Music: Hello, Kansas City! >>

• Best Local Band
  Doris Henson
  Choosing a best local band is like picking a favorite child, but, to borrow from one of this group's songs, tonight there is no sidestepping. So with a heavy but resolved heart, we dub fair Doris Henson the best band in the land right now. Watching this band mature has been less like witnessing... More >>
• Best MC
  Mac Lethal
  David McCleary Sheldon has a dangerous mind. Abhorring the shallow trappings of make-sum-noize hip-hop, Sheldon -- Mac Lethal to y'all -- spews smart, caustic, bleak, hilarious, slang-and-cliche-free verse with the inspiration and artfulness of a poet but the attitude of a reform-school dropout.... More >>
• Best DJ
  DJ Sku
  Corey Aguilar can't keep his hands off records. Between the time he spends in record stores and the hours he spins vinyl on the ones and twos, DJ Sku's thumb has been on just about every good hip-hop, soul, funk or rock record in existence. Born in El Paso, Texas, and now living in Lawrence, Sku... More >>
• Best Success Story
  The Golden Republic
  It wasn't all that long ago that first cousins Ben Grimes and Ryan Shank began jamming together in grade school. Now they're all grown up, and they have tattoos, sweet equipment, a professionally shot music video and a deal with Astralwerks, one of the best labels around. Oh, and they also have... More >>
• Best New Band
  In the Pines
  The very existence of this band, which consists of four alternative-rock elders and two classical-music students, gives hope to music fans who are ready for the Kansas City rock scene to evolve away from the garage, the mall and the pentagram and toward the realm of art. Seeing In the Pines live... More >>
• Best Unsigned Band
  Namelessnumber-headman
  We simply can't believe that this six-year-old band hasn't been discovered by a credible label. The pain! The injustice! Somebody do something! Even worse, NNHM's 2003 album, Your Voice Repeating -- one of the few local releases that can legitimately be called seminal -- is now out of print.... More >>
• Best Blues Band
  The Litigators
  The Litigators are the kind of musicians who'll embarrass you in front of your boss, light up in church, come over to your house and guzzle all your aftershave, and give you a big hug when their shirts are drenched with sweat and beer (which is pretty much after every show). But they won't play... More >>
• Best Blues Club
  Knuckleheads Saloon
  Plenty of people were outraged when the Grand Emporium's Roger Naber and Herb Palmer sold their gritty, nationally famous blues haunt. Let it be known, then, that the torch has been picked up -- by a biker, no less. Roots, Americana, zydeco and the blues have a new home at Knuckleheads. In a... More >>
• Best Jazz Band
  The Grand Marquis
  No matter how many classic masterworks receive new packaging from great labels such as Blue Note and Impulse, and no matter how many times Wynton Marsalis fires up the Lincoln Center to pay homage to the 20th-century titans of this great American art form, interest in jazz is fading like the... More >>
• Best Jazz Club
  The Blue Room
  Any jazz artist, local or national, should feel privileged to play at this club in the 18th & Vine District. Musicians there don't have to worry about choking on cigarette smoke, and they can enjoy a sound system and a seating arrangement that keep the focus on the sound. The Blue Room, operated... More >>
• Best Country Band
  The Wilders
  Betse, Ike, Phil, Nate ... thank you. (If you, the reader, are confused by this cryptically brief entry in a sea of laudatory verbiage, then allow us to clarify. The Wilders have been around for nearly ten years, playing the kind of old-time country and gospel that inspired Hank Williams to don... More >>
• Best Classical Musicians
  NewEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble
  "Classical" here is something of a misnomer -- complete misnomer, in fact. But what can we say? The members of NewEar sit behind music stands and play violins and shit, right? The sounds they produce, however, would have Bach wrinkling his nose and rubbing the inside of his ears with his... More >>
• Best Live Act
  Bacon Shoe
  Wherever death metal, crunk, raunch, irony, vaudeville, the dreams of brain surgery patients, and animal byproducts collide, you will find Bacon Shoe. The band is made up of a wild-haired MC who wears sporty specs 24/7 like Bono, a faux-mentally challenged hype man, and a dude in a paramedic... More >>
• Best Sexy Musician, Female
  Ruby Falls, Alacartoona
  When looking at a female singer, it's not nice to stare, drool and gradually (or immediately) give way to a joyous, antiquated lust that hasn't been felt in the loins of Kansas City since the decadent 1920s. But when that irresistible dame is Ruby Falls (real name, Erin McGrane) of the... More >>
• Best Sexy Musician s, Male
  The Roman Numerals
  In the Kansas City music scene, the Roman Numerals put the sex back in Generation X. The Numerals are seasoned rockers, graduates of great late-'90s bands such as Season to Risk (Steve Tulipana -- bass, keys, vocals), Dirtnap (Billy Smith -- guitar, vocals; Pete LaPorte -- drums) and Shiner... More >>
• Best Drummer
  Billy Brimblecom
  Drummers are usually the hardest-living, roughest-tumbling instrumentalists in rock and roll, rarely heralded as champions of longevity and strength of spirit. Laying that notion to waste is Blackpool Lights drummer and scene veteran Billy Brimblecom, who stands out as a human being, never mind... More >>
• Best Album
  Biscuits & Gravy, SoundsGood
  At last, Kansas City is free of the rock hegemony. Who are its liberators? Why, the two caddish-looking gents sipping tea (at least, we assume that's tea) on the cover of this still-steaming album. The men of SoundsGood -- producer and composer Miles Bonny and MC Joe Good (real name Jamal Gamby)... More >>
• Best Album Title
  Hard Times Are in Fashion, Koufax
  It seems like only yesterday that politicians and pundits were prefacing every statement with "in the wake of 9/11." Now, with an entirely new disaster (and subsequent governmental failure) on the nation's mind, "in the wake of Hurricane Katrina" has become standard. Add to that downer an... More >>
• Best Radio Show
  Sonic Spectrum KCUR 89.3
  Recognized by the Pitch in 2002 as the area's finest two hours of radio, host Robert Moore's free-form music show is still the absolute best thing going for Kansas City radio. Moore labors over each Saturday-afternoon program like an obsessive-compulsive vinyl junkie, picking only the best from... More >>
• Best Live Music Night
  Sundays at Fred P. Ott's on the Plaza
  When it costs $50 to fill up your Chevy, two bucks doesn't buy much. But it will get you into what has been, for about a decade, Kansas City's most reliably rockin' good time on a Sunday night. It all began with a dude named Jay Zastoupil (rhymes with ... never mind), who got bored one day and... More >>
• Best Sound Guy
  Duane Trower
  Being a sound guy is the most thankless job in the business (well, maybe after being a sullen merch dude). Bands bitch them out when the microphones fuck up, and fans glare at them after every accidental feedback crackle. Even when things go right, engineers rarely get so much as a howdy-do.... More >>
• Best Music Promoter
  Jacki Becker
  In recent history, no one has brought more desirable bands to more venues in the Midwest, especially KC and Lawrence, than Jacki Becker of Up to Eleven Productions. But far from being the slicked-back, cell-phone-jabbering, Hollywood type, Becker has her feet -- and her heart -- firmly planted... More >>
• Best Music Festival
  Wakarusa
  When Wakarusa debuted two years ago at Clinton Lake State Park, we had three prejudiced expectations: hippies, drugs and very long sets by Phish-eating bands. Those elements were there, to be sure, but they were balanced by the majority of attendees, who turned out to be regular folks out to... More >>
• Best Music Collective
  Rural Grit Happy Hour, the Brick
  The Rural Grit "booze collective," as one regular puts it, has been staking out bars for several years. (It was the last troupe to perform onstage at the Grand Emporium before that club's transformation.) But the mountain-music, open-jam tradition it maintains is as old as America. Founded by... More >>
• Best Reason to Believe in Kansas City's Musical History
  The Kansas City Sisters of Jazz
  Some people relish our town's local history, its cultural status as having been a radical, rollicking jazz capital in the '20s and '30s, chock-full of speak-easies and rife with soon-to-become legendary musicians. The Kansas City Sisters of Jazz not only celebrate the city's history but also... More >>