199x (Distant Dreams Music) Thanks to a serendipitous collaboration with Kendrick Lamar last year on his debut mixtape, Watts Up, Gee Watts is one of Kansas City’s most buzzed-about rappers. And when his debut, 199x (say: nineteen ninety never), was at last released, in April, it stirred up a flurry of approval from underground hip-hop blogs and local listeners. Watts earned…
This year, the 2014 Pitch Music Awards Showcase is split over two nights: Saturday, July 19, at the Riot Room and Friday, July 25, at Knuckleheads Saloon (lineup details and tickets here.) The PMA Awards Show is at the Uptown Theater, held this year on Sunday, August 3 (tickets here). To count down to the awards ceremony – and help introduce you to this year’s picks…
The Kids Have No Taste(self-released) Calculated in its use of lo-fi recording techniques, the first release from the full-band All Blood expands on the work that Jonathan Brokaw has been recording as a solo project for the past few years. The quartet mines a sonic territory familiar to fans of Goner or Slovenly Recordings — angular, but with a jangly…
The Antlers with Yellow Ostrich Riot Room, Kansas City Wednesday, July 2 One should probably not anticipate that a band that came on to the scene with an album titled Hospice would be a flying ball of fun (they weren’t), but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t some surprises from the Antlers’ show last night at the Riot Room. The…
Land Locked / Off Duty Trip (Single) by Schwervon!
A little bit of Grandview in Hyde Park? For the last several years, Glad Heart Realty has been buying up real estate in Grandview and Red Bridge, near its headquarters in south Kansas City. Glad Heart Realty is run by Diane Bickle, wife of International House of Prayer founder Mike Bickle. Many of those properties have been converted into dorm-style…
First Midnight (self-released) When garage-rock trio the Bloodbirds dissolved last year, following the relocation of bassist Anna St. Louis, local music fans mourned the loss of one of their community’s most enigmatic groups. But in April, drummer Brooke Tuley announced the release of First Midnight, a small batch of songs she had recorded with her husband, Bloodbirds guitarist Mike Tuley,…
Fascist Chrome(self-released) If you had to name a band that typifies the underbelly of Kansas City rock-centric music today, you may as well say it’s Burial Teens. Unapologetic and intentionally contrary, the band — guitarist and lead singer Nathan Loud, drummer Dan Ohm, bassist Carrie Thomas — began under this name just a few months ago and was obviously fated…
This year, the 2014 Pitch Music Awards Showcase is split over two nights: Saturday, July 19, at the Riot Room and Friday, July 25, at Knuckleheads Saloon (lineup details and tickets here.) The PMA Awards Show is at the Uptown Theater, held this year on Sunday, August 3 (tickets here). To count down to the awards ceremony – and help introduce you to this year’s picks…
Your Heart Not Mine by My Oh My!
Summer is for cold beer — cold beer in sweaty cans, gripped in koozies. So I called Matt Gardner, general manager at Kansas City’s Flying Saucer, and asked him to take me beer shopping for a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. My only request: Keep it craft. Forgo the Bud and the Miller and the Coors Light Summer Brew. That’s…
Your Heart Not Mine by My Oh My!
The secret to that perfect burger: The sucker has to be bad for you. We’re talking a greasy, messy tower of meat. The kind of thing for which you must unhinge your jaw. This was lesson No. 1 when Ophelia’s executive chef Bobby Stearns agreed to help me build the kind of mind-blowing meaty masterpiece that makes everyone at a…
Kansas City, Missouri, leaders must feel like they can’t win for losing. When city leaders try to move a big-dollar idea along, they get accused of cramming pet projects down everyone’s throat. When they launch an “outreach” effort to talk to more people about those ideas, they get slapped with an ethics complaint. Last week, Citizens for Responsible Government (CFRG)…
Name: Paul Schofer Occupation: President and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts Hometown: I grew up in Columbia, Missouri, but Kansas City is now my hometown. Current neighborhood: Parkville What I do: Lead a spectacular team that delivers Kauffman Center’s vision of enriching lives by offering diverse and extraordinary performing-arts experiences. What’s your addiction? Ice cream –…
Inner Outer Limits, now at the Todd Weiner Gallery, is a circus of crowd-pleasing pop art and multigenerational nostalgia by father-son artists Michael and Ian Young (respectively). Three of its works are standouts worth seeing before the show closes later this month. Ian Young’s board-game-themed paintings tap into some of the conventions of commercial box art. “Battleship” splashes its title…
Like many artists, painter Michael Young has moved through several periods: dark, semiabstract, aliens. Now, though, he can be said to have begun a new one: the sold-out period. Collectors are buying works by the Kansas City, Kansas, native as fast as he can produce them — sometimes sight unseen. Todd Weiner, in whose gallery Young opened his latest show,…
With red drapes and faux-classic paintings adorning its walls, Green Lady Lounge has felt joyously eclectic since it opened in December 2012. Last spring, the bar took that eclecticism a step further, replacing the main floor’s piano with a B-3 organ. Played correctly, it can fill the room with the soul of Ray Charles and the funk and jazz of…
Kansas City icons (Marilyn Maye, Valomilk candy, Arthur Bryant’s) are forever being discovered and rediscovered by observers outside our metro. Mostly, even the click-baitiest of such notices are good for us — those outsiders stoke the reputations of people and products that many of us take for granted. A few weeks ago, for instance, the Daily Meal website posted a…
Sarah McLachlan Get all the jokes about Sarah McLachlan’s ASPCA commercial out of your system right now, because you’re unlikely to recall that particular piece of marketing when you hear her sing Thursday at Starlight. The Canadian songstress is on tour in support of Shine On, a sunny pop record that makes 1997’s Building a Mystery seem downright funereal. But…
Last year, local rappers the Abnorm, Huey P. Nuisance and Domineko formed Yawn Johnson. None of them knew how long the partnership would last. The group released its debut album in October. Even that was accidental. No one expected a full-length. Seven months later, Yawn Johnson is still going strong. The trio opens Saturday’s show at the Riot Room for…
II’ll cop to being a bit of a grump about geeks-versus-jocks tropes. The culture offers only so many ways to celebrate the necessarily limited “computer nerd wins hot cheerleader by not being rape-y cretin” story. Ditto any star-crossed romance between the sports captain and the art chick. (Trash those ponytail holders, ladies — there’s a Rachael Leigh Cook in all…
The Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph continues to roil in its sea of child-sexual-abuse scandals. In a revelation Monday evening by The New York TImes, an arbitrator ordered the diocese and Bishop Robert Finn to pay $1.1 million to 44 plaintiffs in March because they broke promises to report child-abuse cases to authorities and deal more strictly with predatory priests….
