Blogs

By ERIC BARTON

If you've ever been to Lochloosa, you’d wonder why JJ Grey is always singing about it. It’s up in the Florida lake country, past nothing and halfway to Hawthorne. I think there might be a Hardee’s there.

But there’s something in Grey’s voice when he sings that song about his hometown. There’s something that feels like true life homesickness.

I first heard that in Grey’s voice back in 2002 at a Tampa juke joint called Skipper's Smokehouse. It’s actually a place that feels a lot like where I saw Grey and his band Mofro tonight, at Crossroads Kansas City. Like Skipper’s, Crossroads is nothing more than some park benches, mulch, corrugated metal and a sound system. It actually feels like it could be in Lochloosa.

More

Feist and Juana Molina
Date: July 13, 2008
Venue: Starlight Theatre
Better Than: International bootlegs of “The Sifl and Olly Show.”
By GRANT SNIDER

It’s not viral indie rock journalism that propelled Feist to stardom. It’s not her Canadian camaraderie with the art commune Broken Social Scene or the vulgar genius Peaches. It’s not even that damn iPod commercial you heard some fifth grader whistling a month after you bought The Reminder. It’s her voice. As a desperate-to-be-quoted friend remarked, “Feist has a voice that could save the NHL.”

Pontificate all you want about how she doesn’t even write all of her own songs (including the one in that commercial), and how the ones she does write can be the lyrical equivalent of a sugarcube marinated in syrup. But tear out a page from your favorite pop songbook and Feist will craft a cherubic arrangement, summon her seraphic vocal cords, and transubstantiate it into her own tune. Give her a guitar, and she can simultaneously raise hell.

More after the jump.

More

By NADIA PFLAUM

Click on the photo for a slideshow.

Q. What's brown and rhymes with Snoop? (Find the answer at the end of this mini-review.)

Let me just say that the last time I saw Snoop Dogg perform, it was with Eminem when Eminem still had a career, and he and Snoop shared the stage with a giant, inflatable hand waving a middle finger up and down.

So it pains me to point out that the stage was bare for this round of Snoop action, save for a floating marijuana leaf by the back curtains and what looked, from my vantage point, like a cardboard cut-out of a flaming donut. (Let it never be said that Pitch employees get special treatment. We were general admission on the Cap Fed lawn and found a "good" spot behind a wall of small pine trees.)

More

Mewithoutyou
July 8, 2008
The Bottleneck
Better than: Watching a televangelist from the comfort of your air-conditioned living room.
By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

One guy on the left side of the room undulated, shirtless, last night for the entirety of Mewithoutyou’s experimental-spiritual indie rock set. I don’t really like it when dudes strip down at shows, but this time I was kind of jealous. The Bottleneck was a sauna. It was one of those shows where the sweat gathers at your neck and pours right down your back and legs, whether you’re dancing or just standing still.

That the singer for opening band Maps and Atlases survived his whole set wearing a long-sleeved, button-down shirt and cardigan is kind of amazing.

More

The People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City
Date: July 6, 2008
Venue: The Record Bar
Better Than: Band Camp
By LORNA PERRY

There was many a folding chair onstage at the Record Bar last night. The People’s Liberation Big Band was in the hizz-ouse, and when they’re around, something in the order of a dozen chairs are needed. Not that the band consists of only a dozen members – last night’s show had 17 musicians total packed onstage, with sheet music and various instruments in/on/under hand.

“This whole People’s Liberation thing stemmed out of Brad Cox’s weird musical mind,” explains Sam Wiseman, percussionist and member of PLBB. “He wanted to develop a kind of musician’s collective, for the purpose of creating new music.”

New in the sense that well-known musical scores are re-arranged by whichever PLBB musician wants to bring something to the table. Musician, composer and People’s Liberation mastermind Brad Cox rearranged the Beach Boys’ "Don’t Talk", for example. On the setlist and ready for delivery, PLBB-style.

“We get paid in Pale Ale,” adds singer Shay Estes. “Sometimes we actually get paid, but most of the time it’s beer-for-play. It’s truly a case of musicians coming together for the sake and love of music.”

More

The 14th Annual Vans Warped Tour
Date: July 2, 2008
Venue: Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Better Than: The Utopia Mountain Music Festival (when I was 16)
By DANNY ALEXANDER

Click to view the first of two slideshows.

My 16-year-old daughter and I attended this year's Warped Tour together, just as we did two years ago. Last time, I was clearly needed for a chauffeur; this time it was an honor. I couldn't stay until evening, but my daughter had other ways to get home.

Click to view the second of two slideshows.

First, my perspective: this year's Warped Tour seemed stronger than the previous tour. Last time, the event seemed very white, male-dominated and so oriented toward punk purism I found myself wondering how so little could have changed since 1979.

More after the jump.

More

The coolest little ladies in Kansas City take the stage at the KCK Blues Festival.

KCK Street Blues Festival
Date: June 27 & 28, 2008
Venue: Koran Temple parking lot
Better Than: A drunken evening at B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ
By LORNA PERRY

Click to view slideshow.

The 8th Almost Annual KCK Street Blues Festival got underway this weekend at the corner of 13th and State, in Kansas City, Kansas. Friday night featured Cadillac Flambé, Koolaide & Exact Change, Dan Bliss, Blue River Ordonnance with special guests Phil Sanders and Ernie Johnson and Millage Gilbert plus Tommy Soul. Friday’s attendance was hearty, but Saturday was the biggest draw – a sizeable crowd had settled in by the time the first event, a 12:30 panel discussion titled “KC Blues – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” with Jim O’Neal, Lindsay Shannon, Chuck Haddix, Groovy Grant and White Hat Mike Ross got underway. Throughout the large parking lot in front of the very tall stage, people had laid claim to asphalt, throwing down blankets, lawnchairs and coolers. Venders and their wares – be it BBQ, T-shirts, African Juices or the African American Democrat Caucus booth – were everywhere.

More

By JOHN KREICBERGS

Click photo to view slideshow.

There’s little doubt that “American Idol” is the best thing that could have ever happened to Kansas City’s annual Red, White & Boom extravaganza. Having pulled through a few awkward years (think “Livin’ la Vida Loca” and “White Wedding” on the same bill), this homegrown event started to hit its stride during its tweens thanks to a parade of artists hand-picked by primetime hitmakers Randy, Paula and Simon and, in most cases, rejected en masse by an American voting public obviously more interested in minting popstars than presidents. Now officially entering its teens, Red, White & Boom is starting to express a unique sense of style and personality, much like the young girls and boys (but let’s face it -- mostly girls) that packed the recently rechristened Sandstone Amphitheatre this past Saturday.

Bolstered by incredible weather that produced more suntans and cool breezes than cases of heat stroke, the show opened with Drew 6, winners of 93.3’s Ultimate Band Search, followed by the Last Goodnight. By the time the venue started to fill with bedazzled teens sporting puffy painted t-shirts declaring “[insert heartthrob of the moment here] 4 EVAR!,” Ferras pulled up a keyboard centerstage and settled into a short set capped off by this past Idol season’s official sayonara song “Hollywood’s Not America.”

More

By ROY KASTEN

The glitter fell but doom never did. So much the better for this -- how else can it be put? -- historic Tom Waits show at the Fox Theatre. Not that Waits didn’t try to summon all the spirits in the boneyard at the end of the junkyard at the end of the world. The hall roared when he gave “What’s He Building In There?” all his crypto-voyeurism, but his greatness has nothing to do with channeling Vincent Price. And who cares who “Mr. Stitches” is anyway? One can only take so much persona.

Click the photo to view slideshow.

Photos from the show.

For all the prophecies of chaos and clusterfucks that heralded the anti-scalper gouge-fest that is the Tom Waits ticketing system, the Fox staff moved the sell-out crowd through the block-long lines on Grand like they knew what they were doing. To think I could I have driven to Memphis, chased some trucker speed with a half pint of bourbon, and made it back to St. Louis, stopping for all the coffee and cigarettes I could consume at every other truck stop along the way, for the same price as my VIP2 Row H ticket. I might have gotten some stories out of it, but none of them would have been history.

More after the jump.

More

Little pig, little pig, let me in. Click below to view the slideshow.

By JASON HARPER

Buffalo Saints. Now there's a band that takes me back. The first time I saw 'em was in early 2004. The next time after that that I saw 'em was election night 2004, when America re-elected George W. Bush. The band was playing the election results watching party at Davey's. Lead singer and guitarist Tommy Hoskins was then and still is now one of the finest voices in Kansas City music -- his bleating tenor equally suited for pop as for twang. Joining him were Nate Harold on bass, Ryan Johnson on drums and Mike Alexander guitar -- a country slinger before I ever knew him as an Architect or Gadjit. The Saints, in those days, were as dedicated to flannel western shirts and catchy hooks as any band ten or fifty years older, and their music was crisp, catchy and smoky like wet mesquite on the fire.

Or something like that.

More

Expassionates, with Barclay Martin
Saturday, 06-21-08
Davey's Uptown
Better than: Lung cancer

There's no place I would have rather experienced my first smoke-free night in Kansas City than Davey's Uptown. Many a night have I cursed the dive's omnipresent smoke cloud, and just as many nights I've avoided it altogether for that very reason. Thanks to the great voters of Kansas City, I was stoked to experience my first (mostly) smokeless night in Kansas City. As an added bonus, Expassionates and Barclay Martin were set to perform – the latter joining the bill following an unfortunate last-minute cancellation by San Francisco's The Botticellis (a great band well worth checking out despite their unexplained truancy).

More after the jump.

More

Love old school? Miss the Cosby Show? Still hate Reagan? Click below to view our slideshow of '80s night at the Record Bar.

Soul Asylum and Los Lonely Boys
06/21/08
Ribfest, American Royal/Kemper Arena Parking Lot
Better Than: you could imagine
By DANNY ALEXANDER
Photos by LAUREN ALEXANDER

Click photo to view slideshow.

"Karl told us to say hi," guitarist Dan Murphy announced toward the end of Soul Asylum's set, "That guy could kick some ribs." Of course, Murphy was referring to Karl Mueller, the band's founding member lost to cancer in 2005.

Despite the oddity of playing to a somewhat sparse crowd (it grew substantially as the band played) on a hot afternoon at a barbeque, lead singer Dave Pirner seemed determined to have fun from the start, prowling the stage and cracking bad jokes inspired by the John Deere display and the irony of playing in the shadow of an arena. By the third song, Pirner
was swinging his hips and dodging invisible bullets (or ribs).

More