For five years running, The Coterie Theatre has made Laura Ingalls Wilder its regular holiday guest. With productions derived from but never exactly re-creating Wilder’s semi-autobiographical series of books, the trend has even created a cult following of sorts. At the opening of the latest installment, Little House on the Prairie, a contingent of young female devotees in period…
Growing up in the 18th and Vine district, Luqman Hamza saw such jazz legends as Charlie Parker and Joe Turner on a regular basis. Not satisfied to merely stargaze, Hamza sat patiently outside the clubs, too young to legally enter but mature enough to study the phrasing and delivery of the vocalists performing behind the closed doors. Hamza formed a…
Headlining a concert has its perks — the headliner draws the largest crowd and gets to play a set unencumbered by time constraints. But this prestigious honor also comes with a substantial risk — namely, that one of the openers will steal the show. And though Season to Risk acquitted itself nicely Saturday night at The Hurricane, singer Steve Tulipana…
Pop punk is in a bit of a rut, with bands either reveling in immaturity or engaging in futile attempts to revive the spirit of ’77. As both camps begin to inspire yawns, the Dillinger Four’s latest effort spits a loogey in the face of stagnation. “Who Didn’t Kill Bambi,” the opener of the band’s sophomore album, flows flawlessly through…
Only Muhammad Ali has been able to get away with proclaiming himself to be the greatest of all time. L.L. Cool J proclaims himself the best MC in rap but fails to back up his words with his latest release, G.O.A.T. In terms of longevity, no rapper has had a more fruitful career. L.L. burst onto the scene as an…
If nothing else, this record should win awards for truth in advertisement. A soundtrack to a movie called Heavy Metal should provide heavy metal (or some variation thereof), and that’s exactly what this soundtrack features. Big deal, right? Well, yeah, actually. It’s a good thing that the soundtrack’s producers got it right in 2000, because they certainly flubbed it the…
To promote Kid A, Radiohead’s virtually inaccessible new record, Capitol Records created an ad campaign that states that some things must be experienced because they’re impossible to describe. This approach has proved somewhat problematic: Critics, who like to be able to describe things, have funneled their frustration at the inability to critique these unorthodox compositions into scathing, cathartic reviews. Publications…
Many moons ago — before “www,” “IPO,” and “venture capital” became part of a record label’s required vocabulary, back when the majors numbered more than five — music industry minions roamed the countryside looking for a vital and vibrant music scene outside of New York and Los Angeles. For a while, Kansas City was thought to be among the contenders…
Roughly one year ago, singer Davey Havok of AFI (A Fire Inside), who was on the road in support of his group’s appealingly bleak Black Sails in the Sunset, told the Pitch about his ideal tourmates. “We’d love to play with Green Day, but their fans would hate us,” he said. “And I’d love to play with Danzig, but their…
Open the booklet to John Wesley Harding’s new disc, The Confessions of St. Ace, and you’ll be confronted with a short essay called “The Gnostic Ace: A Translation from the Mythographica of Shellian.” The verbiage that follows calls to mind the self-penned liner notes of Bob Dylan’s mid-’60s albums filtered through Monty Python: “He performed many miracles as a child….
Nearly 30 years after its release, Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie — which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 1972 — has lost none of its humor or its ability to surprise. If it no longer seems quite so timely, the fault lies in changes in the real world, not in any flaw…
Unbreakable is such a quiet film that whenever a character speaks above a whisper, it sounds like glass shattering in a monastery. It’s also a terribly sad movie; almost no one cracks a smile or a joke, and everyone wears the look of a person who’s just spent the past hour sobbing uncontrollably. As a university security guard named…
Clay Pigeon Dead in its tracks: Thanks for Bruce Rodgers’ article on Clay Chastain (“On a Rail,” November 16). I signed a petition to put light rail to a public vote. I felt that full discussion was needed. Would I sign another? No way! In fact, I loudly tell Chastain as he approaches to “Get back!” I want light rail….
American greetings: Last week Hallmark announced that it’s teaming up with esteemed poet Maya Angelou to create a new line of products to be sold in Hallmark’s Gold Crown stores (take that, Kmart and Martha Stewart!). We’re not quite sure whether it was a compliment when the one who knows why the caged bird sings said she felt about Hallmark…
At the end of last summer, when Westport streets were swamped on Saturday nights by under-21 kids hanging out under the peremptory eyes of 50-some cops and private security officers, I asked Second District Councilman Paul Danaher whether 3 a.m. clubs were part of the reason for the large underage crowd. He brushed aside the connection and laid blame on…
Like many bodies of water in the state, the Kansas River is not in the best shape. It’s what folks at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) call “impaired.” Depending on flow levels, the Kaw is at times so contaminated that the fish and plants living below its surface are in danger. So to protect these living things,…
A thousand disciples attended the final service of the Evangelizing the Heartland conference at Bartle Hall over Labor Day weekend. Members of the International Church of Christ had traveled from their churches in Lawrence, Wichita, Columbia, St. Louis, and Manhattan to join the Kansas City Church of Christ in advancing the Great Commission — the evangelization of the world. The…
Come and get it: The words “all you can eat” have an almost hypnotic quality. The concept of loading up a plate with as much food as possible is a seductive one that goes against the very grain of America’s Puritan past, when gluttony was considered a sin. And what better place to combine sins — gluttony and gambling —…
If only fortune cookies had true predictions tucked inside instead of the typical platitudes (“Work hard and everything else will work out”). Then the owners of the new Sun’s Chinese-Korean Restaurant could quickly know whether the addition of a shiny glass-and-brass steam table to their storefront on 39th Street will bring them good fortune. After all, the narrow, cantaloupe-colored…
16 Thursday “Balance” is a popular theme these days, from feng shui to the continually reorganized food pyramid. Now balance’s all-pervasive appeal has hit the University of Kansas Department of Design, where visiting instructor of metalsmithing Mattie Mattssen tells students that, like boats, jewelry must be balanced in order to function. Mattssen takes the boat analogy literally. Today at…
When the dancers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Company perform C# Street, B-Flat Avenue at the Midland Theater this weekend, they’ll be bringing a part of Kansas City native Jawole Willa Jo Zollar back home. Zollar choreographed the piece — which includes jazz music by David Murray and a poem by Ntozake Strange — and Zollar’s formative…
When Best in Show, Christopher Guest’s spoof on dog shows and dog-show enthusiasts, was released last month, Kansas City moviegoers got their laughs at the quirky people who obsess over an obscure hobby. This weekend a similar subject hits closer to home: More than 1,300 felines, competing by invitation only, convene downtown for the Cat Fanciers’ Association International Cat Show…
Spinning Jack London’s adventuresome books Call of the Wild and White Fang into musical theater is not a task for the faint of heart. Set on the frozen Alaskan coast of 1901 and populated mainly by dogs and wolves, the texts offer barriers aplenty — chiefly, how to anthropomorphize all those four-legged creatures without looking like an episode of…
In 1942, a gallon of gas cost 16 cents and a new house would set you back about $7,500. Stockings sported seams (or fake seams drawn on with eyebrow pencil), and the great tunesmiths were in their prime. Among the composers sampled in American Heartland Theatre’s rerun of its previously staged The 1940’s Radio Hour: Rodgers and Hart, Harold Arlen,…
