A site garnering buzz on the interwebs is nothing new, but when it’s a local site about local bands for local fans, the buzz effect compounds — fast. I Heart Local Music, a blog aiming to cover all things burgeoning in the Kansas City and Lawrence scene, went live last Monday. Its mission statement calls it “a free flow of…
Have you heard Hidden Pictures’ new album? It’s called Synchronized Sleeping, and it’s the perfect soundtrack to these balmy, lengthening springtime afternoons. In fact, Hidden Pictures is so dang proud of it that the band wants you to help them score some press from across the Atlantic. Hey folks, we don’t usually ask you to vote for stuff, but if…
When Missouri’s ban on nude dancing went into effect last year, the assumption was that the new laws would keep us safe from all those boobs that we’d been forced to look at for so long. But as far as I can tell, the only people getting in trouble so far are male strippers — and only in St. Joseph….
A bunch of investment bankers robbed the Treasury, foreclosed on your home, burned up everybody’s money and went strutting up Main Street in their silken finery. Nobody had jobs or health insurance, and families nibbled on tree bark for sustenance. As a result, completely awesome artistic ventures, such as the 940 Dance Company, are withering for lack of financial support….
When John Covington messed with the Southwest Early College Campus, he messed with the wrong neighborhood association. The Armour Fields Homes Association covers the area of Wornall Road to Ward Parkway and Gregory Boulevard to 65th Street. If City Hall were swallowed by an especially hungry sinkhole, Armour Fields residents would miss few of the city’s services. They pay for…
Shanny, the model from Butter Magazine, is struggling to balance on a stool fashioned out of a stack of Heineken cases. She pats her glossy, blue-black curls with her French-manicured talons and tosses impatient glances around the liquor store’s stockroom. Clearly, she expected more from the Popper’s headquarters. Shanny met the Popper, whose real name is Walter Lee Edwin, earlier…
Holly Dodson is no Alice Glass. Parallels kicked off when Cameron Findlay, former drummer of electro-thrash hipster touchstone Crystal Castles, chose to pursue a solo career and bailed on that band after its world tour in 2008. He and Dodson began to vibe when the duo went to a Bowie concert together. After that, everything was melancholic, disco-flavored gravy, so…
Is it possible that the best band in the world could also be the biggest? Montreal’s Arcade Fire makes a compelling case with The Suburbs, a Grammy-winning set of lovingly rendered tracks about life in cubicle hell. Suburban America is an all-too-predictable target, of course, but Win Butler and company enliven the familiar subject with warmth and candor. Consequently, The…
Justin Townes Earle has a lot to live up to, at least on paper. His father is cult folk and country icon Steve Earle, and he’s named after Townes Van Zandt. Luckily, the man has got songs: colorful Americana numbers that explore a different side of the country-rock divide than his father’s did. What he did inherit from his pop…
Bassist Mike Watt, originally of legendary punk outfit the Minutemen, has charted a strange and prolific career since that group disbanded after guitarist D. Boon’s death in 1985. Adhering to the tenet of “jamming econo,” the name that the Minutemen gave their minimal approach to touring and music making, Watt has moved through a series of notable collaborations, forming Dos…
After downtown Kansas City’s once-vibrant restaurant scene fizzled in the 1960s, and before first-rate dining venues opened in the Johnson County suburbs — the archaic liquor-by-the-drink laws in Kansas stifled restaurant growth until the 1980s — the Country Club Plaza was the best place to get a great, distinctive meal in the metro. The Spanish-style buildings on the north side…
Subhumans surfaced as part of Britain’s post-’77 punk scene. The band’s fast, political records helped define the early days of hardcore and created the subgenre known as anarcho-punk (which owes more to lyrical content than to a particular sonic aesthetic). Like many bands of that era, Subhumans had a short run, breaking up in 1985. The band re-formed in 1998…
