June 7 was a sultry Friday at Barney Allis Plaza, where the gay-pride celebration opened with a disco version of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Cheers rose from the crowd, and drag queens took the stage for a night of raucous festivities. Missing were a couple dozen stalwarts of the city’s gay political establishment, who were having a weenie roast at…
This spring, undercover Kansas City police officers arrested 47 strippers for dancing too close to their customers. Now the lap-dance dragnet has created a throng of municipal court cases, but the prosecutor expects most of the charges won’t stick, despite the enthusiastic efforts of the Kansas City Police Department’s vice squad. Approximately 75 percent of the cases will likely…
It took less than five years for Kansas City’s leaders to forget everything they’d learned. In the mid-’90s, Kansas City was the same as it is today: a homey place run by a government hell-bent on doing just about everything half-assed. There were potholes everywhere. Miles of streets with no sidewalks. Clogged storm drains. Flood-happy creeks. Busted curbs. Cracking bridges….
There’s a perception that servers who work in fancy restaurants like the Hyatt Regency’s Skies (see review) get lavish tips. Not true, says John Hastings, who has been employed at Skies since Ronald Reagan was in the White House. “The other night, I presented a check to a customer, and the dinner bill was $146.30. He gave me $150 and…
The restaurant business is a tough game in a meat-and-potatoes town like Kansas City. Sometimes it takes more than good food to drag stubborn diners out of their ruts and into a new dining room. Amazingly, there’s always some imaginative restaurateur who takes a page out of the P.T. Barnum handbook and decides to mix food and show business. Most…
William Howell did the unthinkable. He took his friend’s mom’s old, faded Tigger doll and tore its head off. Not only that, he sewed one leg from each of ten collectible teddy bears into the hole that his decapitation had left. This creation is one of several altered plush toys Howell displays only through Saturday at the Cube @ Beco…
At the Plate With the Royals is the layperson’s opportunity to ask team members nagging questions such as, “Why do you guys suck?” and “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” or “You actually get paid to blow toes this bad?” Hosted by Royals announcer Chuck Morgan, this regular event at Crown Center is like a town hall meeting…
At this very moment, members of the Television Critics Association are gathered at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, California, to preview this fall’s new series, interview those responsible for them and, finally, gorge themselves silly and drink themselves stupid on the networks’ dwindling dime. This event, the so-called “press tour,” takes place twice a year: once, when the broadcast and…
“It won’t be long now before the Yankees, trailing by three runs in the ninth, simply go over to the Royals’ dugout and purchase the final four runs.” — Dan Lebatard, sports-talk host on ESPN Radio “I would definitely go to more games if they brought on replacement players. It wouldn’t bother me at all.” — Caller, KMBZ 980 “Major…
Baseball fans in Kansas City finally have something to cheer for — a baseball strike. With the team in terrible shape, it’s easy to worry that a strike will snuff the life from major league baseball in Kansas City. Don’t believe it. The average salary in baseball has risen from $51,500 in 1976 to $2.38 million today. Though the Royals…
Whatever Lewis Carroll was smoking when he created Alice in Wonderland, its by-products include a Mad Hatter, a March Hare and a Cheshire Cat who vaporizes himself into just a grin. Theatre for Young America’s production — of a David Mackey adaptation with a Cheryl Benge score — delivers some of the lunacy resulting from Alice’s spiral down a…
In 1999, Lauryn Hill won five Grammys for her solo debut, graced the cover of every major magazine and became the darling of the pop music universe. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was unanimously touted as an instant classic; Time even named it the greatest hip-hop album ever, though it wasn’t really a rap record. The former Fugee was poised…
Three years after Imperial Teen riddled What Is Not to Love via the title of its 1999 disc, the answer — not much — comes courtesy of On. The San Francisco quartet, featuring Roddy Bottum and Will Schwartz alongside Lynn Perko and Jone Stebbins — because everybody knows the best pop bands allow both genders to participate — returns with…
There’s a huge community, several million strong, of O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack owners who never saw the film — not that there’s anything wrong with that. These folks don’t know the brothers Coen from The Brothers Karamazov, but still, they need the music. Craving another dose, some of them will buy Divine Secrets, T Bone Burnett’s first soundtrack…
There are three good reasons single-artist pop soundtracks — as opposed to orchestral scores composed by pop musicians moonlighting uptown — take up little space on record store shelves. The most basic is that, as dumb as movie producers think you are, soundtrack compilers — the savants who cobble together scraps of hair-gel punk and Viagra-ready oldies to sell a…
In the five years he spent with Albert Collins and the decade he spent in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Coco Montoya learned the value of balance. His guitar work impresses, but just as important, it rings with crystalline clarity. So do his vocals, which check aggression with seasoned control. Montoya’s fifth solo album, Can’t Look Back, is a present-tense blend of…
Larry McCray has been touted as a “promising young blues voice” for more than a decade (which, knowing the blues, probably puts him in his mid-to-late thirties). McCray has one of those huge, commanding voices somewhere between the gruffness of Bobby “Blue” Bland and the smooth facility of Robert Cray. He scrapes sudden bass depths, then his pipes crack when…
Lucero singer Ben Nichols, a shy, wiry guy held together by tattoos and a worn-down guitar, is what Ryan Adams could be if he’d just quit winking. Though the band’s name means bright star, here’s how mournful its songs actually are — in “Nights Like These,” the song’s narrator actually loses his girl to a writer. But the group’s…
DJ Spooky, aka Paul D. Miller, boasts a résumé as postmodern as his music. A New York-based writer, conceptual artist and sound alchemist, Spooky has remixed tracks for a wide range of artists, including Metallica, Sublime and Moby. He’s also collaborated with everyone from Sonic Youth to Yoko Ono on his quest to bridge the aural culture gap. Few DJs…
After years of conditioning, radio listeners who tune to “hits” stations might have difficulty associating downbeat songs with anything but the power ballads, maudlin tributes and saptacular serenades that break up the perky pop parade. But a spin down the dial to the classic-rock zone reveals Pink Floyd’s comfortably strummed wallflowers, the Beatles’ psychedelically enhanced strawberry fields and the Doors’…
Although Koufax does a right-on cover of Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” American fans might have a hard time finding it in recorded form; so far, it’s only available commercially on the Japanese import version of Koufax’s 2000 disc It Had to Do With Love (available for about $42 plus shipping on Amazon.com). Jackson’s ’80s classic epitomizes the keyboard-and-synthesizer-smothered sophisticated pop…
Some homegrown hip-hop can be hazardous to your health. Monotonous beats might lead to crippling boredom; trite gangsta-leaning lyrics could inspire distraught listeners to impale their own eardrums; all-hype, no-substance live shows lead to panicked crowds squeezing through exit doors, trampling bystanders in the process. Tech N9ne’s absolute power (and an eight-song sampler suggests his new disc will be even…
David Silveria, who supplies the pummeling beats for Korn, is a patient man, described by his bandmates as “the shy one” in the group. But even reticent rock-stars have their limits, and right now Silveria’s are being pushed to the very edge. “Leslie!” he snaps at an assistant, “Will you get me some Red Bull? I’m fading. I ate a…
Kwik Stop is a road movie that purposely doesn’t go anywhere. The protagonists in Michael Gilio’s film take journeys all right, but of the existential type. Despite their attempts to get to Los Angeles from a bleak Midwestern landscape, they move two steps back for every step forward. Gilio discusses his film as part of the Indy Film Showcase on…
