Kansas City Music Blog

I'm posting this rather late today because, well, that's what going out all three nights of the weekend does to a body. And because I saw so much music this weekend, I'm not even gonna try to make this a shapely piece of writing. Here's what I saw, y'all.

FRIDAY
Son Venezuela at Power & Light: The district was by no means packed. It was a cold, sorta wet night, and Son Venezuela ain't exactly Blues Traveler or the Bravery. We perched on one of the staircases and watched as the area's hardest-gigging salsa bands kept a good 20 or so couples hot-stepping on the pavement in front of the stage non-stop. Seriously, those people could move. Ladies in tight dresses and high heels twisted and spun and popped their knees at the behests of graceful men in leather jackets and slacks. Talk about a following; it's no wonder Son Venezuela always wins the Latin category in our Pitch Music Awards. On the big screen overhead, the New York Yankees beat The The Angels Angels in game one of the ALCS. Shout out to two-for-one Fridays at the Bulldog.

Jason Harper

Hidden Pictures. P.S. My camera is seriously on its last legs.

​SATURDAY
Popfreeradio's Third Birthday at the Riot Room: I don't listen to Popfreeradio much at all, but I'm gonna start. Founded and largely operated by affable, walking-Kevin-Smith-movie-character Chronic the Hedgehog (aka Justin Bale), the online station attracts thousands of listeners a day. Maybe tens of thousands. I can't remember the figure Chronic told me inside at the Riot Room bar, but it was surprising. Meanwhile, FM continues to become more and more sterile and obsolete.

Hidden Pictures was the first band I caught when I arrived around 9. They were outside on the unheated patio. Fronted by frequent Pitch contributor Richard Gintowt and his fair lady, Michelle Sanders, the band doesn't get a lot of press - an unfortunate and direct result of Frer Gintowt's affiliation with our paper. But it definitely deserves a lot more listeners. The group crafts tight, sweet compositions with a sense of melody so strong it comes off as effortless. The sound is mellow rock in the vein of Travis or the Long Winters, and the Pics are definitely a step up from most local bands in terms of songcraft. Remarkably solid.

Jason Harper

The best shot I got of the Dead Girls.

​Up next, Lawrence band the Dead Girls made a crack about the unused patio heaters and surged into power-rock guitar awesomeness. For its upcoming Halloween show, the band is playing the entire soundtrack to the movie Adventureland, a comp that includes "Modern Love" by David Bowie, "Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco and "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure. It's a coming-of-age '80s soundtrack to match Dazed and Confused's Me Decade menu. It was during a cover of "Breakin' the Law," however, that the weekend's Ultimate Rock Moment occurred: a police helicopter that had been hovering overhead zoned in and shined its spotlight on the patio. Everyone flipped 'em off.

That Handsome Devil

​After that, I caught parts of sets from bands including but not limited to the Belated, Grandstand, Shudder and CES Cru - but the one that stole the whole evening was the sole out-of-town band, That Handsome Devil. Though billed as the headliner, the Brooklyn band went on around 11 and played a thoroughly crazy and engaging set of cracked-out, whiskey-cabaret punk jazz that with echoes of Outkast, Gogol Bordello and early Tom Waits. A deadpan three-piece backing band supported the antics of two singers: a towering black guy with dreadlocks and a muscly, bearded white dude (who goes by the name Godforbid) in a wife beater and fedora. Careening about the stage, they reported on the high lives of drifters and kooks. I'd never seen anything like it. I bought the Devil's EP (I wanted the more recent full-length but didn't have enough cash), and it's a trip. It's rare that something so affected and overtly performance-driven blows me away, but That Handsome Devil busted the Pinata of Expectations. And it was full of acid-laced candy corn. Their off-kilter approach was the perfect precursor to...

SUNDAY

Spot the nesting doll.

​Mumiy Troll at the Record Bar: In Russia, is not a crime. Also: this band is huge. Arena-filling huge, by all accounts. Our Muscovite friend, Inna, kept expressing wonder at being so close to Mumiy Troll, which she likened to Green Day in terms of national popularity back home.

Max Kunakhovich, lead singer for opening band Nuthatch-47, who is from same part of the Motherland as Mumiy (near Vladivostock), was also starstruck. He said tickets to see the band in Russia usually cost "seventy-fucking-hundred" bucks. As reported in the interview we conducted with band this past week, after years in the biz, Mumiy Troll is vying for an American audience, and I was happy to be a part of that audience last night, though about 80 percent of the crowd was Russian-speaking. And weirdly standoffish.

Though joining in boisterously for Nuthatch's rendition of a Ukrainian folk song, the crowd mostly gave the humor-oriented local group a wide berth. When I got there promptly at 9, the bar area and seating areas were packed, and the only place to stand was in the huge empty spot in front of the stage. This forced me stand in front of some cranky older people who were sitting in plastic chairs against the wall near the stage. Fortunately, after trying to tap on us to move out of their precious line of sight, the wallflowers got the idea to stand up in their chairs for the rest of the show. This trend would be adopted by others throughout the bar the rest of the night.

Ilya Lagutenko's got no strings to hold him down.

​

When Mumiy (pronounced "moomie") came on around 10:25, the dance floor filled with elegantly dressed ladies and churlish gents snapping constant photos and singing along to every word they knew, which ended up being quite a few. To an outsider's ears, the all-Russian-singing band sounded like minor-key guitar rock with a recurring traditional-music undercurrent, rather like a Russky Franz Ferdinand. I haven't seen anyone quite as facially expressive as clownish frontman Ilya Lagutenko in quite a while. He and his bandmates wore baggy sailor suits, and though his mates were somber, Lagutenko (not unlike Billie Joe Armstrong) gave off a sprightly jester-like persona, widening his eyes, contorting his face and grinning like a mental patient even during songs that were, on the whole, accessible pop rock. Still, there was something strange, something other about the band, and much of that effect sprang from Lagutenko's vocal delivery: a croaky, low-baritone stream of alternating babbling and crooning. Apparently, dramatic expressiveness is prized above pure vocal ability in Russian rock stars. I'd never seen anything quite like that, either.

As Yakov Smirnoff would say, what a weekend. Eh. Eh. Eh.