From its album title (a quote from Kerouac) to its Raygun-style lyrics sheet design (complete with backwards letters), it’s clear that Sturgeon Mill aims for a brainier, edgier image than its alt-rock peers. Musically, the group offers a few experimental moments, such as the sound-effect-filled “The Dance of Chad” interludes and the chilly distorted guitar of “Vex,” but most of…
“I had a ticket to REO Speedwagon about two years ago, and I was so upset because I didn’t get to go. I look back and laugh at it now. Now I’m like, ‘I’m going,’” recounts 17-year-old Jason Smith, The SuperNauts’ guitarist and vocalist. “And I might get to see them just a little bit closer.” That’s because The SuperNauts…
Even though as I went walking that ribbon of highway these days means that you’ll see more strip mall playgrounds than golden valleys, there’s still some bad news for all you rave kids who hate folk music — it ain’t dead yet. In fact, after the release of ‘Til We Outnumber ‘Em, produced by queen of folk Ani DiFranco, folk…
Composed of such luminaries as Latin percussionist Ray Mantilla and alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, The Jazz Tribe is the very definition of an all-star band. Unlike most such projects, however, which tend to stink of vanity and closed-mindedness, this ensemble works together to impressively stretch the musical boundaries of the individual performers. The heart and soul of the group is…
Leave it to a classically trained violinist to excel at writing three-and-a-half-minute pop songs. Four years after Tracy Bonham’s impressive debut, The Burdens of Being Upright (which yielded the lively hit “Mother Mother”), the Berklee College of Music dropout continues her foray into singles-driven ditties that show more of an allegiance to rock history than to Rachmaninoff. On Down Here,…
Weeks after Jeremy Toback’s ill-fated film about interracial youth culture disappeared from theaters, hip-hop fans are still buying and bumping the Black and White soundtrack. Actually, this record didn’t gather steam until weeks after its release, as listeners flocked to the mainstream-friendly Romeo Must Die soundtrack while sleeping on this grimy compilation. However, the buzz has spread, and this album’s…
Though it earns points for eliminating the Supertramp songs, Aimee Mann’s new Bachelor No. 2 isn’t as immediate or exciting as the soundtrack for Magnolia, to which she contributed eight original songs. (Three of those tracks turn up here, including one of the film’s standouts, “Driving Sideways.”) But perhaps it’s unfair to expect alchemy twice in 12 months. Mann’s songs…
Ask pioneering jazz/bluegrass musician Béla Fleck why he decided to play the banjo and he will sigh and admit that he gets tired of answering that question. “That’s the primary mystery of my existence, and I don’t really have any excuse for it,” he claims in an only half-joking manner. Fleck doesn’t need any excuses for the brilliant depth and…
“Industrial-strength boredom” is a vicious term to unload on anybody — friend, foe, or former actress. Considering the lingering discomfort the term inspires, one must be wary of its impact, even around a seemingly invulnerable producer’s returning to the screen to melt our hearts in yet another variation on the emotional doppelgänger narrative, à la Sliding Double Lives of…
When the first line ever written by a band is “I am an antichrist,” that’s a lot to live up to. And though the images of singer Johnny Rotten and soon-to-be-dead bassist Sid Vicious in ripped T-shirts, dyed hair, and sporting safety-pin jewelry look more contemporary than shocking by today’s standards, in 1977 England they were the closest thing to…
They killed film! You bastards! I just sent you an e-mail a few days ago, praising your local movie reviewers, and this morning I opened up The Star to discover that you’ve fired all of them. Loey Lockerby, Dan Lybarger, and Melina Neet have proved to be the best film critics in town on a consistent basis. All three of…
Representatives of contractors and organized labor will meet with Kansas City, Mo., city staffers and city council members this week to find a middle ground on an issue that could either end free enterprise and reasonable labor practices in Kansas City or guarantee that the city’s major building projects run on time and on budget — depending on who…
In Lawrence, the fastest growing city in Kansas, the north end of Massachusetts Street — the city’s hub — is under construction. Along the sidewalks, scaffolding and newsprint-plastered windows are signs of new businesses taking over old space. A more aggressive growth is evident in a construction site’s exposed steel beams: new space for retail shops. Interspersed among local…
The usual cast of characters, the regulars, shuffle into an Express Mart in southeast Kansas City on a warm Tuesday night. A sweating, barrel-chested guy who looks like he belongs on a Harley-Davidson, with his full beard and long, frizzy hair pulled back into a ponytail, swaggers in to buy some Skoal. A small grandmotherly woman with gray hair purchases…
For a moment or two, David Lowery — front man for the band Cracker, and before that, beloved college-radio revolutionary sweethearts Camper Van Beethoven — found himself enjoying the book. He laughed in the right places, winced in the appropriate spots and thought, for a moment, the book wasn’t half bad. And there’s no reason why David Lowery shouldn’t like…
If an award were to be given out for the sexiest new restaurant in Kansas City, I would enthusiastically cast my vote for Café Des Amis, the French bistro on Main Street in Parkville. And not only because the place is cozy and intimate or because the three young, attractive owners — French-born Emmanuel Langlade and Didier Combe and Kansas…
1 Thursday Yee haw, buckaroo, it’s time for the Cowboy Music Roundup at the 1859 Jail Museum. The Jackson County Historical Society presents music featuring outlaw ballads, cowboy tunes and poetry, and classic country music. Bands include Pick and Hammer, Cowboy Trio, and Tommy & Bobby Campbell and the Sugarfoot Band. But the fun doesn’t end there. The gates open…
Her production company is called NEON, and maybe that’s because this woman glows. Forget lighting up rooms — for years Michele Lewis has lit up Kansas City with her poetry and productions. Growing up in the area, Lewis has worked to give Kansas City a truly alternative nightlife through her productions, such as poetry readings, fashion shows, giant all-ages parties,…
During their weekly 9-to-5 shuffles, Kansas Citians drive, ride, and walk past many artists’ work. Be they the fountains spewing up and down throughout the city, sculptures idly standing guard over medians and plots of land, or the tags of the graffiti artists, most are given only a glance or ignored completely. But now, six artists have received an…
Attention Kansas City sports fans: There’s a new professional sport in town, called outdoor soccer. The sport, which is rumored to have been available for the four previous years, started out with a small bang and ended with a whimper, thanks to a disastrous 1999 Wizards season. With injuries, a string of losses, and general turmoil, wins and fans…
Alan Ayckbourn has written about a zillion plays, and American Heartland Theatre is counting on the scribe’s ingenuity to deliver what the company has been lacking of late: a solid play. Communicating Doors, at least the third Ayckbourn work AHT has staged, is pretty close. Ayckbourn delights in the manipulation of time and space. In other Ayckbourn shows the…
More than an exploration in restraint and quietude, Kiyomi Iwata’s art is an elegant move forward in defining textile art. Rather than submitting bold, in-your-face materials to counter the audience’s preconceptions as to what Iwata’s medium should be, she delicately layers her cloth with materials that subvert only when close attention is paid, thereby producing perhaps not textile art…
Back by popular demand for a second year, the Midwest Oi! festival landed at the elegant and ever-evolving El Torreon ballroom. Saturday was the first installment of the two-day event, which took place last year at Gee Coffee in Olathe. Seven bands shared their blue-collar, working-class, shaven-headed shenanigans with a rather packed group of mostly harmless malcontents and beer-drinkers….
Trent Reznor and Maynard James Keenan gave Kansas Citians something truly memorable this Memorial Day weekend when their bands, Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle, put on perhaps the finest show of the still-new year at Kemper Arena amid the stockyards of the famed West Bottoms. Stylistically, the two bands differ slightly, yet both evoke a strange melodious…
