The Weekend Haps

TGIF, homies.

Don’t forget that tonight, starting at 7:30 downstairs at Skybox, our DJ challenge goes down like Julie Brown. Five DJs, whose spins can be sampled here, faceoff for command of the dance floor. The best and brightest gets a trip to Miami to lay down some wax (or CD or MP3 or whatever) at the Ultra Music Festival. For regular heads, it’s a fun competition, and for people who don’t get out to the clubs much, it’s a good opportunity to sample what’s going on in the local dance scene. You get five DJs in under three hours, and it’ll be over around 11, so you can go home and get some good sleep, visions of girls doing the twisty-arm dance twirling in your head. I personally challenge everyone at the Kansas City Star to come represent. Oh, and don’t miss this: one of the DJs put together a diss track. That’s a first!

Later tonight, the OxBlood showcase takes over the Record Bar. The lineup has changed, so check the venue’s site for details.

We talked on the Wayward Cast about this, but a lot of people still probably don’t know that a real-deal film crew is shooting a documentary about the Kansas City music scene, with concert footage and interviews all taken from the OxBlood showcase. I spoke with filmmaker Bob Moczydlowsky a couple of weeks ago, and I salute what he’s doing. Rather than make a film that hypes or zooms in too close to anything specific to Kansas City, Bob’s shooting a film for a universal audience — it’s a movie about the trials and triumphs in the lives of people who participate in an independent music scene. He’ll be interviewing somewhere around 125 musicians, plus hangers-on like me.

“It’s basically a no-budget film,” Bob told me, but he’ll be using cinematic high-definition cameras, and he’ll submit the product to small film festivals. His approach to making the film could help the scene — precisely because he’s not trying to help the scene. “The less it’s actually about Kansas City, the better,” he said, meaning better for both the film and the scene it documents. No one wants to watch a doc intended to hype some random city’s scene, namely, a bunch of bands you’ve never heard of and don’t care about. But with all this great music being heard in the context of a universal human interst story, perhaps people will be more moved to research the bands they see. Ah, counterintuitive!

A native to these parts now based in LA, Bob has done videos for the Roman Numerals, one of which is viewable off the Audio + Visual portion of the band’s site.

OK, enough of the shoutouts. For some rock and roll that’ll grab you by the shirt collar and push your face into its crotch, head down to the Brick tonight for the Pink Socks. If you’re still not wise to this band, all I should have to say is remember the Litigators? That’s them, but with different members and an ever rawer sound. (Is “rawer” a word?) The band recently added Josh Mobley from the Afterparty on keys. Also playing: the Afterparty (natch) and the Depressors. For those tired of indie rock, come to this show for some down-home, broke-ass shit.

At the Brick on Saturday and then again at Fred P. Ott’s on the Plaza is a Texas band called Youngmond Grand. OK, I know nothing about ’em. They were supposed to send a press kit and never did, or it got lost. Or something. But enough people have recommended them to me (Amie Nelson and Shawn from the Roman Numerals, to name a couple), that I think I can safely pass along my secondhand recommendation to you. Plus, the songs on their Myspace don’t sound half bad — that “angular,” dry, repeating-riff-based sound of Interpol, but with more rock than retro, sounds like. Oh, looky, they’re playing tonight at the Jackpot and have plans to come back in April. They must have friends here…

Be good to your friends this weekend, friends. Remember ladies, you can drive a man to drink, but don’t drink … don’t… fuck, I can’t think of how that one should end. Anyway, check Sad Dog and Lawrence.com and our own listings for other alternatives for live music shenanigans.