We're honoring Kansas City talent on Sunday night at the Uptown Theater in our annual Pitch Music Awards Ceremony. (Buy tickets here, for six bucks.) We've got Bleach Bloodz, the Dead Girls, the Grisly Hand and Mark Lowrey with Diverse and Reach performing covers of classic Kansas City acts. (Think the Get Up Kids, Howard Iceberg and the Titanics, Charlie Parker and Creature Comforts, to name a few.)
Plus, you'll be able to finally find out who won those Pitch Music Awards we've been gabbing about for the last month.
Check the schedule for the event after the jump.
Here are the beautiful people of Kansas City, enjoying 35-plus bands at 2010's Pitch Music Showcase in Westport last night. Is your drunken mug in any of these shots? You'll just have to click through to find out!
Look at last night's Pitch Music Showcase on the surface and it seems like any standard math problem.
How much music and shitshow shenanigans can be packed into one night of music with more than 35 local bands performing at seven different Westport bars at a mere cost of $6? Solve for x.
Turns out, the answer is "a lot." Around 2,500 people descended on Midtown last night to catch the very best in local music. We heard some "foot-stomping, tambourine-rattling" during The Grisly Hand performance at the Riot Room and thanks to Soft Reeds, we now know what it sounds like when continents fuck. Consider our minds blown. But the crowd was just as much fun to watch as the bands. Pitch photographer Paul Andrews snapped a few crowd pics for this slideshow.
Last night's sweltering conditions produced a soupy, sweaty success at 2010's Pitch Music Showcase. Granted, four of the night's most anticipated acts (Queens Club, Capybara, Mammoth Life and Stik Figa) were no-shows. But, despite some inevitable shit-talking on the Kansas City music scene, it went off without a hitch thanks to our generous sponsor support, always-dependable participating venues and Jason Dockery, The Pitch's Director of Marketing and Operations. Kudos, dudes.
It seems appropriate to begin this with a disclaimer: When the majority of the shows you are slated to cover are DJ sets or involve the Riot Room, a hazy fog of drunk will inevitably cloud your night. And that cloud most certainly blew in like a rainstorm over my Pitch Music Showcase experience last night.
Never mind that, though. Westport was the place to be for live music last night, and 2010's Pitch Music Showcase brought out some of the best our local music scene has to offer.
After The Pitch's music editor, Elke Mermis, handed me my wristband and basically said, "Have at it," I was hit with a wondrous and terrifying feeling as I walked into the nucleus of Westport. It was the feeling of too many options: too many places to go, people to see, beers to drink, and bands to watch.
This overload, of course, is the beauty of something like the Pitch Music Showcase, which offers a choose-your-adventure style portrait of the Kansas City and Lawrence music scene. I had an itinerary, but even as early as my arrival at 8:10 PM, I could tell my plan was going to be subject to some last minute impulses. I would, as they say, go with the flow, and flowed I did.
I have an admission to make: the 2010 Pitch Music Showcase was my first rodeo. Was I prepared to catch all 35-plus acts that we, The Pitch, had packed into Westport in this single night of rock? Maybe.
Duly caffeinated and armed with notebook, pen, camera, and weathered Chucks, I believed I was ready to take whatever some of Kansas City and Lawrence's finest local musicians could whip my way.
I am music journalist. Hear me roar.
I may not have seen it all last night - truly, who can? - but as I threw my crumpled itinerary to the wind, I found a fiercely rich cross-section of Kansas City and Lawrence's music scene throbbing in the heart of Westport, aching to be heard. And hear, I would, indeed.
Pitch photographer Paul Andrews caught some less crazy action at the music fest. Check out locals rocking out in this slideshow.
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