Around Hear

Being subjected to the Catholic school system for most of my academic life, I can say without a doubt that the greatest thing the brothers and sisters taught me was the concept of Lent. It wasn't because I enjoyed cramming a full year's worth of guilt, self-loathing, and fish into one action-packed month, but because Lent gave Catholics and self-described party animals the world over a single day to revel in the Dionysian ecstasy that Brazilians call "Carnival."

This year in Kansas City that day (Tues., March 7) will go unnoticed by most people, unless you plan to join the Kansas City Blues Society on its 10th annual Mardi Gras Blues Pub Crawl. The setup is easy: for $10 (adv. tix.) you can ride buses all over the city to 19 different clubs where 19 different bands will play. "It's the best entertainment value for the money," claims Blues Society member Bill Williams, and it's hard to doubt the guy.

"The routes will have buses circulating among three hubs that are positioned between three or four different clubs within reasonable walking distance," Williams says. "So in the 18th & Vine district there will be The Duck Warner Quartet at The Blue Room, and up the street at Club Mardi Gras will be King Alex. Plus, this year we will have some new hubs near the 75th Street Brewery, where The Mistreaters will play, that will go all the way south to BB's Lawnside BBQ, where Lee McBee and Bill Dye will be. Also this year for the first time there will be a KCK downtown hub, where there's been a resurgence for the blues, and there will be three clubs over there."

And that doesn't even touch the evening's feature presentation at Grand Emporium where CJ Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band will, with the help of zydeco, achieve every Yankovic's life dream in proving the accordion cool. So you couldn't do much better if you were in New Orleans, except that there are no Hurricanes (to drink) and beads do not equate breasts. Still, according to Williams, this is the biggest celebration of Mardi Gras in Kansas City, and unlike revelers in the French Quarter, participants in the Blues Club Crawl can always rest easy knowing money was spent for a good cause, and it doesn't involve posting bail.

"This is the biggest money-maker for the Blues Society each year," Williams says. "And even though we're a nonprofit group, the proceeds also go to support a number of the services we provide in the community, like the Blues in the Schools project."

Although it's easy to imagine a more inviting name for the organization's efforts to raise awareness of blues music among young people, it's also hard to argue with the group's methods or results. "We bring in used instruments and refurbish them and supply them to needy students in the schools because we realize that schools can't spend as much (money) on music education as they have in the past," says Williams. "We also bring in musicians to perform for these students and to teach kids the history of the blues, going back to their roots in the South."

So for just 10 bucks you and the krewe can ride around the city in the safety and comfort of a chartered bus and drink Fat Tuesday away to the sounds of the area's best local blues musicians. Then you can smile through Ash Wednesday's hangover content with the fact that your 10 spot will soon help a group of children get out of class for an afternoon with Sonny Kenner -- all things that would make the parishioners proud.

Quiet riot Ever since the Klammies nominations were printed in last week's Pitch, the typical, and now annual, backlash against the evil, mainstream minds behind this publication has been in full swing. "Where's my band?" some lament, while others ask more pointed questions such as: "How can one of the best records of the year (according to the 1999 Best of Music Awards) not get nominated for a Klammy?" Still others take the classic "Pitch fucking sucks anyway" approach. None of these statements is without merit, especially the second, but now it's time to get to know those folks who are still willing to acknowledge the Pitch, at least until April 1.

Q is a band that would defy the laws of music if its success were on a larger scale. On its 1999 album Heads, Q attempted to revive a brand of rock that was barely dead long enough for its offspring to land in the dollar bin. But the thing is, the band sort of did it, at least around here. Heads brought fans of what was known as "the Kansas City sound" back to the days when distilled hybrids of the area's brand of "meth-rock" ruled the airwaves in what America knew as Alternative Radio. But at times this year, Q sounded as fresh and energetic as anything by Molly McGuire or Giant's Chair. It was then that it found fans, and that's presumably how the group got nominated as one of 1999's Best New Bands.