Aaliyah deserved to be a superstar, and her third and best album demonstrates why. Aaliyah is the album Janet wishes she could make, the album Britney Spears will never be able to make and the album Alicia Keys might someday approach. Hell, it’s the album Prince has been trying to record for the past ten years. It’s a gorgeous, modern…
Marty Robbins stands as one of the most gifted, emotionally compelling and just plain important vocalists in the history of country music. With his initial hits in the early ’50s, he proved himself a crooner nearly the equal of Tommy Duncan, Eddy Arnold or Red Foley. It wasn’t until rock and roll’s emergence in the mid-’50s, though, that he really…
With its innocuously vague title, obscure record label and slapdash cover art, Action Figure Party belongs to the “What-the-hell-is-this?” category of new releases. But Greg Kurstin, the gifted keyboardist throwing this shindig, is no stranger: He’s collaborated with everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Matthew Sweet. As a result, this Party has a high-profile guest list, including Sean…
Howard W. Hamilton III reportedly supplements his income as the sole member of The Busy Signals by using eBay to sell discs of drum sounds to hip-hop beatmakers. Perhaps he should include a complimentary copy of The Busy Signals’ second record, Pretend Hits, to instruct his cyberbidders how best to utilize the raw materials he provides. Hamilton starts with his…
It’s no wonder all anyone wants to say about The White Stripes is what a great crunchy sound they have. Just when it looked like old-school guitar rock was dead forever, here comes this divorced Detroit duo — the Stripes are just Jack White on guitar, Meg White on drums and no one else on anything — to kick the…
There’s nothing wrong with where I come from, (but) sometimes it’s meant to be just that, Scott Miller announces at the beginning of his debut solo effort, Thus Always to Tyrants. From there, the former V-Roys frontman sets out from his Virginia home with hopes of becoming a brand new man. Such coming-of-age tales are a rock and roll staple,…
Jewish culture has been coming out of the ghetto, so to speak, over the past few decades. But while most of today’s Jews would gladly let popular culture revolutionize, say, gefilte fish, more beloved traditions remain untouchable. Klezmer music, once played in Jewish-American immigrant communities, is a case in point. It’s characterized by Eastern-European folk instruments such as fiddles, accordions…
When the party’s over at the Old Chelsea Theatre sometime on the night of Monday, September 10, the doors will shut on an all-too-brief era that has been equal parts history and hysteria. Late Night Theatre waves bye-bye to its year-long crib with Stripped: Eve of Destruction. The compilation of Late Night’s greatest hits will literally bring down the house;…
6 Thursday Overseas, a 1991 French film set in Algeria in the 1940s, kicks off Rockhurst University’s Cinema Series tonight at 7. This year’s series focuses on foreign-language films, and Overseas chronicles three sisters’ lives as the tension leading to the Algerian War builds around them. This quiet political satire is three movies in one, shifting the focus sequentially from…
Italian food is everywhere. Kansas City boasts more than three dozen Italian restaurants — not counting the pizza shops — including two-year-old Frondizi’s (see review). So does the town need another one? Yes, according to Patrick Quillec, the French-born chef and co-owner of Hannah Bistro Café. Quillec, who opened the intimate Café Provence (3936 West 69th Terrace in the Prairie…
I was at a party the other night making small talk with people I didn’t know when someone asked me to name my favorite Italian restaurants in Kansas City. It’s my second-least-favorite question because there’s no simple response. (Topping my list is “What’s your favorite restaurant?” — which also has no answer.) I especially like a handful of Italian…
Often when Americans think of Africa, they envision a land stricken with warfare and famine. If they ever consider its native music, they imagine traditional drum-and-dance displays that have changed little over hundreds of years. Toby Foyeh provides listeners with a more accurate portrayal of Nigerian life. In his lyrics, he celebrates all that’s great about his homeland — its…
Usually, if a festival is still solidifying its lineup just a week or so before the event, it’s an ominous red flag, signifying poor planning at best and an impending debacle at worst. But the Dreadrock Music Festival gets a free pass on these grounds because its organizers must navigate through a daunting maze of red tape to ensure that…
About a month ago, To Conquer?, which featured former members of Haloshifter, The Hillary Step and Thestringandreturn, became the latest local all-star group to burn out far too quickly when it ended its agonizingly brief run with a seemingly contentious farewell show at The Hurricane. For whatever reason (most likely divided attention due to overabundant side projects and/or irreconcilable conflicts…
= Drinking hard, playing hard, touring even harder — the members of Filthy Jim don’t like doing things the easy way. Taking brief respite from a year-long tour during which it has afflicted thirty states and more than a hundred cities, the group will play a few local dates before packing up the Chevy and the U-Haul trailer and heading…
A year after Cameron Crowe climbed back aboard the tour bus for one last spin through rock’s golden days of giddy hedonism and phony heroism comes a film set a decade later, in the mid-1980s, when the parties got harder, the music louder and the musicians prettier. The world of Rock Star is one Crowe’s young stand-in from Almost…
In the early ’90s, during a particularly dark time for the pro-wrestling business, perennial jester and one-time Andy Kaufman-accomplice Jerry “The King” Lawler proclaimed that he was going to do something that had never been done before: call play-by-play commentary on his own match. Entering the ring armed with a microphone, he proceeded to pummel his no-name opponent while…
“I’m convinced more than ever that the move we made in the off season to get was the right thing to do.” — Matt Cavanaugh, Ravens offensive coordinator, Inside the NFL, HBO “I think the players are rallying around . He’s a very verbal guy when it comes to dealing with his receivers.” — Cavanaugh, HBO GH: Grbac was then…
High school football in the Kansas City area is about to blow up big. A combination of unprecedented media attention and a fifteen-year-old running back with one of the best football names this side of Bronko Nagurski have rejuvenated Kansas City’s interest in Friday night’s heroes. Football has been played in area high schools for almost one hundred years, and…
Return to Poo Corner Pick up the feces: I just finished Joe Miller’s article on Bannister Acres (“Fertile Ground,” August 23). I live in Bannister Acres, and I disagree with a few of the “facts” in the article. The families in this neighborhood are not walking around in their own waste. Yes, we want what was promised to, and paid…
Hurry up please its time: Even though it’s the birthplace of T.S. Eliot — winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize “for his work as a trail-blazing pioneer of modern poetry” — Missouri is one of only ten states in the country without a poet laureate. But don’t call us a wasteland. Two Missourians have served as U.S. poets laureate —…
Eric Chan and Heather Schatz, both majoring in architecture in the mid-1980s at the University of California-Berkeley, sat side-by-side in an art class and found they couldn’t keep their hands off one another’s drawings. The two swapped seats over and over and contributed to each other’s work. From there a collaborative relationship blossomed. The two met often and pushed…
At about 11 o’clock on a chilly November night in 1998, a black Lexus sped to the emergency doors of Overland Park’s Menorah Medical Center and lurched to a stop. The driver’s door opened, and a distraught, pregnant woman emerged clutching two yapping teacup Yorkies to her enormous belly. “Call the FBI! Call the DEA!” she screamed as a Colombian…
