Pair of hypocrites I guess it’s okay to accept money for advertising from the payday loan industry while at the same time being overly critical of that industry (“Quick cash gamble,” March 9-15). I guess it’s okay as long as you don’t mind being considered a scoundrel in the same fashion Patrick Dobson blathers about legal businesses performing legal services…
Archives: March 2000
No Kansas hayseed
Call John Ballou a visionary and he’ll rock back on his kitchen chair as a smile breaks apart his poker-face expression. He hadn’t heard that one. But the three-term Republican state representative from Gardner, Kan., doesn’t mind the label. Sure, it counteracts that right-wing, conservative tag he says the press gave him early on in his political life. But he’s…
Stroke foundation pulls heartstrings but angers neighbors
The plain exterior of the American Stroke Foundation’s house at 8700 Lamar belies the bucolic feel of the inner compound. Sculpted gardens and paved paths surround the house. A pool and cabana lie steps below vast glass windows looking out onto a patio. The interior of the house is open, well-appointed, and comfortable. Looking out the back windows of the…
Remaking a Truant into a Con
David Wainwright’s earliest memories are of the little cakes his mom used to make, and then of her lying down one day, when he was about 7, and dying. “At the time, I thought she was just tired and went to sleep, and I started shaking her,” he says. “To this day I don’t know what happened. Nobody ever took…
TERRY EVERETT QUIETT
With Paper Doll Spokesmen, a moving 15-song release, Terry Everett Quiett makes a dramatic entrance into the area’s singer-songwriter’s club. Whether lamenting the plight of laid-off workers at a plant in his hometown of Winfield, Kan., or speaking eloquently about the aging process, Quiett is a gifted writer, equally at home with prose and straightforward observations. Musically, Quiett fleshes out…
BRADLEY ALLEN
Percussionist Bradley Allen, the latest KC performer to record his takes on jazz, blues, and swing classics, taps his way through an interesting mix of selections that ranges from a low-key rendition of “Jump, Jive & Wail” to a bass-heavy version of Charles Mingus’ “Nostalgia in Times Square.” Allen’s ticking drumbeats power “St. Thomas” and “Cherokee,” mid-tempo jazz numbers that…
Around Hear
“I would like to talk about the really good bands from here that people don’t even notice in the scene,” says Reflector’s drummer, Jake Cardwell, apparently unaware that discussion of his group’s new album, Where Has All the Melody Gone, has dominated discussions in the area’s Internet chat rooms and indie-rock backrooms. But maybe he’s not talking about Reflector. “The…
The more things change …
One of the most entertaining features of Spin magazine’s thoroughly enjoyable 15th anniversary issue is its wide array of bizarre, irreverent, and contradictory quotes. There’s the Beastie Boys, erstwhile social activists but former beer-spraying, crotch-grabbing party animals, recalling their ill-fated stint as the openers on Madonna’s Like A Virgin tour. There’s New Kid turned Sixth Sense-psycho Donnie Wahlberg, one…
Friday, March 17
Since the advent of the “new jack swing,” super-producer Teddy Riley’s late-’80s push to inject hip-hop beats into R&B, soulful singers who play their songs instead of having someone program them have become increasingly rare. However, Brian McKnight, whose latest release, Back At One, has earned him Grammy, Soul Train Award, and Blockbuster Music Award nominations, supplements his rich vocals…
STEELY DAN
Well, this is going to sound strange, but the new Steely Dan album isn’t slick enough. Oh, there’s clavinet and Rhodes electric piano aplenty, and kicky jazz guitar, and horns, and metronomic drumming, and Donald Fagen’s familiar postnasal drip leading his narrators through a carnal wasteland. But something is wrong. The ridiculous sheen of its ’70s heyday used to blindingly…
Swing stampede
Here’s a tip for you music know-it-alls out there: Next time someone tells you that he has some friends in a band who will play at his wedding reception, don’t assume it won’t be hip. And don’t try to hide your misguided nonchalance; the moment you say, “You guys have a label deal?” during the cake-cutting, you’ve blown your cover,…
Night of the Mekons
If you’re in just any band, you can debate all you want about what kind of agent you need. If you’re in the Mekons, you indisputably need a travel agent. “Getting everyone in the band in the same place to rehearse is an achievement in itself. When we’re together, because of the constraints of geography, we have to get recording…
Pitch Forks
HE IS CERTAINLY BETTER THAN THE LAST DUKE WHO RAN FOR OFFICE … Former Ambassador Duke, the hard-partying character in Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip, formally announced his intention to seek the U.S. presidency. Supporters claim he is already more animated than Al Gore. — Jon Niccum TAKING THE WORLD OVER THROUGH CHESS … In the April issue of Wired…
Sinking Sun?
Considering all the turmoil caused during Jim Gray’s reign as publisher at Sun Publications, one might find the announcement of his firing, as printed in the Johnson County Sun, to be anticlimactic. “Jim Gray, publisher of Sun Publications since June, has left the company. His last day was Tuesday,” read the lead of the brief article, which appeared in the…
Puppy love I’d like to compliment Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell on her great article regarding the continuing “puppy mill” problem in Kansas and Missouri (“Disposable pets,” March 2-8). During the mid-’80s, I was the assistant attorney general assigned to the Kansas Department of Animal Health and did the licensing actions (and, in some cases, prosecutions) of cruelty cases of the animal dealers…
Local anthropologist conducts art dig and digs art
Stepping into Richard Anderson’s office causes momentary confusion. There’s a lack of art. Being as it’s the office of a Kansas City Art Institute professor, that’s not what one would expect. But there’s an air of scholarship even though Anderson doesn’t come across as a run-of-the-mill anthropologist. His pierced ear and easy mannerisms crack the wall most professors build…
Activist works against governments’ sleight of hand
Phil Klein is a harried, excited man. As manager of U.S. Toy’s magic and entertainment divisions, he has a big job. And he is hands-on, working with customers, purchasing inventory, riding herd on employees — sometimes in the space of minutes. The U.S. Toy Co. Magic Shop is in what used to be a tennis and racquetball club. The 10,000-square-foot…
Love on the run
Lynette Barnett swiped her ID card at the security gate. Then she swiped it again for the man 4 feet behind her. The blond prison guard at Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Mo., walked through the last check the way she did every day and strolled to the parking lot. The control tower guard stopped the man behind Lynette. “I…
The Zin standard
Restaurant gossip can travel faster than the show-business kind. When a restaurant is doing badly, a manager is caught stealing, or an irate chef flings a knife across the kitchen, the servers complain to their friends (often other servers or the biggest talkers of all, bartenders), who spread the tales like wildfire. The stories about Zin, the stylish new restaurant…
To Wit
Much has been made lately of the toothless standing ovation — audiences getting to their feet after any old thing. Yet at the opening night curtain call of Wit at Unicorn Theatre, I couldn’t help but lose my lap and join the crowd giving actor Peggy Friesen the s.o. she deserved. Hers is a performance you miss at your own…
The return of an old flame
It seduced me when I was too young to be seduced by anything else. It burned me and teased me, but the passion went away for a long time. Now, for some reason, the old feelings are coming back. I remember the crack of the bat against a hardball bound not by stitches but by electrical tape. That’s what we…
Closing your eyes
Not to nag, but recent events and run-ins have forced a subjective topic into the foreground of my conversations: the apparent and conspicuous absence of many local self-defined artists or arts professionals from local galleries. Granted, I am most likely preaching to the choir here, but almost weekly I am confronted with a person who — once we delve past…
Seeing an old new world
Like the Mexican Surrealists, a group we know more for its fiction than its visual art, Carlos Jurado believes in magic — the palpable, real, physical existence of magic — and he captures it through a magical means: his camera. Photographs from his homemade pinhole cameras are on exhibit at the Society for Contemporary Photography. Jurado’s belief in the everyday…
A trip to the Red Planet
Hopping a rocket to Mars has been a popular cinematic trip in many films. Here are two videos from the ’50s that feature visits to the Red Planet. Abbott and Costello Go to Mars Okay, they don’t actually go to Mars, but that’s the theme in this 1953 installment of the Abbott & Costello franchise. Orville (Costello) stumbles onto a…
Find The Pitch
