Sku, and others, made this pratfall-and-hijink-rich…
Maybe I’m out of my mind, but lately, I’ve been digging shit that rocks. Like the other night, for example, when I was wowed by Crazy Talk (fine, fine, one word it is) on Halloween, those friends of mine who said they were enjoying the band — that was just part of their costume. They secretly exchanged costume notes before…
TGIF, KC, OMG!!! Yeah whatever. This guy knows what it’s about. His name is Brad Hodgson, and you’ll see him tonight seated in a chair (sometimes standing and kicking and flailing), strumming a guitar and singing with his band In the Pines if you stop by the Record Bar. I only discovered Hodgson’s solo identity the other day, and it…
In Colorado Springs, Colorado, church types have been hiding in their hymnals since a male prostitute accused the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, of paying him for sex. But what caught our attention is that the prostitute claims Haggard was using an alias of “Art,” a married man from Kansas City, Missouri. We called the…
Baywatch: Season 1 (First Look) The Benny Hill Collection (Music Video Dist.) CSI: Miami — The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Down to the Bone (Hart Sharp) Future-Kill: Limited Collector’s Edition (Subversive) Ghost in the Shell SAC: Complete Collection (Manga) The Ghost Whisperer: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Hardcastle and McCormick: The Complete First Season (SPG) Hard Rock Treasures (MPI) Heart…
