A sleepy, small town is awakened by a murder investigation when town bully Mona Dearly (Bette Midler, Isn’t She Great?) winds up floating in the Hudson River, and all of her associates are suspects. The film’s running gag is that everyone in the town — even the police — drives a Yugo. But the gag grows old, and there…
Tuva is a region in Northern Mongolia that is all but unknown to the Western world, but a style of music called throatsinging has developed there over thousands of years. The technique involves finding a way to isolate the overtones and harmonics of the human voice and bring them out so that several pitches are heard at once. These are…
Written and directed by a Tibetan Buddhist lama, Khyentse Norbu, this feature film is the first to be produced in the tiny Himalayan nation of Bhutan. It stars the actual residents of the remote Chokling Monastery and is based on a true story. With such a background, one would reasonably expect a plodding, reverential movie about a people of…
Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus. Garry Shandling is from a stranger place — an otherworldly spot legendary for its bizarre inhabitants and their ongoing battle between the sexes. Of course, that would be Hollywood. Shandling, the perpetually single standup comic best known for HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, finds women to be a total mystery. That…
AT LEAST THEY GOT THE ZIP CODE RIGHT … The Census Bureau sent out 120 million letters in an effort to inform every American residence that the questionnaire would follow, but it misaddressed the mail. The mistake tacked on an extra digit to the beginning of each street address, forcing states such as Kansas to hand-deliver the questionnaire. This has…
Columnist ignoramus I read Shawn Edwards’s (Reverberations) column regarding (Jason) Whitlock’s Cro-Magnon thoughts on hip-hop (“Fact checkin’,” Feb. 17-23) and thought he was right on the money. Usually when attention-seeking blowhards (Pat Buchanan, Jesse Ventura, Fred Phelps, Whitlock…) spout off, my first reaction is to ignore them and not give them the satisfaction of discussing their shit at the water…
Rigoberta Menchú walks into the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center in Kansas City, grimacing from the blustery winter day. She is a small woman with a round face; dark, unfathomable eyes; and a serious, quiet demeanor that belies the force of her convictions. Ever since she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work for human…
Nurses set to battle Health MidwestAs his audience shivered from a potent mixture of bitter cold and anxious energy, Rev. Nelson Thompson, president of the Kansas City chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, stood and delivered. The crowd, a diverse mix of local labor leaders, elected officials, and nurses, cheered as Thompson declared, “Of all the different folks…
Dennis Behrens wants to talk about the payday-loan business. A wiry man with dark hair and intense eyes, the 43-year-old Behrens is infectiously optimistic. His demeanor draws people to him. But he looks tough, like a man who has learned some rough lessons. After talking to him awhile, one can see that his optimism has been hard-won through a life…
With songs such as “My Life Is a Beer Commercial” and “The Shootout at the I’m OK, You’re OK Corral” speckling his discography, Greg Tamblyn knows how to make people smile. His latest effort, Art From the Heart, has its share of funny stuff as well, such as “Underachievers Anonymous,” a tune that Tamblyn suggest ends prematurely because, although he…
Whereas children could once look forward to creative tunes written by singer/songwriters who chose to target a younger audience, kids must now make do with nonsensical, commercial offerings by the likes of Barney and The Teletubbies. However, Kansas City composer Jim Cosgrove delivers a dozen tot-themed tunes on Stinky Feet, and even enlists young relatives and a group of singers…
Being subjected to the Catholic school system for most of my academic life, I can say without a doubt that the greatest thing the brothers and sisters taught me was the concept of Lent. It wasn’t because I enjoyed cramming a full year’s worth of guilt, self-loathing, and fish into one action-packed month, but because Lent gave Catholics and self-described…
If one incident summarized the 42nd annual Grammy awards ceremony, it was the overshadowing of the Dixie Chicks’ live performance. The band’s video was intrusively broadcast behind the trio, and the camera often cut away from the performance, focusing the full screen on a video that viewers could catch at any given time on Country Music Television. Meanwhile, the musicians…
With Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, and Fiona Apple touring and recording with bands, it’s becoming difficult to discover singer-songwriters who preserve the sounds of solitude. Tara Jane O’Neil plays everything from a banjo to a thumb-piano on Peregrine, which she recorded while holed up in her New York apartment for a 10-week span. She allowed a few friends to assist…
We live in a time in which groove-ridden hard rock sells millions of records. If Coalesce were rapping and had turntables, the Korn and Limp Bizkit kids would worship at its feet. Instead, the KC band has stayed underground with its paint-peeling blend of chaotic hardcore, heavy riff segues, and penchant for making a wall of noise sound beautiful. Somewhere…
After Snoop Dogg’s cameo on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, hip-hop heads and industry insiders proclaimed that he would become one of the greatest rappers in the game. He has yet to fulfill that prophecy. His much-anticipated debut did not live up to expectations, and his career has since been a long bout with mediocrity. On Snoop Dogg presents Tha Eastsidaz,…
Weezer might have lamentably called it quits, but each year another self-deprecating dork-rock band steps up with a clever, catchy collection of goofy tunes. In 1999, it was Fountains of Wayne with the sublime Utopia Parkway, and now Nerf Herder fills the 2000 quota with its irresistible sophomore effort How To Meet Girls. Perhaps best known for its theme song…
It’s only been a few months since Richard Thompson barnstormed Lawrence with a tight band and a plate full of new tunes. But it would take well more than a couple of nights to dispatch all of the veteran musician’s songs, and Thompson further varies his performances by touring solo when it suits him. His nimble guitar playing is equally…
On the touring jazz circuit, exciting collaborations occur with some regularity, as instrumental specialists note a mutual open date and make plans to pool their talents. Saturday night’s show at the Folly offers a particularly intriguing pairing, with soprano saxophonist and Paris resident Steve Lacy making a rare appearance in America to join Panama-born pianist Danilo Perez. In 1958, Lacy,…
Even those who possess only a casual grasp on pop culture are familiar with the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. The notion is that the star has appeared in so many films that any actor/actress can be linked to him through a common movie in under six steps. Usually no more than three or four steps are necessary. But…
Years ago, popular music had a humanitarian streak — it was a time of generosity and shared ideals and tunes of social consciousness. It was the summer of 1985, Live Aid. Okay, just kidding. Not that musicians have banded together much since the ’80s campaign to feed Ethiopians that began with the British hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and…
TALK ABOUT “I TOLD YOU SO” … In the first Arbitron ratings since KLZR 105.9 dumped its alternative radio format for Top 40, the station lost nearly two-thirds of its listeners. The Lazer went from a 1.4 of the market share last summer to a paltry 0.5 currently. Ironically, this coincided with the blood alcohol level of KLZR’s programming staff…
Great piece on hip-hop (Reverberations, “Fact checkin’,” Feb. 17-23). I always look forward to the music pieces in Pitch; they are usually the first things I turn to every week. I totally disagree with Star columnist Jason Whitlock, and I believe that hip-hop culture has created more good than harm, but sometimes I wonder if music could be more positive…
About 200 supporters and members of the press showed up to greet former Sen. Bill Bradley at a Feb. 14 fly-through held at the Downtown Airport. But, to the campaign staff’s chagrin, a three-hour plane delay thinned the group to about 125 — despite the barbecue brought in to feed the groaning crowd. Aside from the press, most of the…
