‘tober Kill
No month invites moniker manipulation like October. True, people could celebrate August-a by barring women from their homes for 31 days. Or they could spring into April (Lavigne) by wearing a stupid black necktie for four consecutive weeks. But those options pale in comparison with Oculartober (great deals at the mall’s rush-job lens store), Octopustober (on the Discovery channel) and Mocktober (heckling all of the networks’ inept new sitcoms).
The grandest of all October celebrations, though, is Oktoberfest, which Kansas City traditionally celebrates with dozens of rinky-dinky-sausage-linky parking-lot parties. However, this year, the city’s event goes big time, moving to Richard L. Berkley Riverfront Park and enlisting Mayor Kay Barnes and Chiefs voice Bill Grigsby to tap the traditional wooden keg at opening ceremonies.
Given the city’s knack for colossal screw-ups, some might immediately and understandably assume that Oktoberfest has been wrongly wedged into a September weekend, making its title a travesty. Actually, the real deal in Munich, Germany, has already ended, having kicked off at noon on September 21. As for fears that liquor-logged lager sippers might take a drunken plunge into the wasser or start harassing the strolling accordion players, equine-equipped police offers will be on hand to gallop to the rescue.
Those worries set aside, it’s time to move on to the entertainment options. For some reason, people who despise a certain form of music will love a band that covers its favorite songs in that form, though logic suggests they’d be incensed at the intrusion (see Pat Boone‘s “Crazy Train”). Brave Combo has built a cult following and a Grammy-winning career on that curious quandary, and now it brings its Jimi Hendrix remakes and polka-dotted versions of “The Hustle” and the Doors‘ “People are Strange” to Okotoberfest’s main stage on Friday, September 27.
The Beatles cover band Liverpool headlines Saturday night, and if form holds, the group will be unceremoniously booted from the premises the way the original Fab Four was kicked out of Hamburg. Naggabazi flies in from Germany to play all three days of Oktoberfest, and though the group’s Web site contains little English (though an image of Uncle Sam hovers above the cognate phrase dies istein insider tipp), some random clicking uncovers these American anthems on its set list: “Achy Breaky Heart,” “YMCA” and the Tom Jones standard “Sex Bomb.”
Local talent dominates the lineup, though some of the acts have anything but local-sounding names. Festhaus-Musikanten is an authentic German wind orchestra originally organized to play an Oktoberfest at Worlds of Fun in 1991. Betty Jo Simon, Cole Camp, Willie Kirst, Brian McCarty and S.V. Blautaler fill the rest of the slots with polkas, marches, waltzes, schottisches and landlers. (For the full lineup, see kcoktoberfest.org.)
Though German music fits the Oktoberbest bill, it’s not germane to the month’s oft-used nickname, Rocktober. On Wednesday, October 2, Conspiracy, Lost in the Zoo, Equinox and Five Fathoms Down fire Club Wars II’s opening shots. These brutal bands, who will square off that night at America’s Pub, set in motion a 64-team field with no clear favorites.
That number brings another event to mind — last year’s ill-fated Tournament of Rock. (In related news, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon‘s cohorts recently tracked down the Tournament’s AWOL promoter, Terry Nelson, and served him with a lawsuit seeking restitution.) Check clubwars.net for the full schedule, including the rare bill that can tell a story just by rearranging the words in the band’s names (October 25, with Legend, Urban Disorder, Fatal Candy Machine, Severance and Jeremy’s Box).
There are a few more shows of note before September ends. Sure, it’s worthwhile to catch jazz trio Dunn, Freeman and Will Matthews at the Blue Room on Friday, September 27, and pop papa Burt Bacharach with the Kansas City Symphony on Saturday, September 28. But these concerts neither rock nor deliver that certain oom-pa-pa. For that, Kansas City music fans must venture out from the handful of venues that book 90 percent of the area’s appealing shows and travel to empty parks, erstwhile dance clubs and other only-in-October destinations. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, it ain’t ‘tober ’til it’s ‘tober.
