Even if you’ve never heard of Gooding, you’ve probably ear-checked his music once or twice. The Wichita-based multi-instrumentalist’s creations have cropped up in a number of disparate locations, ranging from MTV to a slew of indie and big-budget films. But those already intimate with Gooding’s catalog might be shocked by the new direction taken on his sixth full-length effort, Life…
If ever there were a need to use the universal quotation-marks hand gesture, it’s when differentiating between ’80s “metal” (the realm of Winger, Dokken and other vapid aerosol banks) and ’80s metal (stomping grounds for Slayer, Anthrax and pre-makeover Metallica). In 1990, Poison bopped unskinny fans with Flesh and Blood, but that title would have fit Slayer’s menacingly melodic Seasons…
In some ways, folk musicians still shun technology, preferring acoustic guitars to electric instruments and choosing intimate venues instead of garishly lit stages. But when it comes to getting organized, the unplugged underground has abandoned time-tested organic methods such as paper-wasting mailing lists and time-consuming calling circles. For artists such as Beth Scalet, a three-decade veteran of Kansas City’s coffee-house…
It goes without saying that humility among musicians is scarcer than detangling shampoo in Bob Dylan’s shower. After every fifty performers whose swagger is wildly out of proportion with their talent comes one like singer Rufus Wainwright — someone for whom artistic certainty is not only justified but charming. “When I see someone famous on TV and think, ‘I can…
Last month, GQ ran a disquietingly flattering profile of Joe Roth, who in January 2000 quit his gig as Walt Disney Studios chairman to form his own studio. With a billion bucks on loan from, among others, News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch, Sony CEO Howard Stringer and media magnate John Malone, Roth launched Revolution Studios. Its purpose, paraphrases Maximillian Potter…
To the woman who broke Adrian Lyne’s heart all those years ago: Stop what you’re doing right this minute. Drop everything, pick up the phone and call him. Apologize profusely for cheating on him. Tell him it’s all your fault and you’re a worse person for leaving him. Offer him half your assets if you have to. Just help him…
Thanks a slot: As a Kansas City, Kansas, resident, I want to say thanks for Mark Kind’s article backing an Indian casino in downtown KCK (Kansas City Strip, May 2) and thanks for your other stories, which have shown your newspaper has an interest in writing about KCK. Our downtown is dark and desolate at night, while the Kansas governor…
The Missouri General Assembly would like to be the final authority on all subjects, not just pedophilia. UMKC political-science professor Harris Mirkin has the nerve to quote research that found some minors don’t resist or resent sex with adults. He also notes that, as any historian knows, pedophilia has not been taboo in all cultures. And he points out that…
We’re all waiting for Kansas City to be just like Paris. When Mayor Kay Barnes pitches her idea that downtown actually stretches from the Missouri River to the Plaza, she likes to say that’s the same length as the Champs-Elysees. Barnes’ downtown saviors are waiting, too. Since February, she’s been meeting monthly with the 25 lawyers, real-estate moguls, philanthropists and…
By 3:30 p.m., the Kansas City Municipal Courthouse is something of a tomb. The halls stand empty. Courtroom doors are all locked. Bored security guards in cheap blue blazers lounge beside metal detectors. Courthouse staffers continue to work, but the judges have all left. Justice has been served today, speedily, though the court has been short-handed for months. Yet the…
The thin, attractive blonde stood up before a room of Rent-a-Center’s top execs — the only woman in a sea of white shirts, dark suits and ties — and began delivering her report on the company’s tax situation. She didn’t get far. Before she had completed two sentences, Ernie Talley, crimson-faced and ready to explode, rocketed from his chair, bellowing,…
As Mico Rodriguez, the founder and CEO of the Dallas-based M Crowd Restaurant Group, which owns Kansas City’s Mi Cocina restaurant (see review) — planning to expand his growing empire into Johnson County? “Yes, we’re looking at locations in Overland Park,” says Rodriguez, who hopes to have two or three Mi Cocinas in the Kansas City area. Some of M…
Could a beautiful woman such as, say, Penelope Cruz be any less attractive wearing a Kmart double-knit polyester pantsuit than she is wearing Christian Lacroix? My young friend Jennifer, who works in the fashion trade, would say absolutely. She’s a trend-conscious twentysomething, and looks are everything. That’s why Jennifer would rather cool her perfectly white teeth on a $7.50…
The Kemper’s second annual Animation Festival begins with Tim Burton’s first film, Vincent, an odd six-minute short. Though Burton is better known for such feature-length films as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and the recent remake of Planet of the Apes, he got his start with animated shorts. “You can tell that he’s an animator,” says Michael Fabrizio, coordinator of the…
Trailer parks — even when they’re not being leveled by tornadoes — get a bad rap. Imagination Studios director Cathi Horton loves them, though. It was her idea to turn a trailer park into a microcosm of happiness. Enlisting the help of local playwright Bill Nelson, she created Welcome to Paradise, a monthly theatrical serial that’s like a sitcom…
“This is contrary to how we grew up,” Stacy Peralta is saying a few minutes after getting dropped off at a newspaper office by a limo driver. The 45-year-old Peralta, still SoCal handsome and boyish beneath a ball cap and behind a well-trimmed beard, grins long and hard—a real hell-yeah smile. Peralta’s pal Tony Alva, with his head of…
“I’m not talking to anyone from Kansas. I ain’t got to say about Kansas. I hate Kansas. There’s no way I should have been a free agent.” — Drew Davison, a four-year starter at KU as a 5-foot-11-inch, 185-pound defensive back who went undrafted and recently signed as a free agent with the New York Jets, Lawrence Journal World “I…
In 1985 the Royals defeated the Cardinals for the team’s only World Series championship. The missed call by first-base umpire Don Denkinger led to the Royals’ championship victory but upstaged a more-important personal achievement logged that year. Steve Balboni hit 36 homers that season, a number not topped by any Royal since. Neither George Brett nor Bo Jackson, not Bob…
Many Italian movies of the 1950s, such as Federico Fellini’s La Strada, would feature picturesque but stuffy villages enlivened by traveling theater troupes. Commedia dell’arte, starting in the sixteenth century, brought merchants and peons alike great stories with unsubtle morals, but the magic of theater was the real draw. Pinocchio Commedia at Theatre for Young America is like live…
Given the option to travel anywhere, my precocious thirteen-year-old niece Whitney insisted on Egypt. Her choice may have been initially influenced by the video game Tomb Raider and its ass-kicking heroine, Lara Croft. But Whitney’s continuing passion for Egypt and her exceptional knowledge of its history arose from the sense of mystery, magic and mythology conveyed through ancient Egyptian…
Dave Mustaine called it quits recently, claiming that a debilitating guitar-playing injury forced Megadeth into an early grave. Online rumors insist that Mustaine’s notorious predilection for addiction was the real reason behind the split and that he actually busted his wrist in rehab. Either way, seeing the legendary Megadeth leader resort to the online auctioning of his guitar collection (as…
The stormy one-two punch (“Code Red,” “What I Built Last Night”) that opens the Casket Lottery’s third full-length runs a gamut of rock styles, making shape-shifting noise that hits like a Whippit-induced head rush. Singer and guitarist Nate Ellis, bassist Stacy Hilt and drummer Nathan “Junior” Richardson lock together like Krazy Glue, crafting a voluminous downpour that pays tribute to…
Weezer’s self-leaked Maladroit notwithstanding, Filthy Jim might have the already-heard-it new release of the year. Copies of the Lawrence-based quartet’s bratty debut, Whiskey and Porn, have been circulating in local music circles for months, but the effort remained officially unreleased until recently. Having secured a deal through Dallas indie label Tour Horse Records, Filthy Jim might finally receive its critical…
Dubbing a project Kid Called Computer, thus incorporating the names of two beloved Radiohead albums, creates outrageous expectations, though Toriano Terrell sidesteps the issue by operating on a different plane. Terrell’s tracks combine accessible elements such as gentle, jazzy guitars, speaker-punishing bass blasts and eerie orchestra samples. His carefully tended sonic gardens don’t contain any garish colors or ingratiating scents;…
