How does the Portland, Oregon, band I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House really feel about Fred Phelps? Click play to find out. (NSFW due to strong language and righteousness) It’s the LAist’s SXSW song of the day. Info & lyrics here. Categories: Music
Currently in Belgium, Roach is living up to his MySpace photo. This weekend, our pal Roach, who’s temporarily sitting in on bass with the Gaslights for a tour of Belgium, sent a couple of self-described drunken e-mails. I’m passing them along to you, unedited. Enjoy. Drunken E-mail 1 It is 3am and we are drunk 4 shows in 3 Days…
TGIF, homies. Don’t forget that tonight, starting at 7:30 downstairs at Skybox, our DJ challenge goes down like Julie Brown. Five DJs, whose spins can be sampled here, faceoff for command of the dance floor. The best and brightest gets a trip to Miami to lay down some wax (or CD or MP3 or whatever) at the Ultra Music Festival….
credit: Frank Swider Kirk Rundstrom was the man. News just reached us that Kirk Rundstrom died this morning. The Split Lip Rayfield member had been battling cancer of the esophagus for over a year. His bandmates wrote a fitting elegy on the group’s Web site, under ‘News.’ Mark Twain said, “Let us endeavor to live that when we come to…
The first edition of the Wayward Cast is yours to download free from iTunes. This was my first time doing anything like this, so listen for the content, not the production value. And could I have been given better content for this one? Hell nyet, comrades. I got to interview Robert Moore and Megan Hamilton, founders and owners of OxBlood…
Apartment Zero (Anchor Bay) Babel (Paramount) The Bros. (Lions Gate) Crooked (Lions Gate) Crossover (Sony) Curious George: Zoo Night and Other Animal Stories (Universal) Dark Castle Horror Collection (Warner Bros.) Flushed Away (Paramount) For Your Consideration (Warner Bros.) Gandhi: 25th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (Sony) A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (First Look) Keeping Mum (ThinkFilm) Man of the Year (Universal)…
So you’ve beaten Zelda and can hurl a 90 mph fastball in Wii Sports without shattering your 50-inch plasma. Now what? It’s time to explore the rest of the “channels” — some of them included with your Wii, and most free to download. Like cable TV, Nintendo’s offerings range from CNN-worthy usefulness to stuff we’d trade for a Lifetime…
Shut Up & Sing (Genius) It’s a shame that one of 2006’s best documentaries is being released without extras; it would have been nice, for instance, to hear feisty Natalie Maines talk with directors Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck about her reaction to the film, in which the Dixie Chicks come off less like First Amendment martyrs than scapegoats….
There’s a way young people speak that’s defensive and derisive, disguising every emotion and reaction except boredom. It employs a thousand shrugging synonyms for “Yeah, whatever.” It’s a dialect of imprecision and detachment, one that flattens all feeling, one that is steeped in sneers and scabbed over with sarcasm. If someone cuts in front of an 18-year-old at Walgreens,…
Here’s a shiny penny of a show. Organized around the 10th anniversary of the Charlotte Street Foundation awards, Carrousel at Paragraph presents past winners and other artists. Curator Hesse McGraw asked contributors to show new work, work no one else had seen or work reconfigured from past installations. The exhibition’s concept emerges from the creepy 1976 science-fiction film Logan’s…
In 2003, Mark and Michael Polish made Northfork, an underappreciated, little-seen masterpiece about a town about to drown and the arrival of four freak-show strangers seeking the Unknown Angel, who may be a dying little boy being kept alive by a grizzled preacher played by Nick Nolte. The Polish brothers, softies with a solid touch, doled out mystery and magic,…
The Number 23 grips a stupid idea and runs so far with it — in so many directions and to such little purpose — that it nearly won me over from sheer berserk effort. In a nutshell, this nutso movie observes what happens to a man (Jim Carrey) under the impression that every damn thing that’s happened in the…
The Texas-style brisket served at Wil Jenny’s (see review) is good, but thinking about brisket brought back some of my more pleasant memories of the venerable Stephenson’s Old Apple Farm, which closed last week. When I heard that the place had shut down, I had the same bittersweet reaction as when the 85-year-old Nichols Lunch locked its doors last autumn….
Over the past two decades, I’ve watched as Johnson County’s “restaurant row” migrated from 95th Street to College Boulevard and then southward to 119th Street. Not even 10 years ago, 119th Street was a big deal, boasting the high-toned 40 Sardines and the no-frills Piccadilly Cafeteria and just about every dining option in between. Now 135th Street is the new…
If there’s any bar genre that Kansas City is lacking, it’s martini-and-sports bars. Seriously, why aren’t there more places with exposed brick walls that serve froufrou drinks with names that end in -tini, -rita or -eamsicle? And would it kill anyone to put up some plasma screens so people can watch the game? Sheesh. The newest is Tower Tavern,…
Following this band’s Mercury-Prize-winning debut 10 years ago, some of the UK’s more effusive critics hailed Gomez as the next Beatles. Five albums and a dose of electronica later, the band is still recovering from a run of lackluster productions that didn’t quite live up to the hype. (How could they have?) On 2006’s How We Operate, Gomez’s churning atmospheres…
It’s not standard policy to suggest traveling elsewhere for a show, but in the case of Christina Aguilera, it would be a disservice not to. Sure, her date here will be worthwhile — ever since “Genie in a Bottle” dominated radio, there’s been no doubt that she can sing. And via the at-odds statements of independence “Dirrty” and “Beautiful,” Xtina…
Ferraby Lionheart’s work as the frontman of Los Angeles band Telecast was always worth paying attention to, but his recent solo work as a piano- and guitar-wielding folksinger and songwriter, showcased on his self-titled EP, has a freshness to it that feels old and familiar in the same way that Ray LaMontagne does. It’s difficult to believe that this much-buzzed-about…
A message to cover bands and singers: You don’t have to be hacks. Instead of regurgitating someone else’s art, be like the Holmes Brothers. Their sweet, gospel-tinged roots and R&B, their three-part harmonies and their rustic air utterly transform their subjects. Drummer Popsy Dixon’s falsetto balances brothers Wendell and Sherman Holmes as the trio — sometimes accompanied by other musicians…
After taking the subtle route on tracks such as “Because I Got High” and “Dope Fiend,” Afroman finally just comes out and says it with his new single, “Marijuana.” The self-made file-sharing icon has made a career out of crass novelty raps about drugs, sex and more drugs. With such titles as “Dicc Hang Low” (a parody of Jibbs’ “Chain…
The Windy City took a tough loss earlier this month in the Super Bowl, but at least it has something to cheer about with the Ponys. The Chicago garage-rock foursome will release Turn the Lights Out in March, marking the band’s first disc for the mega indie label Matador Records. You can score a free MP3 of the album’s first…
Matt Hales (better known as Aqualung) made a bit of a ruckus with his 2005 U.S. debut, Strange and Beautiful. A selection of lush, dreamy pop from his first two UK releases, it introduced a songwriter to be reckoned with. But it’s with his latest album, Memory Man, that Hales gets his voice straight. Caught in transit at Los Angeles…
This year we received a plethora of mix submissions for the Pitch Ultra Music DJ Contest. We listened to the good, the bad and the ugly. We paid attention to the DJs who actually realized that they were competing for a chance to play at one of the biggest parties in the world: the Ultra Music Festival in Miami…
Lately I’ve been wondering whether this column has been too focused on the midtown KC indie-rock scene. Now, before you yell doy hickey! in my stupid face, remember that in the past little stretch, I’ve written columns that have touched on the jazz, blues and hip-hop scenes, too. But when I think of what deserves attention from the music industry…
