Local musician Mark Southerland has to work all weekend — but having three CD-release parties in two days isn’t a bad thing. “It’s a frenzy of releases,” he says. “But I’m cool with it.” Southerland plays with TJ Dovebelly Ensemble and Mr. Marco’s V7, both of which debut new records this weekend. What’s strange, though, is that these bands and…
Roman Coppola and L.M. Kit Carson, filmmakers and friends and co-conspirators, sit in front of an audience of 30 on the University of Dallas campus. Their appearance together, in this wood-paneled auditorium on this verdant site, completes a circle, or perhaps a dozen of them, and the moment makes Carson anxious. He feels the vibe. He vibrates. It was…
“Scouts in New Orleans this week were so impressed with the way Zephyrs manager Tony Peña threw batting practice that they pulled out their radar guns. A consistent 88 mph. ‘I don’t think there’s been a bad day in his life,’ said one scout who considers Peña prime major-league managerial timber.” — Peter Gammons, in a May 13, 2001, column,…
Tony Peña, in front of the Kansas City media for the first time, turned to Allard Baird and thanked the Royals’ general manager for believing in him and making him field manager. “I will not put you down,” said a very sincere Peña. Most of the print media cleaned up the quote and inserted the word let for put in…
The good folks at Minds Eye Theatre, who gave Our Town a fresh spin several months ago, may break some kind of record with their latest production. Betty’s Summer Vacation might be the comedy with the fewest laughs, at least in recent memory. Not since the New Theatre’s mean-spirited, gay-stereotype-flaunting Norman, Is That You? has a play’s attempt at…
Pretentious, marginally talented New York singer-songwriters are an already obnoxious lot. But when you take some wanna-be neo-space-cowboy like Drazy Hoops, with music so utterly devoid of life it could be the soundtrack to an autopsy, things really start to get ugly. Hoops isn’t a bad musician — he strums his guitar as well as the next hack, and his…
A groundbreaking L.A. DJ (originally known as DJ Spinn) and collaborator with both hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa and everyone’s favorite gangsta, Snoop Dogg, Simply Jeff is among Southern California’s most prominent ambassadors to the global dance-music scene. He brings the funk to the world party, maintaining a strong sense of his own roots while mixing with everyone else in the…
The first words Kylie Minogue breathes heavily, only seconds into “More More More,” are give in. From then on, it’s futile to resist being beguiled by Kylie’s every sing-along-and-hate-yourself-later chorus on Fever, her umpteenth bid for the stardom she’s scored everywhere but America. (The Aussie’s biggest U.S. success thus far was a late-’80s top-ten cover of “The Locomotion”; the current…
It’s nothing short of dumbfounding that Neil Young — the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer responsible for “Love Is a Rose,” “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold,” “Cortez the Killer,” “Rockin’ in the Free World,” “Change Your Mind” and (insert your favorite here) — could release a song as musically inept and emotionally flaccid as “Let’s Roll.” Inspired, for lack…
The most telling analog for Elvis Costello’s career trajectory is even further from rock’s molten core than Burt Bacharach or the Brodsky Quartet, two collaborators with whom Costello has unevenly explored his softer side during the past decade. Think Woody Allen. Beyond their shared taste in eyewear and a compulsive mystification of sex easily mistaken for misogyny by shallow critics,…
Until recently, national observers often crowded the Get Up Kids and the Anniversary into the same dry space under the emo umbrella, a purgatory where sensitive souls wailed while carnival-calliope keyboards mocked their pain. These tragicomic figures make mirth out of misery, like Charlie Brown entertaining the Peanuts gallery with his can’t-win ways. But unlike the awkward-aged comic-strip icon, the…
Many artists take offense at being compared with other musicians, blindly insisting that their music is completely original. But even though he once warned listeners that he might “Go ‘Nam on Ya” if provoked, Canvas guitarist Pauly-C won’t threaten anyone who likens his band’s latest work to platinum-selling, critically reviled acts. In fact, he courts such comparisons. “Our new sound…
Long before the “No mo’ emo” uprising of 2002, during which the genre’s local delegates bravely shrugged off the approach that had earned them hot-topic status among power-pop teens, Shiner made an equally bold decision. Back in 1997, the band attracted a thin yet rabid following with Splay and Lula Divinia, two teeth-jarring, brain-teasing mathematically precise displays of abrasive virtuosity….
Said to be inspired by the gooey therapy sessions of films such as Ordinary People and Good Will Hunting, Martin & Orloff actually grew out of a dare. It came from the kind of challenge that improvisational comedy groups such as Upright Citizens Brigade give themselves every time they take a stage: Create a topic or a couple of characters…
The bad news for Memento fans is that Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia is far less complex and challenging than the backward-edited art-house hit that sparked as much disdain as devotion among moviegoers last year. The good news for Memento-haters is that Insomnia is far less complex and challenging. Its relative straightforwardness and accessibility are likely to inspire wider but shallower…
Summertime dues: In response to T.R. Witcher’s article regarding the under-21 crowds in Westport (“Covert Curfew,” May 16), I don’t see why the issue is even being debated. Everyone over the age of 21 who has been to Westport after hours knows that there is only one reason to stay: bars. If the only businesses that are open (with the…
Somebody needs to say it: The teddy bears suck. Inspired by last summer’s Cow Parade, local do-gooders have organized this summer’s March of the Teddy Bears, in which 150 six-foot-tall fiberglass beasts decorated by local “artists” descend on high-profile street corners. The first platoon, dressed like Allied soldiers, invades the Liberty Memorial rededication this weekend. Mayor Kay Barnes has proclaimed…
It’s a balmy Saturday night on the Plaza. A minivan from Kansas slows alongside a dozen or so young men dancing ecstatically across the street from Helzberg Diamonds. “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,” the saffron-robed men chant as they wave their arms above their shaved heads. One devotee beats a drum strapped to his side. Others ping…
On game days, David Smith and his teammates gathered at the Velvet Freeze across Linwood Avenue from Central High School to catch a bus to the Southeast Fieldhouse, near the entrance to Swope Park. As he walked down Indiana toward Linwood, passersby honked and waved, yelling, “Have a good game!” Smith always wore a suit and tie, and he carried…
Gosh, is there anything more embarrassing than discovering you’re in the dark about the newest culinary trends? That’s how I felt when I learned that there was a “zesty movement” overtaking the country. I learned all about the zesty revolution when a New York-based public relations agency, the Rosen Group, announced the winners of the “Sixty Best Zesty” restaurants in…
It’s not surprising to discover that plenty of Brooksiders haven’t ventured east of Oak Street to discover Café Maison. The combination coffee house and bistro slipped into a 63rd Street space next to J’Adore, a Gallic-flavored antique-and-gift shop, a year and a half ago. Oak Street seems to be the invisible Maginot Line between Brookside proper and its eastern…
Mac McClanahan is a walking contradiction. After doing graduate work in Boston (though he says he’s dyslexic) and starting a ceramics career, he is now an artist-in-residence. His residency is not at a museum or a gallery but at a metal-fabrication facility called Wenzel Steel Works in Kansas City, Kansas, where he’s been employed for the past three years. He…
Actor Randall Kent Cohn makes stilt-walking look easy. After he slips his feet under rubber straps, his stride quickly grows to a leap. Cohn, a founder of the Evaporated Milk Society, is nonchalant about suddenly becoming 9 feet tall. Walking on stilts is not as difficult as it is simply disorienting. Most novices are stilt-walking on their own within a…
At first, they approach tentatively, their pens and posters timidly extended as though afraid the two men standing beneath the blank movie screen might bite or bark them out of the theater. “No, no,” insists Chris Weitz, standing next to his older brother Paul. “I’m happy to sign your poster,” and he proceeds to scribble his name across Hugh…
