Maybe the only thing Americans love more than a winner is someone who makes winning look easy. But there’s a difference between making something seem effortless and simply not making an effort, and no one is easier to fool than fans of smooth-drinking, less-filling lite-classic American rock. Hobbling down FM radio’s two-lane blacktop, Sheryl Crow has the white line separating…
Nearly a decade before Alexander Lowry recorded Left My Car on the Paseo with the band that bears his surname, he fronted a Pittsburg, Kansas-based outfit called Dirty Steve. Singing, he says, about “punk bullshit, ‘fuck you, rah rah rah,’” Lowry and his cohorts hacked pedestrian punk and metal riffs through the biggest amps that summer jobs and allowances could…
In the great book The Latin Tinge, John Storm Roberts writes, “The modern bolero is a lush romantic popular-song form, largely distinct from the salsa, and very few singers are equally good at both.” Grupo Aztlan’s fans would argue that this Kansas City band is among that few. Aztlan formed ten years ago as a bolero act and recently released…
For the past couple of years, Lonesome Bob has usually taken the stage armed with just an acoustic guitar, his stentorian baritone and a slew of courageous songs. By turns pissed and funny and tender, those songs constitute a singularly impressive body of work. Indeed, the Nashville Scene just named Bob the town’s “Best Damn Singer-Songwriter” — and this in…
Almost fifteen years after arriving in Kansas City and working on nearly every stage in town, actors Mark and Hollis McCarthy made Chicago their new home in December 2000. They were still living here, though, when they got a call that would make them the stars of Garage Sale, one of the films featured in the Halfway to Hollywood festival….
If movie lovers aren’t too image-fatigued after last month’s Filmmakers Jubilee, another film festival has arrived: the second annual Halfway to Hollywood festival at the Fine Arts, the Rio and Union Station’s Exteme Screen. Despite sharing a higher-than-average number of women filmmakers, though, last month’s event and this one are apples and oranges. Whereas the Jubilee is so fringe it’s…
Kick a boy enough times, and he’ll become a man. The question is, of what sort? In his long-awaited feature portrait of the comic-book hero Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi brings forth a kaleidoscopic answer full of hope and verve. Flashy enough for kids and insightful enough to engage adults, the movie will line ’em up at the multiplex and…
Stand by your fan: Keep up the good work of local sports reporting! I, too, feel the same way as Greg Hall describes in “Fan Scam” (April 18). Since moving to KC in 1994, I have watched in disgust as these bloated owners of the Chiefs and Royals rip off the fans here year after year. This does not work…
Governor Bill Graves is shocked — shocked — to hear that tribal gambling may soon come to downtown Kansas City, Kansas. Never mind that wicked wagerers can buy a state lottery ticket within forty paces of the trailer-house bingo parlor he’s fighting. “People buy $100 at a time,” says Paul Abanishe, owner of the African Tropical Market on North Seventh…
When principal Greg Cartwright appeared on NBC’s Today Show in December 1999, he brought good news: A student’s warning had thwarted a Columbine-style shoot-up plot in his rural, southeast Kansas high school, saving many lives, perhaps even Cartwright’s. Host Matt Lauer listened as Cartwright told how police acted quickly on the Labette High School student’s alert. “It was very close,”…
Walk down the streets at 18th and Vine on a warm spring afternoon, and you’re supposed to be able to step into a white-tablecloth steak house. Or slide into a booth at a cozy café or a loud bar and grill. Relax at a coffee house. Pick up some fresh vegetables at a grocery store, buy vitamins at a pharmacy,…
