Let me be the first to officially welcome Pitch music editor Jason Harper to the blogosphere as the longtime KC print alt-weekly takes its first halting steps into the 21st century with Harper’s Wayward Blog.

(And when I say “let me be the first,” I’m basing that on the fact that over the course of Harper’s first three weeks in the ‘sphere, his blog has generated a grand total of three comments…and that’s not including the three I’ve dropped over there. Insert your own “if a blogger posted in the woods” joke here.)

But before you write off Harper and the Pitch’s efforts to harness the power of the interwebernet, I think it’s now safe to say that they’re starting to wrap their heads around what makes the whole blogging thing work: hits generate hits. The first tentative jab came with his March 16th (“Unironically Crazy For You”) caustic but tragically accurate post on Vedera’s new video for their single “The Falling Kind,” which is admittedly as hip as Adam Curry’s teased-out, pre-podcasting VJ-fro from MTV’s heyday…or at least back when they actually played music videos.

The second swing came on March 23rd (“Van Superfan”) when Harper dinged KCUR’s “Cyprus Avenue” host Bill Shapiro regarding his recent gushing over the release of the new Van Morrison disc Pay The Devil. Granted that’s kind of like making fun of Michael Jackson’s limo slowing down in front of an elementary school playground, but when the show’s called “Cyprus Avenue” you got to know what you’re tuning into, right?

Yet far and away the heaviest hit—and we’re talking a journalistic poke in the eye, knee to the groin, elbow to the back of the head combo here—came with his March 27th missive (“Alacartoona, she has a lover”) on what Harper describes as the perennial PR prattling antics of pseudo-cabaret act Alacartoona. And just to make sure he leaves no stone un-thrown, Harper manages to implicate the Kansas City Star’s Timothy Finn as a guilty enabler in the process.

By jove, I think Harper’s finally got it!

Big time blogging is all about maintaining a steady, scorched-earth policy. Just ask Tony over at tonyskansascity.com. But unlike Tony and his blogging brethren who’s only allegiance is to the punchline, the Pitch is still required to splash the altar of journalistic integrity with regular offerings of the blood of ne’r do wells, which makes this first foray into the land of 1s and 0s for the Pitch all that more perplexing.

Now as a writer and critic, I’m all for calling out crap when I hear it. But given the distinct lack of dedicated support for our local Kansas City music scene, eschewed time and time again in both the mainstream and alternative press in this city so that local writers can instead carefully transcribe the same stock interview answers from national artists coming through town, such antics seem out of turn coming from the Pitch.

Don’t get me wrong, either; if the shoe were on the other foot and The Star had decided to work the same angle, I’d still be punching out this post. But instead of Harper merely scratching his head over Finn’s fetish and leaving Alacartoona to be the Star’s pet, he felt compelled to throw down the gauntlet after using it to perpetrate a good, new-fashioned digital bitch-slapping.

So bravo to Jason Harper and the Pitch for finally starting to think like bloggers. As for what that may mean for the local music scene, only time will tell.

—John Kreicbergs