The backdrop is a painted starscape, its heavens whirling with purplish cosmic dust. The tiling of the floor below suggests a textbook’s familiar spirographing diagram of the inside of an atom: a nucleus from which electron orbits bloom like flower petals. In between stand the actors, playing physicists and spouses and, of course, humanity itself, lost somewhere between infinities and…
A couple of months ago, Todd Schulte and his wife, Tracy Zinn, took over the old Gillis Sundries space at the corner of Gillis and Pacific in the historic Columbus Park neighborhood. Though this two-story brick building had recently been home to a restaurant (SORedux), from the outside it still looked a lot like it must have looked just after…
Tokyo Police Club’s Elephant Shell joins the ranks of highly anticipated release dates marred by early leaks, so Saddle Creek Records decided to up the ante. The Canadian four-piece officially releases its debut full-length on April 22, but you can preorder it directly from the source for instant access to the MP3s. In addition, Saddle Creek will mail you the…
Persons driving past Mike’s Tavern on Troost at approximately 2 a.m. last Halloween witnessed two dudes in powder-blue leisure suits brawling with an inebriated, masked mob. Meet Paper Cities, Kansas City’s reigning badass supergroup. “Basically, I was breaking down my drums and Cory came out and said these guys were fucking with his wife,” explains drummer Billy Johnson. “Long story…
She sits at the kitchen table of her house in the suburbs, staring into a glass of chardonnay on this overcast Tuesday afternoon. “It’s my life,” the not-quite-40-year-old thinks. “And it’s now or never. I ain’t gonna live forever — I just want to live while I’m alive.” She knows she has to tell her husband everything. She pours a…
Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1969-1979 American photographer Stephen Shore’s exhibition includes more than 150 images of ’70s-era parking lots, motel rooms, restaurants, highways and other familiar road-trip images from across the country. Anyone who has been on a road trip knows these images by heart. The exterior photographs of filling stations, desolate dirt roads, billboards and other…
Death, dying, hair, bones — that’s a lot for a two-person exhibition to pack in. But Kansas artist Mary Kay and California artist Rebecca Morales deal with the subjects in ways that are sublime, repellent, chaotic and mostly beautiful. Death, entropy and parasitic invasions are often represented by grotesque, visually disturbing images designed to galvanize. Some of the work…
By JASON HARPER Highlights from the life of an unapologetic rock fan: I. Age 15, Led Zeppelin IV, Dark Side of the Moon. II. Age 29, Little Lucid Moments Coming of age in the ’90s, I was not particularly hip or schooled in the cool underground music of that decade or the one before, but I was pretty sure of…
By JEN CHEN Just when everyone’s neuroses on The Real Housewives of New York City were starting to get interesting, Bravo had to crash the hagfest and air the season finale last night. The drama had been swirling around our favorite former Fort Scott resident, the socially ambitious Alex McCord and her gay/not-gay husband Simon. The other Housewives wanted…
By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE Image courtesy MeganBirdsall.com Last fall, KC jazz ingenue Megan Birdsall disappeared from the scene. Her break from music wasn’t voluntary. Birdsall’s career – and her life – were in jeopardy due to an arthritic bone condition that was eroding her jaw and partially blocking her windpipe. She needed a very expensive surgery in order to…
Bleating, bearded, dreadlocked, perennially weird-looking Counting Crows frontman Adam Duritz gets all the attention. And we feel bad for the rest of the band. So we’re printing their names (because we don’t have their individually labeled photos and really don’t care enough about this to try and get them, because after all, the only one that anyone really cares…
By CHRIS PACKHAM The Elephant in the Rectory: His Popliness, Pope Benedict Ratzinger XVI, landed in New York. He’s pictured here with some teen girls at Hot Topic. On the plane over, the Pope made some statements about pedophile priests. One statement suggested that the Vatican is now “screening” priest applicants for pedophilic tendencies. %{}%No word about bishops who…
By NADIA PFLAUM AWKWARD! There’s a curious pairing of billboards on the east side of Wornall between 84th and 85th streets. The first is one of those familiar neon-colored signs advertising an upcoming gun show. But right next to it is a PSA from Project Safe Neighborhoods against gun violence. I called CBS Outdoor to ask if the positioning…
Kansas City hardcore-riff-post-Toasty-metal band Hundred Years War has finished its debut album, Nails for Teeth, and your skull is going to seep gunk when you hear it. That’s right — gunk. It’s coming out next month download-only via Lawrence label Thoughtcrime Digital. To celebrate, here’s an MP3 from Nails, followed by an exclusive Inside the Actors Studio questionnaire filled…
No longer merely your sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel is now your web news aggregator. Today, the former Genesis singer and — many believe — GOD launched his (and his co-investors’) newly redesigned “recommendation engine” The Filter. As Gabe explained to CNET: “When you drown people in an ocean of information, you’ve got to give them navigation tools,” Gabriel said. “I…
By FLANNERY CASHILL It was nice to see Lawrence mentioned on national news scrollbars last week after the NCAA Championship, but it just wasn’t enough. Our favorite small town gets stiffed too often. That’s why we’re so flattered that big-time blog Stella Splice mentions the fledgling BeatLawrence as one of its top 20 music blogs, beating out better-established and…
By ERIC BARTON Former NFL quarterback and dog-fighting son of a bitch Michael Vick may be serving his prison sentence in the metro area, but has anybody really welcomed him to town? Not one car dealership has featured him in a commercial. Not one downtown loft has boasted that he has bought property there. And not one bar has…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Now where will I buy my $3 sunglasses? Tony Conforti, owner of Discounts Unlimited, a store in the City Market, is being forced out of his location after 37 years by The Man, via The Man’s appointed proxy, Copaken, White and Blitt. Presumably, following an eight-month vacancy, they will replace it with something that sucks. The…
By C.J. JANOVY I can’t let this tax day pass without thanking the nice anti-war activists over at PeaceWorks Kansas City. A couple of weeks ago, they delivered a pizza to The Pitch offices – half a pizza, actually, meant to illustrate how the military gets more than half of the U.S. budget. Along with the pie, and a…
Blitzen Trapper, with Fleet Foxes Saturday, April 12 the Jackpot by GREG FRANKLIN Seattle’s Fleet Foxes took the stage at the Jackpot with a recently-released EP on Sub Pop under their belt, some glowing recommendations from the blogosphere tastemakers, and the pungent stench of a band who has spent the last two months playing smaller clubs, sleeping on floors,…
I just got off the phone with Rich Boys frontman Mitch Rich, who says that despite what you may have heard, the band is still alive. Mitch says he’s not sure which original Boys will accompany him into the next incarnation but that he wants to play live as soon as possible. “I’m just taking this into my own…
Converge, with Red Chord, Genghis Tron, and Baroness Saturday, April 12 The Bottleneck by ANDREW MILLER Converge singer Jacob Bannon shows fans profuse gratitude, like a man thanking someone who saved his life. His stage banter, heavy with vaguely ominous references to portentous occasions as “the day I decided to stop dying and start living,” suggests that’s exactly how…
by ANDY VIHSTADT Voice of the Beehive Wolf Parade announced details on the yet-to-be-titled (rumored Kissing the Beehive) second LP last week. The album does’t come out until June 16, but you can get a preview below courtesy of Stereogum. Wolf Parade: “Call it a Ritual” MP3 Docudrama For your viewing pleasure, the National will be releasing A…
The Pink Socks, the Black Tarantulas Friday, April 11 The Studio By JASON HARPER When I first heard about a new bar opening downtown called the Studio, I figured it was an offshoot of loft culture — a place for hoity toity loftdwellers to go when they got tired of sitting alone amid their accent tables and eating pre-shelled…
