When Travis added Britney Spears’ ” … Baby One More Time” to its live set a couple of years ago, making the song a tightly coiled epic of unrequited longing, the band replaced its heavy-lidded dourness with an otherwise undemonstrated sense of irony. The song (later issued as a b-side) was the best winking testament by a Scottish group to…
Touting the healing potential of power chords, camaraderie and beer, the Reducers SF raises a grimy glass in making a toast to Crappy Clubs and Smelly Pubs. Produced by Steve Burgess, bassist/songwriter for Oi! legends Cock Sparrer, Crappy Clubs and Smelly Pubs rocks and talks with a distinctly British accent. Its harmonies stagger like barfight losers, and most of its…
You self-righteous fuck/Give me a reason not to rip your face off: These are not healing words. Slayer’s God Hates Us All, released September 11, is a soundtrack to terror and mayhem, making it either one of the most prescient or ill-timed albums ever. Its cover, a photo of an antique bible that appears to have been used for some…
Human lives are filled with banality. Thousands upon thousands of large and small tasks must be completed in order to maintain domestic harmony. Stack the dishes. Sweep the floor. Pour the water. Replace the soap. Fold the towels. Repeat until death. To a monk, each task is an opportunity for enlightenment. To most everyone else, it’s a chore, forgettable and…
Ryan is eight years old. He sits high on a stool at McDonalds, dipping McNuggets in barbecue sauce. Twelve-year-old Josh stares at Ryan’s Royals cap from across the burger bar and snarls, “The Royals suck!” Ryan’s cheeks turn as red as the ketchup-bearing french fry he has just plopped in his mouth. Ryan answers with a whisper, “I know.” These…
“This isn’t going to happen very often, and what we need to do is enjoy it.” — Dick Vermeil, following his team’s first win in Washington, 101.1 KCFX GH: Vermeil meant that the Chiefs wouldn’t blow out many opponents like they did the Redskins. But his words also sounded like a warning to all Chiefs fans to rein in any…
No Jewish-mother stereotype is as thorny as the Sophie Greengrass character in Andrew Bergman’s comedy Social Security, directed for The New Theatre by Dennis Hennessy. Were she a saint in anyone’s mind but her own, she’d be known as Our Lady of Perpetual Kvetching. More accurately, she’s a pain in the tookas. Michael Learned, winner of four Emmy awards (three…
Before he was editor in chief at Marvel Comics—which, by all rights, makes him the man who tells Spider-Man what he can do with himself and the X-Men where to go—Joe Quesada illustrated a comic book titled Ash. The title did not last long; there was, perhaps, little market for a gangly, anxious superhero whose day job was putting…
When Lawrence resident Joe Collins was fourteen and living in Sioux City, Iowa, authorities came to his home. They informed his father that if Joe didn’t stop operating a zoo without a license, there would be repercussions. The young Collins had been catching snapping turtles, snakes and even a raccoon and keeping them in his backyard. When his father made…
“It’s always been my greatest fear that I’d find myself in a situation where I have to act without thinking and suddenly I’ve killed somebody,” says film director David Atkins, whose contemporary film noir, Novocaine, will make its Kansas City premiere at the eighth annual Filmfest Kansas City. About sixty movies will screen from October 5-11 at the Tivoli Manor…
4 Thursday Rockhurst University Theater opens its 2001-2002 season with an ancient Greek comedy about the persuasive power of sex tonight at 8 at Mabee Theater, 1100 Rockhurst Road. In Lysistrata, the women of Athens and Sparta — fed up with the Peloponesian War — wage a sex strike, refusing to go to bed with their men until a…
Remembering the late Loula Long Combs, legendary “Queen of the American Royal” (see Café) is one way to celebrate the yearly horse-and-livestock show. Going to the annual American Royal Barbecue, October 5 and 6 at the American Royal Center, is another. A variety of nonprofit organizations (including the American Royal, the Dream Factory and Harvesters) benefits from the two-day bash,…
It’s been thirty years since Loula Long Combs, fabled horsewoman and heiress to the Long lumber fortune, passed on to that big rodeo in the sky. But her name still gets trotted out each year during American Royal season, because the doyenne of Longview Farms was also the queen of Kansas City’s annual horse and livestock extravaganza. Longtime fans…
Time was, groups constructing a long-awaited album would end up writing too many songs to fit on one disc, which led them to issue separate releases simultaneously. (See Guns ‘n’ Roses’ 1991 Use Your Illusion(s), two albums that inspired countless rebellious teens to report fictional dental appointments so they could pick up the discs before the school day ended.) Later,…
As reported in this column last week, in the dubious history of musical competitions there’s never been a battle of the bands that featured 64 groups. Nor, for that matter, has there been a battle that incorporated sports-tournament-style brackets, a charity angle (money was to be donated to area high schools) and an entrepreneurial aspect (the musicians sold their own…
The man Pete Townshend once described as the ideal candidate to become England’s poet laureate is, true to Townshend’s hopeful notion, breathing new life into the marriage of music and literature. Ray Davies is currently back in the States with his Storyteller tour, a performance that presents the songwriter’s rabid fanbase with an opportunity to see The Kinks’ founder in…
It’s three in the afternoon. Isaac Brock, lead singer, guitarist and lyricist for Modest Mouse, wakes and wipes the sleep syrup from his eyes for the second time today. After a morning spent drinking beer and a midafternoon nap, Brock has awakened to discover he has a strange, unattributable fever and a serious jones. A moment later, he’s scratching around…
The German filmmaker Tom Tykwer has a gift for fusing psychological complexity and crackling plot without forsaking the excitements of either. The success of Run Lola Run didn’t exactly turn Tykwer into a household name, but it earned him his props as a young lion of the art houses. Tykwer’s new film, The Princess and the Warrior (Der Krieger und…
When Truman Capote stumbled upon a small New York Times article with the headline “Wealthy Farmer, 3 of Family Slain,” in November 1959, something caught his attention. He didn’t immediately suspect that his interest would evolve into a book that would change not only his life but the entire boundaries of what a crime book — in this case,…
Clubbed Kids Bully pulp: C.J. Janovy’s editorial on Westport (“Bully Clubs,” September 13) may have been as ridiculous as anything I have read. The statement that the underage youths who hang out well past midnight have been “liberated” from things like reading and church is probably true. But it is sad. The Westport merchants only ask for a chance to…
Knock the vote: Kay O’Connor seems to make Kansas’ creationists look progressive. Much of the world now sees the state senator, an Olathe Republican, as a sort of Taliban Carrie Nation, wanting to smash voting booths with a pickax to prevent women from voting. It all began when a Kansas City Star reporter overheard O’Connor reject a “Celebrate the Right…
Image suddenly matters to Raytown. Its residents shrugged off the redneck jokes. They disregarded the Raytown stereotype fueled by wacky car dealers offering “doggone good deals” and the forgettable, Raytown-set sitcom “Mama’s Family,” starring “Carol Burnett Show”-refugee Vicki Lawrence. Raytowners had neighbors they liked and who looked like them. They sent their children to decent schools. They paid their relatively…
On the first day of school this year, newly appointed Kansas City school district Superintendent Dr. Bernard Taylor visited Delano Alternative School near Linwood and Indiana streets. He spotted a young girl moving slowly with the aid of a walker. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “Your shoe is untied.” Then he knelt and tied it. A photographer waved away onlookers and…
