Archives: March 2011
Download Ebony Tusk’s debut release for free, right now
Ebony Tusks is a hip-hop project from Cowboy Indian Bear’s Marty Hillard and Lawrence collective Team Bear Club. Midas, Hillard’s “mini concept album,” is available for free download right now. Score it here! Categories: Music Tags: cowboy indian bear, Ebony Tusks, team bear club
Class Actress is becoming a class act — and you can catch it at Crosstown tonight
Elizabeth Harper’s story is so damn Brooklyn that it’s almost cliché. After releasing an album of acoustic coffeehouse songs under her own name, she hooked up with two producers, Scott Rosenthal and Mark Richardson, in the hip New York borough, and they deftly swept her singer-songwriter sound into electronic territory. The result: Class Actress, a steadfastly vintage-sounding unit, like a…
In Kansas City, Kansas, an improbable hoops renaissance
Eric King, the boys’ basketball coach at Washington High School, has removed his suit coat and is bent at the waist, clapping his huge hands together. He looks, for the moment, like an obstetrician in a hurry to get to the next delivery room. Standing in a corner of the gym, Nancy Browne, Washington’s athletic director, watches as the sweat…
Auternus
At first listen, Dissonant Sea seems to be more of the same from Auternus: down-tuned, droning guitar and a steady pulse from the rhythm section. On the band’s previous Changing Seasons, the music was all build and no jam. This time, though, Auternus marches toward climax — especially on the songs with vocals (“Empty Heavens,” “Old Me”), which also work…
Halfway to Winfield
It’s roughly six months until a slew of bluegrass bands and fans gather in tents, trailers and trees outside Winfield, Kansas, for the annual music festival in the southern part of the state. (Technically, the festival — which turns 40 years old this year and draws about 16,000 people each year — is called the Walnut Valley Festival, but it’s…
Trashcan Sinatras
Trashcan Sinatras can lay claim to the pretty, jangling Scottish pop of the early ’80s, a sound forged by Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. Frank Reader’s doleful voice earned the group deserved comparisons with the Smiths after its successful 1990 debut, Cake. By 1996’s third album, A Happy Pocket, the industry had moved on, and the album wasn’t even released…
Vince Gill
Vince Gill has one of the sweetest tenors in all of popular music, captured hauntingly on his 1992 country hit, “I Still Believe in You.” The song is a cry of regret turned into a caress, and that delicacy is one strong tie that binds him to ballad partners and spiritual siblings Ricky Skaggs and Patty Loveless. Another tie is…
The Republic Tigers
As any casual observer of the local music scene will tell you, the Republic Tigers enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame with its 2008 song “Buildings & Mountains.” It showed up on Grey’s Anatomy and Gossip Girl, and the band played it on Late Show With David Letterman — the works. And the Tigers remain one of the few local…
Faster Than Hell
Federation of Horsepower drummer Kriss Ward steps out from behind the kit to front this four-piece hard-rock powerhouse. Faster Than Hell sounds like the instruments have been tuned using a 454 big-block engine, and the record itself sounds like a vintage Blue Oyster Cult album, or something that Sandy Pearlman might’ve done in the late 1970s. Rather than speed along…
Spirit Is the Spirit
The Lawrence rock outfit formerly known as Seafarer has a new name: Spirit Is the Spirit. Unwittingly, the band has traded one indie-rock cliché for another. Seafarer’s image of a wind-whipped naval crew (think the Decemberists, circa 2006) has been swapped for a name that co-opts the romance of Native American myth (think Fleet Foxes, circa 2008). Mother Mountain’s song…
Das Racist, the Internet’s favorite prankster, is stronger and smarter than you’d think
Das Racist is a multimedia art project, formed in 2008 by visual artist and fiction writer Victor Vazquez and business entrepreneur Himanshu Suri,” Das Racist mastermind Himanshu Suri begins. “And joined by spiritual adviser — ” Suri stops quickly. “Fuck, dude, don’t touch my guap! Sorry. Victor’s being a dick because I make more money than him.” Indie rap’s most…
Chapala is east of downtown, south of expensive and north of delicious
There’s something about Kansas City’s East Side that frightens off some diners. If I start extolling the virtues of a restaurant on this side of the metro, most people unfamiliar with the area get this strange glazed look in their eyes, as if I’m describing a restaurant in another galaxy instead of a 10-minute drive — if even that —…
Bodies pile up after another bloody weekend in KC
Another bloody weekend in Kansas City ended with three fatal shootings and one suspicious death still under investigation. Nineteen-year-old Stephen Jackson has been identified as the victim killed early Sunday morning near Eighth Street and Charlotte. Jackson and a friend had just left Xpressions, formerly known as Club NRG, at 220 Admiral Boulevard. The venue has a violent history. According…
Claire McCaskill to sell the ‘damn plane’ that keeps making news
%{}% Campaigning for the U.S. Senate in 2006, Claire McCaskill copped to being “a rich lady.” Having a wealthy developer for a second husband meant that, among other things, McCaskill had access to a private plane. But on Monday, McCaskill said she plans to sell the “damn plane,” which threatens to run landing gear over her re-election chances. After acknowledging…
Jamie and Bobby Deen are coming to Kansas City
Lock up your grills, boys and girls, Jamie and Bobby Deen are coming to Kansas City. The cooking offspring of Southern culinary legend Paula Deen will be at the Webster House (1644 Wyandotte) on Monday, April 25, from 6 to 9 p.m. for an event organized by Rainy Day Books to celebrate the release of their new cookbook, The Deen…
Felon charged with bringing a loaded gun to KC’s St. Patrick’s Day parade
People and guns were loaded at Wednesday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. The KCPD was watching from a police helicopter high above the parade route when it spotted 21-year-old Michael C. Glover as he allegedly placed an object in the corner of a wall at 38th Street and Broadway. Police recovered a Makarov 9 mm semiautomatic handgun from the spot. Categories:…
The Neighborhood Cafe has been called more names than Charlie Sheen
Last month, three entrepreneurs — Tony Olsen, Bob Baker and Ben Wine — reopened the former Neighbor’s Cafe (which closed in January) in Lee’s Summit as the Neighborhood Cafe. The new menu is almost identical to the one offered at Neighbor’s Cafe, including the complimentary cinnamon roll served during breakfast, lunch and dinner. The restaurant at 104 S.E. Third Street…
Local musicians bring Neil Diamond’s swagger to RecordBar
The Sonic Spectrum Tribute Series: Neil DiamondSunday, March 20, 2011RecordBar The third installment of the Sonic Spectrum Tribute Series hit RecordBar last night, and much like its previous two successors, the event brought out the best local talent channeling influential rock and roll. This time the honoree was Neil Diamond, the singer-songwriter master who was just recently inducted into the…
Can Mike Burke keep city agencies from backsliding?
During his campaign for mayor, Mike Burke has accused Mark Funkhouser of hanging a “closed for business” sign on Kansas City. Funkhouser went into office on the promise that he would make developers work harder for incentives. Things slowed to a crawl, all right. How much the economic downturn and the mayor’s pigs-at-the-trough rhetoric were at fault is anybody’s guess….
Kansas Republicans becoming oddly reasonable?
What the hell is happening in Topeka? Heading into this Kansas legislative session, Plog was poised to poke fun at the budget-slashing, culture-destroying, rights-infringing, possibly racist foibles that the Sunflower State’s conservative elected officials were sure to engage in. But all that great lunacy is so far MIA. Yeah, Gov. Sam Brownback spent his first few months in office consolidating…
So where did I eat this ‘vegetarian’ potato soup?
Thanks to several co-workers who lead a meatless lifestyle, I’ve become a lot more sensitive to the tribulations that local vegetarians and vegans must endure in Kansas City restaurants. Even though I still eat meat, I find myself asking questions in dining venues that my vegetarian friends might wonder about. Are the refried beans cooked in lard? And speaking of…
Find The Pitch
