On October 31, 2001, as Kansas City basked in a sunny and warm autumn that seemed it might last until June, City Hall abruptly e-mailed cold news to three Kansas City charities: Effective immediately, no more city money would be available for needy residents’ rent, heat, electricity or water payments. Now that warm weather is also unavailable, the Emergency…
We’ll salute our dead and corrupt political bosses, but forget about leaders accused of incest. We still don’t know why Ernest Hemingway, Walter Cronkite, Rush Limbaugh and many, many others failed to make the list of 175 notable Jackson Countians released during the county’s 175th anniversary celebration (Kansas City Strip, January 3). But we think we’ve figured out Charles E….
That was then, this is pow! Charles Ferruzza has a glimmer of a gem of a gritty gemutlich gallery, but gums it up at the get-go with his suggestion of a ghastly, giddy gimcrack for Science City (Kansas City Strip, December 20). May I suggest his idea is a tad over the top? But it still might be saved if…
Who would have guessed that 31 years after M*A*S*H, the film that made Robert Altman’s reputation, he would still be turning out movies as good as his latest release, Gosford Park? Full of the director’s usual energy, powered by the sense of controlled chaos that marks all of his ensemble films, Gosford Park also finds the quintessentially American director…
For the most part, keyboards and heavy metal don’t mix. At one point about two decades ago, a few genuine headbangers thought it might be cool (and commercially appealing) to blanket their coldly technical solos with warmed-over keyboards. Then came the synthesized prelude to Europe’s “The Final Countdown” and the perky piano intro to Bon Jovi’s “Runaway,” the combination of…
In rap, you have the studio gangster; in sports, it’s the paper champions; and in country music, they’re called the urban cowboys — all people who make a living pretending to be harder, tougher and rougher than they really are. Is Rex Hobart an urban cowboy? Well, if you consider that he makes his home not too far from the…
This column has been especially preoccupied with local discs lately, but Around Hear still has plenty more local releases to review. In fact, we have review-ready recordings from artists A to Z. In addition to alphabetical diversity, these albums offer considerable musical variety, providing a truly random cross-section of the area’s eclectic music scene. This week’s column rounds up suspects…
If I had a dollar for every time a friend or acquaintance told me how much he or she loved Carmen’s, the garlic-scented little Brookside bistro, I’d have enough money for a down payment on one of those manor homes that symbolize Brooksiders’ unerring good taste. Historically a Catholic, white-collar neighborhood, the area has seen an influx of gay home…
Each morning, a crowd huddles around an elevator, waiting to push into a claustrophobic container that gives the phrase “upward mobility” a second meaning. Nearby, a door leads to another option: a stairway. Nobody opens that door. But later that evening, at a gym, these same people wait for their turns on Stairmasters. Where do these stairs go? Nowhere,…
Diana Timmons, the manager of Cup and Saucer in the City Market, knows that tasting wine can feel awkward, especially for people who were brought up not to spit in public. “I’m just sort of learning about wine, and I think it’s intimidating,” she says. That’s why her monthly wine tastings are going to be low-key. The idea isn’t to…
GH: I played Frasier Crane with UMKC Coach Rich Zvosec and asked him to respond off the top of his head to a few subjects. Here are his responses. Kansas City barbecue: “No personal favorites, although I’m leaning toward KC Masterpiece.” The Plaza: “Fantastic. It reminds me of inner-harbor Baltimore — without the harbor. We take all our recruits to…
The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s third head basketball coach in three seasons is despondent after a 62-50 loss to nationally ranked and undefeated Oklahoma State on December 19. Rich Zvosec’s shoulders slump as he makes his way to the bowels of Municipal Auditorium to meet the largest contingent of local media he’s confronted so far this season. He trudges…
Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write—a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite television proves it’s possible to have access to 150…
Steven Eubank is a seventeen-year-old college senior. Even as a precocious child of four, he would watch movie musicals such as Oklahoma and The Sound of Music with a critical eye. “I’d want to recast them,” he says. “I think directing has always been a calling. My parents thought it was a phase that would go away. But when they…
Atlanta’s Outkast ranks among hip-hop’s most popular and well-respected groups, but it wasn’t always cool to hail from the Dirty South. True, other artists (Houston’s Geto Boys and Miami’s 2 Live Crew) opened the door for rappers from that region, but Outkast blew the hinges off the sucka. Now, eight years into its career, the duo receives the greatest-hits treatment,…
What makes the Wu-Tang Clan so distinctive is that it embraces confusion in a genre that normally avoids it like the reefer-mad Method Man ducks urine tests. After all, hip-hop has long prided itself on being direct. I don’t rhyme for the sake of riddlin’, Public Enemy’s Chuck D spat in the late ’80s, epitomizing rap’s former emphasis on the…
The Anniversary isn’t abandoning the sound that brought it recognition. In recent concert appearances and on advance tracks from its upcoming disc, Your Majesty, the quintet’s Moog keyboard still goes “wee-ooh” all the way down its new-wave fun slides. But in a welcome change from the tell-almost-all album teasers that pass as singles these days, the songs on its split…
Chris Carrabba (or Christopher Ender Carrabba, as he’s now calling himself) specializes in emo at its most over-the-top — call it “extremo.” His tunes start innocently enough, with polite strumming and earnest lyrics (I’d be so pleased to see you/Out of the classroom/Wearing the smile that I’ll bring you) that step unironically into the awkwardly fitting shoes of his growing-pained…
L.S.S. With its provocative title and its busty, red-tinted cover models, the latest disc from L.S.S. gets off to an ire-inspiring start. L.S.S. keeps this momentum alive with its first track, “251,” which parents won’t be selecting as a lullaby anytime soon. (“You see, son, there was this woman, Annabel Chong, and she slept with 251 men to make a…
Last week’s music section offered a thorough overview of 2001’s top recordings, taking the current pulse of everything from hip-hop to contemporary jazz to soundtrack scores. But music’s health can’t be defined solely by its albums, any more than a trend can be confined to a calendar year. So in this week’s Around Hear, regular music-section contributors Robert Bishop and…
Somewhere, there’s a traditional country song just waiting to emerge from the mess that Hadacol has waded through in the past three years. Its first record, 1999’s Better Than This, debuted to critical praise, but then the band was forced to search for a new drummer. After bassist Richard Burgess and guitarists, songwriters and brothers Fred and Greg Wickham recruited…
Had The Royal Tenenbaums been made by a first-time director unburdened by acclaim or expectation, it could be heralded — and then just as easily dismissed — as a light, literary exercise that’s as pleasant as it is frustrating. It is carefully written and perfectly shot (with each scene rendered almost as a painted portrait), the sort of movie…
In your faith: I noticed in your Year in Review article (“Sad but True,” December 27) that you excoriate (get your dictionaries out, kids) John Ashcroft for praising a German law that allows the forfeiture of assets of a religious institution fronting for a terrorist organization. Funny, but I missed your outrage when Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law…
Walter Cronkite might be the most respected man in America, but he’s no Al Mauro. The courteous little guy on the Kansas City school board also has a spot on Jackson County’s recently published list of its “most prominent” citizens ever. But the famed alumnus of Kansas City radio and CBS News does not. It’s hard to tell who’s in…
