Kansas City Music Blog

And once again, we bring you Friday Freebies, wherein we present things to do this weekend that won't cost you any more than the gas it takes to get to 'em.

First Fridays hits the Crossroads art district tonight. You can check out the Pitch's First Friday Hitlist for a list of what we think is worth a look. Jason Harper's interview with Commander Cody might get you out and about to see some art, as well (what we're saying here is, "Go see that Commander Cody art show -- it's gonna be good).

Marc Haney plays what is described as "front porch" Americana tonight at Signs of Life, 722 Massachusetts, in Lawrence. The show starts at 7:30pm, but you can always show up early, grab some coffee, and look at The White Show, "works by 49 established and emerging artists from 18 States and Puerto Rico explore the concept of 'white'." Mr. Haney goes on at 7:30pm.

​Saturday afternoon at the Inge Theatre in KU's Murphy Hall, you can attend a staged reading of Karel Capek's R.U.R., also known as Rossum's Universal Robots, from a new translation by PhD student Eva Hauska. Capek's play is famous for popularizing the use of the word "robot," rather than the previously preferred "automaton." The reading starts at 2:00pm and is presented by KU's Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Sunday, November 8, you can get some culture. Patrick Buckley will be presenting a lecture recital at 4:00pm in the sanctuary of Congregation Kol Ami, 7501 Belinder Ave., in Prairie Village. Buckley will present information, both in German and in English, regarding influential German composers and poets. He will also sing Mahler's Kinder-Totenlieder, as well as compositions by Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms.

There will be a panel discussion on the subject "Is violence more effective for the right than the left?" at at the restaurant Ten at the Eldridge Hotel in Lawrence. You can find more information on the panel discussion and the optional brunch beforehand in our preview. The discussion starts at 1:30pm Sunday afternoon.

Lastly, Mark Cowardin's From the Ground Up solo exhibition has its opening reception from 2-4pm at the Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom. The solo exhibition features new large-scale sculpture by the artist. According the press release, "Cowardin approaches his subjects through the industrial complex of the building industry, namely construction materials such as actual two-by-fours and simulated cinder blocks, ductwork, and electrical switches." Directions and more information are available here.

Oh, CoCoComa -- you are so amazing. You had me hooked the instant I put your first 45 on my turntable. Your garage beat is infectious and makes me want to dance all over my living room. So, it makes a certain amount of sense that kiddie dance program Chic-A-Go-Go would have you on to perform/pantomime/lip-sync -- whatever -- your song "It Won't Be Long," off your new album Things Are Not All Right.

It's also amazingly adorable that Bill and Lisa Roe (the husband and wife team behind CoCoComa) brought along their 6-month-old child, Ronnie Roe. He's the little bundle dressed up like a hot dog.

The Roes also recently started a record label, Trouble In Mind, which releases limited-edition 45s. The label's first release is from CoCoComa, and features two songs not on the new full-length, "Ask, Don't Tell" and "The Anchor." It's on gorgeous purple swirl vinyl, too.

Just over a year ago, friends of musician Abigail Henderson rallied to help her defray the cost of the expensive cancer treatments she was undergoing. And in true Kansas City fashion, that first benefit show, called Apocalypse Meow, rocked. Now Henderson is cancer-free, and it's time for another round of musical fundraising.

Forester Michael

Abigail Hendson at last year's inaugural Apocalypse Meow

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Taking place Saturday at Crosstown Station with a pre-party tonight at Midwestern Musical Co. (1830 Locust), Apocalypse Meow 2 will raise money for the burgeoning Midwest Music Foundation, which grew out of the first Meow and is bent toward helping musicians with health-care costs.

Beginning at 7 p.m. Friday at Midwestern, Howard Iceberg and the Titanics, followed by Henderson's band, the Gaslights, kick up the dust. Live-music-oriented photographs will be on display and for sale.

Saturday, the party moves to Crosstown for a blowout headlined by the Pedaljets and featuring the Columns, the Grisly Hand, Alacartoona, Sara Swenson and Tiny Horse. Scores of sweet prizes will be auctioned and raffled, including two pairs of Leonard Cohen VIP tickets, an autographed Zach Greinke baseball and a one-year pass to the Riot Room. Get there early for the health fair if you haven't had your blood pressure checked in a while. But watch out -- later, when the bands go on, it's gonna rise.

Go here for more info, plus an hour-by-hour, audio-enhanced schedule.

When Brad Hodgson told me, on a recent First Friday night, that he had left his position as frontman for In the Pines, one my favorite Kansas City bands ever, I would've sliced off his ear with a sword cane. But (a) I had no sword cane and (b) I had heard tracks from his awesome new project, Biarchy.

Matt Naquin

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Launched in early October, Biarchy is a two-man project conceived by Hodgson and fellow former ITP member Mike Myers (who drummed for the band, which, by the way, is forging on toward album two with new members). The duo's radiant, electronic-steeped music is warm and etheric; it filters into the brain's auditory cortex as if through electroencephalography.

Fans of Thom Yorke's The Eraser, Moby's more somber moments, Sparklehorse and/or late-'70s instrumental art-rock compositions in the vein of Brian Eno and David Bowie (see: "Warszawa") will find a lot to sway to in Biarchy. On songs like "Informed" (streaming now on MySpace.com/biarchy) there's even a delightful sprinkling of Sea & Cake.

And of course, this is still a Hodgson project, so you'll traces of that evocative, shoegaze-folk sound that has marked his songwriting. In fact, a Hodgson solo tune I first noticed back in late 2006 has been beautifully repurposed by Biarchy.

MP3: Biarchy, "Runs on Blood"

But music is only half of what Biarchy's about. Hodgson and Myers hope that visual artists -- filmmakers, videogame makers, animators, etc. -- will use Biarchy's sounds to soundtrack their projects. And to that end, they're giving away their entire 12-track album free. Download it at Biarchy.com.

They've already had a couple of video submissions, including this one, by Jordan Kerfeld, set to "The Coldest." View more at Biarchy's Vimeo profile.

The Coldest from biarchy on Vimeo.

There's not a lot I can say here that trumps what Saby Reyes-Kulkarni said about Valient Thorr in his show preview:
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Valient Thorr kicks ass far beyond the dreams of any of those psychedelic-stoner-garage-riff-'n'-rollers who make careers out of copying Sabbath or Iggy Pop and get drooled on by forgiving fans.

However, it's certainly worth bringing up that the Architects will make a rare appearance in Lawrence as openers for this show. We'd like to see some more rock 'n' roll in Lawrence, but it sadly seems to be, for the most part, exclusive to Kansas City, which is a shame -- mainly because those of us who live in Lawrence and don't suckle at the teat of indie rock or jam bands have to make 80 mile round trips.

So, if you live in Lawrence, please come out and support the rare Friday night rock 'n' roll show. Showing up early and giving the Phillips brothers and Mr. Liggatt a little love wouldn't be unappreciated, either.

MP3: Valient Thorr, "I Hope the Ghosts of the Dead Haunt Yr Soul Forever"

​When Leonard Cohen's first-ever Kansas City concert was announced a few months ago, you'd have been forgiven for assuming it was the latest Folly Theater event booked by Bill Shapiro, host of KCUR 89.3's long-running music show (and pledge-drive workhorse) Cyprus Avenue. Shapiro had often named the Cohen tour as No. 1 on his wish list.

In fact, the tour is an AEG jam at the Midland, and if you're sitting anywhere close to the dapper Canadian, you've blown a big-city chunk of change. (As of this writing, it's mostly sold out, but some $250 seats remain.)

In lieu of the preshow talk he might have offered an audience at the more intimate Folly (which has about 1,080 seats to the Midland's 2,300), we asked Shapiro to name the songs most on his mind as the clock counts down to Leonard Hour. His exclusive list after the jump.

Before Commander Cody became a household name for his saloon-stomping, country-rock jams in the '70s, the man behind the moniker had a career in art academia as George Frayne. In the late '60s Frayne was plying his MFA in sculpture toward teaching at the Wisconsin State University in Oshkosh when he decided to move to San Francisco in 1969 with members of his backing band to pursue music full-time. Later that same year, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen would open for the Grateful Dead and then go on to tour the world, releasing albums throughout the '70s on Paramount and Warner Bros., the highest-charting being the band's self-titled 1975 release.

The Commander in Italy, July 2009.

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The Lost Planet Airmen lineup ended with We Got a Live One Here in 1976, but the Commander forged ahead with various backing bands in the subsequent years. After the release of Let's Rock on Blind Pig Records in '87, Commander Cody stopped touring and recording regularly but continued with his art, especially painting.

This year, Commander Cody has a new album out, Dopers, Drunks and Everyday Losers, his first since 1999, as well as a coffee-table book, Art, Music & Life, which features paintings by Frayne alongside stories from his life and career in music.

The 1819 Central Gallery will be showing an exhibition of Frayne's paintings beginning with an opening tonight from 6 to 9 p.m. (Read our profile of the gallery here.) The show runs through December. Unfortunately, Cody won't be coming to town to play, he says, until probably sometime this Spring, at Knuckleheads.

Never ones to pass up a chance to talk to someone unusual and famous, we caught up with the Commander from his home in Saratoga Springs, New York, to talk about, among other things, a life-changing revelation in his family history, playing Cowtown Ballroom in KC, how he was the "reefer man" in Ann Arbor, how Hunter S. Thompson tried to blow up his hotel room and, well, art, music and life. Better clear your calendar for the next 30 or so -- the Commander likes to talk (and we likes to listen to him).

Is it alright to call you Commander?

The cover of Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen.

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Sure, call me Commander or George or Cody - actually, most people call me Cody. But whatever you're comfortable with.

I kinda like Commander.

Military background?

Trekkie actually.

Excellent, I'm kind of a Trekkie myself. I certainly enjoy science-fiction. That's one of the things I really, really love.

Did you toy with any other stage names?

Yeah. It was 1967 and I was out at my summer job in New York as a lifeguard at Jones Beach, which is a pretty big deal. Every July 4th about 3 million people show up at Jones Beach. There's 427 lifeguards spread out over 32 miles and 17 beaches.

We'd retired to the Jones Beach Hotel where there's sort of a lifeguard bar. We were forming a lifeguard band and were trying to figure what names to call it, and I had three. First of all was the name I'd been trying to start a band with, a name I'd brought from college, which was Smooth Dog and the Puppies, which I thought was damn good, you know?

But that didn't work over. Then the television set was on behind the bar, and the rocket man was on there, the Commando Cody character. And the movie was The Lost Planet Airmen, so I went, "How about Commando Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen?" But they didn't like that either.

Standing at the front of the stage before Old Crow Medicine Show went on, I counted the following: 3 banjos, 3 acoustic guitars, 3 fiddles, 1 electric guitar, 1 electric bass, 1 stand-up bass, 1 organ, and 1 drum kit. That's a lot of instrumentation. Specifically, that's a lot of stringed instrumentation, and it's those strings that hamstrung OCMS over the course of their two sets at Liberty Hall last night.

Nick Spacek

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Thanks to the frantic playing Willie Watson exhibited, he broke something like six or seven strings throughout the show. The first couple of times, it was somewhat amusing, in a "man, those cats can PLAY!" sort of thing, but as their first set progressed, it got to killing any momentum the band might've had.

The first of the two sets yielded a lot of problems for me beyond the broken strings. First of all, the band couldn't lay all the mishaps on Watson. Rather than building energy with a series of energetic tunes, and then bringing it down with a slower number, the whole set went fast song, slow song, fast song, slow song, not allowing any sort of energy to get built up.

Nick Spacek

​And, really -- it's on the fast songs where Old Crow Medicine Show shines. Ketch Secor and Watson can harmonize like nobody's business, and when Gill Landry joins in (especially on something like "Big Time In The Jungle"), those three-part harmonies are just gorgeous. But when Morgan Jahnig really gets to let loose on the upright bass during the faster numbers, the whole band's sound gets a little more rhythm and low end. Really good country numbers, like George Jones' "White Lightning" or anything Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three did, have a country rhythm created with a double-slap on the bass -- basically, every good country song sounds like it was set to the beat of a train. Old Crow sorely lacks that rhythm.

Well, we're a little behind on this news, but it bears mentioning nonetheless: Kansas City pop-dance act Queens Club signed to Tooth & Nail, home to MxPx and Underoath, among others.

​And, not only did Queens Club sign to Tooth & Nail, they just released their debut recording for the label, the Nightmarer EP, which dropped back in September. They've also recently tapped Record Machine recording artist Max Justus to remix the title track, and the label has made that available on their blog as November's "Song of the Month."

Download it below, and hear how "Max brings his signature dark vibe to the track giving it a pulsing electronic rhythm through out [and] finds a way to bend and warp the original track into something all together new."

MP3: Queens Club, "Nightmarer" (Max Justus Remix)

Have you ever picked up a slim volume of prose, looked at it, and uttered the words, "This should be a quick read"? That's what I did with David Lehman's A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs. I was sadly, sadly mistaken.

​Lehman covers quite a lot of material in the course of A Fine Romance. He manages to keep the material tangentially related to the idea of Judaism and how it relates to popular song in the early part of the previous century. In the book's opening pages, the idea of how early works such as Porgy & Bess took musical phrasing from Shabbos prayers over the Torah make for an intriguing notion.

Unfortunately, rather than explore ideas like that for the totality of the book, Lehman chooses to name-drop pretty much every songwriter to ever work out of Tin Pan Alley with a Jewish heritage. There are so many people and songs and musicals mentioned in A Fine Romance that one's head starts to swim. If you're less than familiar with musicals such as Oklahoma!, How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, or the works of Frank Sinatra, you're out of your element and pretty much screwed when it comes to making it through this book.

Throw in the fact that Lehman tends to use hypotheticals such as a conversation he had in dream about Ira Gershwin, and the book tends to get rather confusing. At the start of each chapter or section, he manages to bring things back to the book's supposed focus, but then begins rhapsodizing over each writer or performer's merits, and A Fine Romance once again turns into an overly gushing work about popular song.

A Fine Romance manages to keep things moving a long, but by the end of Lehman's book, there have been so many names -- of songs, of musicals, of personages -- tossed at the reader that one can't help but feel overwhelmed. The effect detracts from the point that Lehman is trying to make, that being that the songwriters' Jewish heritage influenced their songs in both words and music.

Tablet Magazine did an interview with Lehman about A Fine Romance, and you can listen to or download it here.