While Pitch readers finish voting for their favorite restaurants in our annual Best Of Kansas City readers’ survey (fill out a ballot here), here’s a bit of news about another cutthroat competition, this one going on inside the restaurant industry. In November, the Chinese Restaurant News hosts its fourth-annual “Top 100 Chinese Restaurants in the USA” awards. The magazine selects…
For a hot minute earlier this decade, the college town of Lawrence, Kansas, had two tastefully mounted upscale restaurants: the PrairieFire Bistro on Massachusetts and chef Jean Michel Chelain’s Gallic-American restaurant, Bleujacket, at 811 New Hampshire. I don’t know whether the venues were too fancy for a town populated by budget-conscious university students or the food and service were…
“Drink Lotsa Whiskey” by Split Lip Rayfield: As any true-blue fan knows, Split Lip Rayfield has always been about much more than Split Lip Rayfield. The speedier-than-thou Kansas punkgrass boogans united blissed-out hippies, grizzled hillbilly cats and plain-Jane music fans at their epic hootenannies, spawning a dedicated following that made last February’s loss of singer and guitarist Kirk Rundstrom to…
It’s an unjust business that makes Toby Keith a superstar while a true, guitar-toting talent like Fred Eaglesmith remains obscure. At least Keith has good taste. He covered the Eaglesmith song “Thinkin’ ‘Bout You” for the otherwise banal movie Broken Bridges. The upside to Eaglesmith not being more rich and famous is the guaranteed intimate setting at his Knuckleheads Saloon…
“Plea from a Cat Named Virtue” by the Weakerthans, from Reconstruction Site (Epitaph): A little-known fact about Canada: Of the country’s 31 million residents, all but five people are in ultra-literate indie-rock bands — and even those five have played with Broken Social Scene at least once. It’s a staggering statistic that makes the Weakerthans’ rise to celebrity that much…
Some dudes have earned the right to wear a fuzzy woodsman beard. Anders Parker is one of those dudes. The former frontman of Varnaline isn’t wearing Bob Dylan’s beard, exactly, but Jeff Tweedy’s face fungus may have rubbed off a bit when Parker recruited former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer for his self-titled 2006 album. The lettered songwriter could also comfortably…
“You Did It Once” by the ACB’s: There are at least three tenets all fresh fellows in power-pop bands must follow if they don’t want a pack of starved, rabid wolves released on their skinny, tight-jeaned asses. First, thou must deliver short but sweet songs laden with punchy guitar hooks. Second, all lyrical content must concern only girls, girls, girls….
“Taco Land Blues” by the Afterparty: Do it. Buy the pickup. Head out west. You’ve waited long enough. Here. Here’s your road music. No CD? No problem — it also comes on cassette. I shit you not. Here. Go. That’s what your inner voice will say when you play the Afterparty’s third, self-titled, self-released gem of an album. Whereas 2004’s…
It’s been almost two months since the Dogstock 5 Music Festival, but the debris on Randy Long’s Osage County, Kansas, property suggests that the camping and music festival could have been last night. Campers left behind clothing, plastic bags, even a broken-down charcoal grill. The main stage is still marked off in orange, plastic fencing. Trash barrels and rubbage dot…
On a gorgeous Saturday morning, I embarked on the Waldo Walk. Billed as the “original Waldo pub crawl,” WW covered nine bars and spanned nine-plus hours. Now in its 22nd year, the event is organized through word of mouth, which is how I first heard about it. “If you attend, you won’t regret it. You may not remember it, but…
“Reconstruction” by Adru the Misphit: Andrew Roufa is familiar with the wrong side of the tracks. He has sold drugs, committed robbery and been handcuffed more times than he can count. As a result, he has spent more than half of his adult life in an institutional setting. But the Lawrence hip-hop artist is determined to pick up the pieces….
IIn this week’s Pitchcast, music editor Jason Harper introduces you to music by the ACBs, Qui, the Black Lips, the Afterparty, Franz Schubert, the Caves and Midlake. Incidental jams by Tiga. Get it through iTunes by clicking here, download it on the Web by clicking here or click the bar below to listen: Categories: News Tags: Apple iTunes, Columns, Franz…
Dear Mexican: A new line of Speedy Gonzalez clothing came out earlier this year. As a black vendor in a predominantly Mexican market, I immediately thought about selling some of these items. I am 35, and although I remember the cartoon from when I was a young kid, I can’t really remember much about it except that he was very…
Martin: “Scoop of Poop,” September 6 Garden Variety I just became a Pitch reader. I found the article about the struggle to create a dog park in Waldo of interest, since I just moved here from a city that is filled with dog parks. The dog I live with doesn’t have any complaints about Kansas City thus far, but then…
Kwaim A. Stenson sat at the defense table, waiting for the judge who would sentence him. Dressed in orange prison togs, Stenson passed the time by handling the slack in his waist chains as if it were a Slinky toy. Three U.S. marshals guarded Stenson, a noteworthy but hardly vicious criminal. In June, he’d pleaded guilty to a count of…
Charles Ray Bradley sits on a short set of concrete stairs, a cup of McDonald’s coffee in his hand. His red ball cap is bleached with sun and smeared with grease. Every morning, he drives a maroon Isuzu from his house on the East Side to his auto shop near the intersection of Prospect and 21st Street. When he started…
It took a barrage of e-mails, endless news stories and constant criticism of a city government that appeared to ignore its people. But the KCMO parks board today reconsidered its ban of dog parks in residential areas. Deb Hipp, the Waldo resident who’s been in charge of the effort to get an off-leash area in Sunnyside Park, said she thinks…
The Wayward Son’s (that’s me!) Wayward Cast, a wayward extension of his wayward ass and the wayward Pitch music section, is wayward ready. (Ain’t it great having a “brand”?) Download it via the RSS page or as an . Subscribe to the Pitchcast on iTunes and get it automatically each week for free like hay fever. Our steez will…
If you’ve been listening to KCUR lately, you know from the plugs that the NPR show “Day to Day” will be broadcast live this week from Union Station. In preparation, the show’s host, Alex Chadwick, filed a couple of reports on our fair city this afternoon. The first was this interview with hometown writer Calvin Trillin, who tells Chadwick that…
I recently asked my friend, the humorist and Pitch assistant calendar editor Chris Packham, to go to this site, stream the new Tragically Hip album (bottom of the page, limited availablity) and let me know what he thought of it. I’ve been a fan of the Hip — arguably Canada’s biggest rock band — since I was a wee bairn,…
BY RICK ANDERSON, Seattle Weekly Photo courtesy of CourtneyLove.com. By Rick Anderson, <a href=”http://www.seattleweekly.com/” target=”_blank”>SeattleWeekly.com “I did not fuck you,” was how Courtney Love responded when told by her Seattle attorneys that she owed them up to $340,000 plus interest. That was the balance due on legal fees attorney Katherine Hendricks and O.Yale Lewis say Love incurred in a 2002 lawsuit…
on the Missouri raft peddler.” /> A thousand-mile journey aboard a raft made out of recycled stuff might have ended in prematurely in Mississippi on Saturday. In late July, Kansas City natives Jamie Burkart and Libby Hendon shipped off from Kaw Point on a homemade vessel they’d built out of discarded items they’d found around the metro. Their goal:…
BY ANDY VIHSTADT The Big Payback Little Brother returns next month with Getback, the outfit’s first LP without 9th Wonder behind the production. Click here to download the album sampler mixed by DJ Flash. I doubt Big Pooh and Phonte will be able to match their excellent Minstrel Show album, but at least they haven’t lost their sense of humor….
This is the actual title of a press release sent to the media today from Sony BMG. (Thanks for the all-caps, you guys.) BARRY MANILOW REIGNS AS THE HIGHEST SINGLE-HOUR MUSIC SALES EVENT IN QVC HISTORY The short of it: Manilow went on QVC to preview his upcoming CD, The Greatest Songs of the Seventies, and sold 40,000 of…
