BY ANDY VIHSTADT Back to the Futureheads Vagrant Records sent The Futureheads a Dear John letter shortly after the release of last year’s “News & Tributes.” No worries though, the UK postpunk act has since started its own label and wrapped up LP3, which the band claims will be “punkier” than the last one. Here’s the first song from the…
Last month, The Pitch reported that the Blue Springs Chamber of Commerce had pushed local veterans groups out of running the beer garden at the town’s annual Fall Fun Festival. Since then, the issue has folks foaming at the mouth, according to Blue Springs City Councilman Ron Fowler. “This thing has taken on a life of its own,” Fowler says….
Last month, Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman sent out a frantic fund-raising e-mail declaring his anti-abortion group “FLAT BROKE!!!” In all caps, Newman wrote that Operation Rescue was “$22,000 IN THE RED” and needed $43,000 in 10 days or “PLANNED PARENTHOOD COULD WEASEL OUT OF THESE 107 CHARGES.” How Planned Parenthood could “weasel” out of criminal charges brought by the nation’s…
Eric Bachmann, with In the Pines Thursday, November 15 The Record Bar Review and Photos by Keanon Liggatt It was windy and clear out last night. Kansas City is one of the best places in the world to live in the autumn — leaves blowing all over the city like that plastic bag from American Beauty. The dying grass and…
In John Updike novels, the characters never go to anyplace real like McDonald’s or Circuit City; they always go to made-up places like “Burger Land” or “World o’ TVs.” That disconnect creates a kind of fictitious fantasy world, like Middle Earth with basketball and suburbs. It’s kind of like putting ironic quote marks around real life, and then adding a…
The push for a new coal-fired power plant in western Kansas has ignited a fierce debate about energy policy in Kansas. Now a similar proposal in the 805-person town of Norborne, Missouri, is setting the stage for a fossil-fuel showdown in the Show-Me State. Last month, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources issued preliminary approval for a new coal-fired power…
The Range Life music blog (which is not affiliated with Lawrence’s Range Life Records) is giving away tickets to see Annuals next Tuesday in Lawrence. You’ll also get a free 7-inch. The catch is you have to write a 100-word essay about how you fell in love with Annuals. We at The Pitch wouldn’t even know how to begin doing…
As reported in this week’s feature story, Kansas City, Missouri, Aviation Department officials think they landed a good deal for Kansas City when they leased 300 acres of city property to FastTrack Group LLC, owners of the KCI Motorsports Park planned for the site. Here’s who landed two good deals: Rick Watkins, who owns a real estate firm called Watkins…
Before you whip out the sweatpants and prop your turkey-stuffed self in front of the TV, spend the morning in your shiniest duds getting crunked and getting down to some live rhythm and blues.Now in its 45th year, the Annual Thanksgiving Day Dance, held in the National Guard Armory (100 South 20th Street in Kansas City, Kansas), is a rollicking…
It has been light for only an hour, but the Watkins Brothers Memorial Chapel is open for business. In the back of the Cleaver II Boulevard complex, two new coffins, still shrink-wrapped in plastic, stand on rolling platforms in a concrete hallway. Later today, they will contain two of the community’s recently deceased. For 98 years — four generations —…
It’s like an extremely undramatic fireworks display! But it’s our holiday tradition, and we love it. Nov. 22-Jan. 13, 2007 Tags: Night & Day
Sammy Hagar is persistently unable to maintain a driving speed below that of the posted speed limit. Fri., Nov. 16, 8 p.m., 2007 Tags: Night & Day, Sammy Hagar
Release the illusions of this physical world through this ancient, indigenous ceremony connected to the Lakota Native American Inipi (sweat lodge) Ceremony. Embrace the Oneness we all share by entering the Sacred Lodge and experiencing Great Spirit, the heat, the ancestors, the vibration of the drum, and the expansion of your spirit to the widest possible horizons. Sat., Nov. 17,…
Kansas’ buffalo license plates are on the endangered list. And instead of hiring six-figure consultants to design new personalized plates, to be unveiled in 2010, the state is asking Kansans to submit their own designs to the Department of Revenue by January 1 (click here for the state’s directions on how to submit your ideas). The new plates must be “a positive…
“Man O’ War” by Eric Bachmann, from To the Races (Saddle Creek) Tall, bearded and bear-throated, Eric Bachmann first rose to national attention in the early ’90s as the leader of Chapel Hill, North Carolina’s guitar-noise alchemists Archers of Loaf. The songwriter’s approach softened and became more rich with his next full-time band, Crooked Fingers, a layer cake of pop…
“Nine Lives” by Expassionates: Since 1964 or thereabouts, it’s been all too easy to assume that guitars, bass, drums and vocals amount to rock music. The subtler elements of what defines a band — the enunciation, the innuendo, the mojo — are often overlooked. The members of Kansas City’s Expassionates choose their words carefully when describing their music. Not once…
The token phrase indie rock doesn’t quite do justice to North Carolina’s Annuals, a six-piece band that stirs up a mighty racket akin to My Morning Jacket or Broken Social Scene. The group’s dramatic compositions utilize multiple percussionists and group-sing vocals to create something similar to Animal Collective but much more tuneful and less self-absorbed. Gigs at Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza…
To paraphrase a colleague, Van Halen made history as being the second band to get worse after Sammy Hagar left (Montrose was first to suffer the paradoxical decline). In 1996, while the United States was enraptured with the Menendez brothers’ double-murder trial, Van Halen quietly replaced Hagar with Gary “Extreme” Cherone, beginning a short-lived era that most fans try really…
One would assume that a band called the Lawrence Arms would have at least a little something to do with the free state’s finest city, but a quick listen proves that this trio is as Chicago power-punk as Chicago power-punk gets. The band’s lyrics tend to teeter between culturally aware and pop-culturally obsessed, and like their pals in Alkaline Trio,…
If Spinal Tap and the Blues Brothers could earn the respect of the genres they parodied, there’s no reason Dethklok can’t be embraced by the death-metal community. The animated band is the subject of the Cartoon Network’s Metalocalypse series, a gory and hilarious show that depicts the intellectually stunted band wreaking mayhem and flunking at everything not related to…
“Habits control people more than people control habits,” Chris Cornell says. The environmentally aware former Soundgarden leader is talking about how hard it is for people to make changes in their daily routines to help offset global warming. Though he took part in the multicity Live Earth concert to promote climate-change awareness this past summer, Cornell has, according to comments…
I can’t remember which famous New York restaurant critic — Mimi Sheraton or Gael Green? — maintained her anonymity by sometimes wearing costumes to restaurants. I’ve spent much time lately putting together my own all-concealing disguises. The other night, I went to a restaurant dressed as a somewhat chubbier Kevin Federline (complete with a sheath of legal papers spilling…
Show of hands: Has anyone not heard of Guitar Hero at this point? You sir, in the back row clutching the Ratt cassette — you’re the only one? All right, pal, here’s your recap: Guitar Hero is the most popular music-based game ever made. It comes with a plastic guitar controller, with which players noodle along to the sounds…
Feature: “Sex Police,” October 25 Free Willy I just finished readin’ “Sex Police,” and I got a few things to say. To start with, who do these people think they are? I mean, really. Pornography is an American institution. Just because these holier-than-thou “Christians” (I use that term loosely) can’t enjoy a little sexual dysfunction doesn’t mean we all gotta…
