17 Thursday The old “loves me/loves me not” dichotomy grows ever more complicated in this technologically advanced world. Switches turn on and off. Computer programs read a binary code. We use number two pencils to take tests, and we’d better erase all mistakes completely. It’s always yes or no. A person could become truly obsessed with the words yes and…
When love — or sex — isn’t enough, try apples. Food can be as potent as romance, maybe more so. Just ask Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl, whose credentials also include her former position as The New York Times restaurant critic, which made her the country’s most powerful voice in restaurant reviewing. She’s written a second volume of memoirs, Comfort Me…
Insomniacs in Kansas City have it rough. There’s always a bar open until three in the morning, but for the sober, there’s only one choice: greasy french fries or “chilled” apple pie. “Not everybody is a complete idiot or buffoon at three in the morning, drunk off their ass,” says Corbin Peck. “There are a lot of people in…
If an average high school boy’s heroes include Samuel Beckett, Tom Waits and the Marx brothers, then eighteen-year-old Bishop Miege senior Matt Bukovac is in the mainstream. That he is about to have two of his plays produced on the main stage at Missouri Repertory Theatre hints, though, that he may swim a little more vigorously than most of…
With credentials as a sideman with such contemporary icons as Maceo Parker, John Scofield, Michael Brecker and Pat Metheny, Larry Goldings has proven his prowess as an organist poised at the forefront of the modern jazz scene. On As One, Goldings, bassist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart display the heightened sense of awareness and interplay that can come only…
As aging rockers such as Aerosmith fight for relevance and chart position in a thirteen-year-old-dominated Top 40 world, a newer breed of rock group has reared its pretty head. Bands such as Lifehouse are as toothless as the dinosaurs they aim to extinguish, but for a different reason. The older acts’ chops eroded with age — Lifehouse’s rotted away prematurely…
With an upcoming R.E.M. album that promises to be as ethereal as 1998’s Up, now’s a good time to congratulate that band’s guitarist for his continued growth. Peter Buck cowrote only two tracks on The Minus 5’s Let the War Against Music Begin, but hanging around Scott McCaughey, the Young Fresh Fellow whose indulgent picnic this double-disc is, clearly has…
As usual, Shawn Colvin puts her best new song first. Following a lag caused equally by Colvin’s new motherhood and commercial expectations following her Grammy wins for 1996’s A Few Small Repairs, Whole New You plays things very safe. So “Matter of Minutes” shares with “Sunny Came Home” and “Polaroids” (the openers from Repairs and 1992’s Fat City, respectively) a…
Dick Solberg is a throwback entertainer, a troubadour whose blend of bluegrass, Irish jigs, sea chanteys and Civil War battle songs has earned him a devoted following in what his bio describes as “the original colony states.” But over the past 25 years, the reputation of the man known as the Sun Mountain Fiddler has spread inland, and the New…
What do a smooth blue-eyed soul singer, a Wu-banger, a Cash Money Millionaire, Space Age Pimps, the leader of Murder Inc. and singing siblings have in common? Very little, except that they’re all hit-making urban artists and they’re all appearing at Summer Jam 2001. Juvenile heads the Cash Money clique. He kicked off the label’s hot streak with “Ha,” then…
On Tuesday, May 15, the music industry’s hottest season got off to a high-profile start by unleashing the obsessive fans of Tool and Weezer on overwhelmed record store clerks everywhere. Missy Elliot, Depeche Mode and R.E.M. also dropped long-awaited discs on the same date. Most of the year’s big-name efforts — the latest from Season to Risk, the Gadjits and…
When politics and music meet, the result can be fierce and focused (Public Enemy, Fugazi) or heavy and heavy-handed (Rage Against the Machine). Occasionally, though, socially aware songs can be subtle. The Weakerthans has earned a reputation as an ideologically charged band, but its lyrics don’t contain easy slogans, “vote this way” or “set this person free.” Instead, the group…
Judging by the retouched bucolic psychedelia of its cover and its Paul Revere and the Raiders-leaning song titles (“Candy Apples,” “Whatever She’s Doin’”), Moods for Moderns’ Loud and Clear easily could pass for the work of some lost Nuggets-bound band from the Time Before Pro-Tools. (Bassist Ben Force’s Who T-shirt, which is from one of that band’s recent reunions,…
“My best friend Heather doesn’t believe that I was really in a band,” says Andy Morton. Oh, silly girl, Morton was in a band and that band was Danger Bob, arguably the Kansas City/Lawrence scene’s biggest local draw, or at least the biggest one that played around here regularly. Danger Bob played its final show at The Bottleneck on…
Chances are you don’t know a whole lot about Angel Eyes other than it’s the brand-new Jennifer Lopez movie. Maybe you also know that it costars Jim Caviezel (periodically known as James; he doesn’t seem to have fully decided yet). It’s been described in some articles as a supernatural romance, and Caviezel himself has said that he can’t tell what…
Kids might well be amused by the frenetic pacing of Shrek, the latest computer-animated film from DreamWorks, which moves so quickly it’s nearly a blur, though they need not get the jokes to enjoy frolicking in the muck (and the maggots) with a green, snaggletoothed ogre who wants only to be a knight and get the girl. But their…
“The possible headline in Flanagan’s column could have been; ‘Catman and White Rose Looking for Jobs.’ Flanagan says their share was 4.5 . My information is that their numbers in March were much lower than that.” — Jason Whitlock, WHB 810, on the spring Arbitron ratings that showed station mate Kietzman’s show to be well ahead of KMBZ’s “Fortune and…
When Johnny comes marching home again Tuesday night, there will be anything but hurrahs waiting for him in the left-field seats at Kauffman Stadium. Johnny Damon, the Royals’ marquee player for the past five years, was traded to the Oakland A’s during the off-season after he and super agent Scott Boras were unable to come to terms with the Royals…
Give ‘Em Health Card-carrying homosexuals: I would like to comment on Deb Hipp’s article “Doubting the Benefits” (April 26). Have the employees of Hallmark forgotten that health insurance is a benefit? One that goes into the total package of benefits? Hipp calls the employees lesbians and gays. They are homosexuals. To call them “lesbian” or “gay” lessens their importance. They…
Rub me tender: Was it sweeps week? On May 7 and 8, KMBC Channel 9 discovered what hasn’t been news since 8000 B.C. Anchor Larry Moore hyped the story as an “investigation” just before reporter Martin Augustine revealed that some “adult services” ads in a certain weekly newspaper actually involve prostitution. Accompanying videotape showed hapless johns saying things like “Do…
There are not many stories left buried in James Ellroy’s past. In 1996, at the age of 48, he penned his memoirs, in which he paired his life story with that of his dead mother, Jean Ellroy, a nurse found strangled and beaten in the bushes of suburban Los Angeles in 1958, when her son was 10. By the time…
Robert Roundtree has been climbing trees for 42 years, pruning out dead wood for the city’s street tree service department. The man his coworkers know as “Tree” began his career making $200 a month in 1959 and has watched Kansas City’s forestry service go from good to bad to worse due to downsizing and budget constraints. Since the 1960s, Roundtree…
Jorge Gonzalez lies awake nights in a cramped, rented trailer in Great Bend, Kansas. He thinks about his three children, imagines them sleeping peacefully almost a hundred miles away in Newton, in an old house that was crumbling when he bought it cheap. Gonzalez fixed up the house himself, reshingling the roof, ripping off the old siding, putting in new…
Panini sandwiches have been called the “fast food” of Italy — even though the actual Italian word for a filled sandwich would be imbottito, not panino. According to Dictionary of Italian Cuisine writers Maureen Fant and Howard Isaacs, a panini is “not a special kind of sandwich.” As they witheringly note, “the term could not be more generic.” Generic or…
