Well, it's been a venue before, but the Grinders sculpture park has just gotten serious.
The outdoor venue will be booked by >Pipeline Productions, the company that books the Bottleneck in Lawrence and does Wakarusa.
I love seeing bands play out behind Grinders, but I'm hoping they'll work to bring genuinely good concerts to downtown KC and not just use this as a KC arm of Wakarusa promotion, i.e., by bringing in a bunch of bands that are also playing Wakarusa and plastering the joint with Wakarusa posters. I guess the most important thing is that people come downtown to see live music, but it would be nice to have something that has a distinct Kansas City identity, which is already built in to the Crossroads. It's just a matter of keeping the place from looking too "outsourced" to the people who do Wakarusa.
Just sayin'...
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my verdict is still out on this one. blame my standard pessimism if you will. although i would go see 5 of the 6 shows listed on the homepage so far (and i WILL be there for blue october), i worry pipeline won't keep the good bands coming in. the upcoming schedule at the bottleneck is pretty pathetic and its been so for quite a while. im hoping this isn't just a good opening push to leave the scheduling by the wayside later on. maybe we should try to talk the guys from the record bar into buying it out already...
That's a great point..I hadn't considered that as one of the ramifications of having the Pipeline gang handle the booking. I'm not a huge fan of Pipeline, having seen the amount of quality shows at The Bottleneck dwindle over the years. So I'm holding my breath that this new venture doesn't fall into the traps of their current booking style.
From the looks of the first few shows announced, I say the jury's still out. Nothing jumps out as an 'ooh, I've got to be there' kind of show, but it's personal taste, not due to lack of quality. A few of the bands are ones that play Wakarusa/The Bottleneck a lot...but is that necessarily a bad thing? I know I rarely go to Lawrence anymore for a show unless its a national band that rarely hits the area and I don't want to wait another year to see.
What I see as a positive is for those that play Lawrence every time they come to the area (ie Bob Schneider) getting the opportunity to play in front of fresh faces- and KC folk that don't travel to Lawrence a chance to see some great music they normally miss out on.
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