Leslie Remington wept as she worked the night shift. The nine patients on her floor needed attentive care as they recovered from surgery or awaited operations. The registered nurse knew she was failing them. Tears welled in her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks. Some of the patients were confused, writhing or yelling, but Remington had no time to comfort…
Step out of The Range Steakhouse (see review), and you’ll discover that the shiny metal tokens clattering out of the slot machines aren’t the only change at Harrah’s. The casino’s Italian restaurant, Cafe Andreotti, is getting a menu makeover this month, says Restaurant Services Manager Ali Hashemy. “We wanted to give the menu more variety,” Hashemy says. So he and…
When people think of Kansas City steakhouses, the first names that come to mind are the famous ones — Plaza III, the Hereford House, the Savoy, the Golden Ox. After that? There are the fancy places, such as the Capital Grille, Ruth’s Chris, Morton’s and Benton’s. And then, maybe, the economy joints, such as the Ponderosa Steak Houses or…
26 Thursday Hidden behind a medieval-looking stone fortress, the Just Off Broadway Theatre at 31st and Wyandotte has been the inconspicuous site of numerous experimental music and theater productions in recent months. Perhaps the throwback look is meant to compensate for the progressive and often controversial nature of the plays performed within its walls. The edgy show of the…
Almost a hundred years ago, the Ashcan school of painters favored downtrodden urbanites as subjects. Local computer animators MK12 might instead be called ashtray artists: Composing a tightly knit clique whose collective sensibility reflects a modern bored urbanism of its own, MK12’s members favor — and fill — big ashtrays. They smoke while eagerly recapping the past year, during which…
It’s all Walt Disney’s fault, this bad rap laid on the backs of wiener dogs everywhere. It was that movie The Ugly Dachshund, starring a Great Dane that thought it was one-tenth its size and got into all kinds of trouble. That title has been a curse. Perhaps only ducklings have it worse, but then maybe not; the moral of…
Even as an unplanned salute to the recently departed Jack Lemmon, American Heartland Theatre’s The Odd Couple — the female version — shouldn’t work as well as it does. Lemmon, of course, was Felix Unger, the persnickety half of the big screen’s duo, who played against Walter Matthau’s piggish Oscar Madison. Reruns of the Tony Randall-Jack Klugman TV version…
For a recovering suicidal drug addict, Depeche Mode’s lead vocalist, Dave Gahan, sounds positively lively on Exciter, the band’s tenth studio album in twenty years. Yet judging by his lyrics, he still can’t seem to shake the diseases that drove him to the brink of madness nearly five years ago, which is probably a testament to the type of songwriting…
This alternative Latin music anthology immediately defies expectations. The opening acoustic nortena, “La Trampa,” emphasizes the texture of gentle plucking while disembodied voices echo the lead vocals with growls and murmurs. The second cut, “Amor Pa Mi,” starts with straight reggae toasting before a call for liberation ushers in salsa rhythms. King Mafrundi’s cover of “Hasta Siempre,” a well-known tribute…
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a cover band/punk supergroup that features members of NOFX, Foo Fighters and Lagwagon, transcends its novelty status to achieve something valuable and, above all else, fun. On its third album, the band skewers ’60s radio classics in a loving, irreverent fashion, with a nod to the punk roots of the musicians involved. “Sloop John…
Breaking through the glut of kiddie-created radio hits, seasoned vets with magnificent voices have produced two of the best R&B singles this summer. Ronald Isley’s “Contagious” and Luther Vandross’ “Take You Out,” adult-themed songs actually sung by grown folk, don’t mark the end of the young-‘un explosion, and given the paucity of mature R&B offerings, these tunes seem almost refreshing…
Sometimes comparisons between bands are unfair — usually to the newer group, which is trying to establish a reputation and identity of its own. But in the case of a recent clutch of dreamy, guitar-based midtempo pop outfits — Doves, Badly Drawn Boy and Travis — the frequent mention of Radiohead in the same sentence only hurts the latter. What…
In the fantasyland version of Kansas City, where the Power and Light entertainment district anchors a revitalized downtown full of light-rail-traveling suburbanites, the Madrid Theatre is already open, serving as a de facto House of Blues and using that organization’s clout to reel in all the acts that used to skip the area. Back in reality, all that remains…
After running through two producers and two drummers, emptying their savings accounts, racking up a $200 speeding ticket en route to the studio and dedicating a year’s worth of vacations and weekends to the task, The Welterweights have finally completed their debut full-length, Here Goes Nothing. And that’s just the abridged list of mishaps, which leaves out a series of…
The members of Flickerstick are the champions, my friends. They kept on fighting, albeit sometimes with one another, to the end. No time for promoting, only time for drinking, they are the champions … of Bands on the Run. For those not in the know, VH-1’s Emmy-nominated Survivor-gone-rock reality show pitted four independent bands (Flickerstick, The Josh Dodes Band, Harlow…
From city to city, at least two things are sure to occur as a government-led light rail election approaches: The sun will rise in the morning, and transportation consultant Wendell Cox will materialize out of thin — or smoggy — air. Things are no different in Kansas City, where the self-employed transportation consultant from Belleville, Illinois, has said he will…
At the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Department, not many people miss suspended jail administrator J.B. Hopkins. Sheriff Leroy Green Jr. fired Hopkins July 3. The Jail Population Control Committee reinstated him two days later. Then Green refused to let Hopkins come to work. Now the sheriff must explain to a federal judge why he acted without the court-appointed committee’s approval. Green…
In Kansas, little kids are killing themselves. The hard facts came out this spring: From 1989 to 1998, 41 kids between the ages of ten and fourteen said goodbye to their parents forever. The state health department’s suicide statistics showed that the number of kids who killed themselves doubled in the second half of that decade. Researchers start counting when…
Matt Stone has little time to talk. It’s Tuesday, July 17, 1 p.m. in Los Angeles, yet Stone and Trey Parker have yet to finish a television show that will debut some 30 hours from now—an episode of South Park titled “Terrance and Garfunkel,” in which the farting, fighting Canadian twosome Terrance and Phillip break up and reunite for an…
Stripping down: With a surprisingly upbeat demeanor, yet fighting back tears, Late Night Theatre directors Ron Megee and Missy Koonce delivered crushing news last week to their various casts and crews: They had sixty days to vacate their Old Chelsea digs in the River Market. There were gasps from the gathered flock and then, true to the troupes’ lemonade-from-lemons spirit,…
Two youngsters practice goofy-foot back-turns on skateboards on an unused Cherokee Park basketball court. A squirrel scampers across the foul line and disappears into the shrubs planted across midcourt. Shrubs? What kind of an outdoor basketball court has shrubs where the midcourt line should be? The kind located in a very white Johnson County neighborhood that wishes to keep young…
“The days of passively developing players at this level, the major-league level, are over. We are not in a position anymore of waiting for people to perform up here. We had to do that the past few years. But now either they perform or we’ll find a replacement.” — Allard Baird, The Kansas City Star “I think some players were…
Even more so than the recent Depression-era comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the turn-of-the-century drama Songcatcher is an absolute treasure trove of old-timey, traditional folk music. Set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia in the year 1907, the film follows city-bred musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) as she traverses the remote, swampy forests and shimmering green…
Though he’s been part of the Kansas City music scene for ten years, Chad Rex has no delusions about where he and his band fit in the local music community. “If there’s an under-underground, that’s where we’re sitting,” Rex says matter-of-factly. That situation should be changing soon, thanks to the release of Songs to Fix Angels, the debut disc from…
