Jenn Deirdorf: Push The last resort for an artist before a caustic critic or a bored gallerygoer is “You just don’t get it.” For Jenn Dierdorf, this phrase actually comes first. According to her statement, her show is about exploring “what happens when we cannot apply our typical meaning system to structures that we recognize.” We do recognize the dozens…
For Santiago Cucullu, disparate ideas and seemingly unrelated things not only are easily stitched together, but also make sense. Rapper Easy-E blends seamlessly with an anarchist library in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and while that pairing may seem idiosyncratic to the viewer, for Cucullu it’s a natural fit. Often his aim is to reclaim history’s linear authority by restating it…
Let’s talk childishness, Kansas City. I saw you in line last weekend, buying tickets for 300 or Wild Hogs, sucking your monstrous sodas, wearing those new team-logo sweatpants that every other culture in the world disdains as the pajamas they are. I heard a couple debating World of Warcraft ethics, I saw a septuagenarian reading Eragon in front of…
Gross-out horror is never far from comedy, and The Host, Bong Joon-ho’s giddy creature feature, has the anarchic mess factor worthy of a pile of old Mad magazines. A broadly played clown show full of lowbrow antics, Bong’s big splat is itself a sort of monster — the top-grossing movie in South Korean history. The Host’s main attraction is a…
In the same week that sees Adam Sandler playing a grieving 9/11 widower in Reign Over Me, another lone figure reeling from post-traumatic stress fills the central role in the new Antoine Fuqua-directed thriller, Shooter. Named Bob Lee Swagger and played with appropriately gruff machismo by Mark Wahlberg, he’s a former Marine gunnery sergeant and scout sniper who’s also…
I’m not a food snob, but I am a plate snob. It’s not just for ecological reasons that I don’t want to eat off Styrofoam plates or use plastic utensils — I just find throwaway plates and flatware to be ugly and trashy. And I put my money where my mouth is: I bring my own silverware and dishes to…
You won’t find the city’s best cheap baguette sandwich at a French bakery — or any bakery. Instead, you’ll find it at David Du’s two-month-old Vinh Hoa in North Kansas City. There’s a $2 version or a generous $3 number — “The $3 is mo’ better,” Du told me. The freshly baked loaf comes filled half a dozen different…
We first covered Chicago DJ band Flosstradamus last July. Now the Flossy boys are slated for URB magazine’s April cover, alongside JK2 and Autobot. Just days before they go GQ on us, they’ll be at Club 5401 Friday with Konsept, Iggy Baby and DJ Sku. The trio will also be in Lawrence Thursday night at the Bottleneck. The group’s playlists…
Omaha, Nebraska, has undeniably birthed some of the decade’s most popular indie-rock acts. But whereas Conor Oberst and Tim Kasher earn religious reverence from the indie cognoscenti, chances are most of you haven’t heard of Landon Hedges. A former member of the Good Life and Desaparecidos, Hedges formed Little Brazil in 2002, and the band has since become the heir…
For Philadelphia’s notably disheveled Man Man, hackneyed comparisons with Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits must be flattering, but they’re hardly applicable. Granted, frontman Honus Honus (Ryan Kattner) has the kind of pipes that make him sound like he gargles with sand and yells at traffic all day — but his circus-barker shtick has neither the range of ideas nor the…
On 1976’s Faithful, the standard-bearer for cover-version fidelity, Todd Rundgren meticulously re-created Beach Boys, Beatles and Jimi Hendrix tunes, playing every instrument. Ghosty, which played Rundgren’s “Couldn’t I Just Tell You” on New Year’s Eve 2006 in Lawrence, plans to be nearly as exacting with its monthly cover nights at the Record Bar and the Eighth Street Tap Room. This…
After producing critically bear-hugged albums for Wolf Parade and Sunset Rubdown, Montreal musician Jace Lasek teamed up with wife and musical accomplice Olga Goreas to create the potent The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse. The ambitious eight-song cycle juggles the brazen riffs of T. Rex with the darker nuances of Montreal mates the Arcade Fire, favoring dynamic ebbs and…
“I Am an Electric Bed” by OK Jones, from Elephantoms: Though the band’s lineup changes like the weather, OK Jones frontman (and Pitch freelance writer) Richard Gintowt has remained a constant, carrying the group from its wobbly beginnings on 2004’s Middletown to the honed space-country atmospherics of Push/Pull (2005) and to making this year’s Elephantoms one of the finest albums…
“Black Blue Jeans” by Arthur Dodge, from The Perfect Face (Remedy Records): Arthur Dodge may be in the bar, but he is not of it. The Lawrence denizen’s fifth release, The Perfect Face, is gorgeous, nuanced, gentle and sly. It’s the first album Dodge has released without crediting backing band the Horsefeathers (though each Feather contributes), calling to mind the…
In the state known for its eerie abundance of corn, Conor Oberst is “he who walks behind the rows.” Luckily, a Stephen King-style ending is nowhere in sight for Omaha’s Bright Eyes as it prepares to release Cassadaga next month. The album marks the Oberst vehicle’s seventh full-length and will include guest spots from M. Ward, Gillian Welch and former…
Though 9/11 hadn’t even happened yet, Brendan Hangauer felt so patriotic that he named his countrified rock project Fourth of July. Er, something like that. Truth is — and sarcastic patriotism aside — when the idea first burst into his head like fireworks way back in 1999, Fourth of July wasn’t even a band yet, and Hangauer had no intention…
Paul Schalda is up to two packs a day. It’s a nasty habit, and he knows it. Funny thing is, the 28-year-old Pablo frontman didn’t even start smoking until four years ago — well past his peer-pressured teenage years — when he had to admit that he’d fallen in love with his best friend’s girlfriend. “I had to go and…
Woodstock was three days of peace, love and music. South By Southwest is a week of music, booze, films, discussion panels, speeches, trade shows, energy drinks, celebrity sightings, bloggers, jerks handing out fliers for you to immediately toss, hip-looking people from Japan and Sweden, solid blocks of humanity trolling Sixth Street, pizza and bratwurst, cranky bartenders, restaurants you can’t get…
Crashing the VIP tables at Blonde requires a certain douchebaggy hubris. Luckily, we have our friend Kristi to thank for landing a VIP table. She reserved it for her birthday and kindly put us on her list, along with Research Assistants Bill, Ralph and Erik. So, on a booze-soaked night, we were able to stroll past the heat lamps and…
Besides having a name stolen from an out-of-this-world Black Sabbath song, nothing implies that the Supernauts “came to Earth to save us,” regardless of what the band claims on MySpace. Yet if the KC trio said it had arrived here in a time machine, you might be tempted to believe it. The Supernauts look and sound like rock and roll,…
Dear Mexican: I am perplexed. I just saw a middle-aged wab (complete with a bright- red, lipstick-accentuated mustache) wearing tight pink stretch pants with the phrase “Pink Taco” emblazoned across her misshapen buttocks. In my experience, Mexicans of the Mexico-born variety seem to wear a lot of clothes with odd or tacky slogans. My question is simple: Do wabs know…
Web Exclusive, March 1 Contempt of Court The Executive Board of the Taxpayers League of Wyandotte County is dismayed that the BPU leadership has failed to rein in the old-line political crowd that has controlled the BPU for decades. To think the BPU board would authorize suppression of facts through a Jackson County Circuit Judge is unthinkable. We would like…
Hey, you, Lava Room thief. Just because I left my bag at the Lava doesn’t mean that you can steal it. Sure, I was drunk, but you probably were, too. And, besides that, whatever happened to the drunk code of ethics? You know: (1) Don’t hit on your best friend’s girl, (2) always tip well and (3) never steal from…
How much does the po-po want to catch accused murderer Shauntay L. Henderson? Enough to release a mugshot of her recently that was Photoshopped to give her a Brittney-style shaved head. But here at the Department of Burnt Ends, we say they didn’t go far enough. So below, we offer what Shauntay L. might look like if she went underground…
