Church and straight: Upon reading Deb Hipp’s article “Love Worn Out” (June 13), I was disappointed. The article led me to believe that the church and the majority of its members have condemned all homosexuals to eternal torment, when that is not the case at all. Jesus, upon whose teachings the church is founded, teaches unconditional love for all who…
Now that butt-ugly fiberglass bears officially blight the Plaza, Crown Center, the Liberty Memorial and other landmarks around town, we continue our mourning over the demise of good taste in Kansas City. Who allowed this invasion of Hallmarky tripe to torture us in the name of philanthropy? There’s plenty of blame to go around, but this week we celebrate the…
Kansas Citians destroyed homes, blew up vans and killed themselves with fireworks last week in an effort to prove terrorists haven’t won. The holiday had extra meaning this year because just one week earlier, a California court had threatened our way of life by tossing out the Pledge of Allegiance. But response from members of Congress was swift after Ninth…
James Williams (not his real name) has paid nearly $9,000 in court-ordered child support since 1996 for two children, though he has proved to the Missouri Division of Child Support Enforcement that he is not their father. The mother of the children has testified under oath that one of two other men may have fathered the children, and Williams has…
Kansas City has no plan for its future. In violation of state law, it gives away tax money to wealthy developers with no worries about whether the money will fulfill the city’s development goals, because the city has no such goals. Kansas City Councilman Evert Asjes has made a habit of quiet protest. On July 1, after hearing a tax-break…
Think of blight, and you probably think of poverty and crime and broken windows and raw plywood siding and cats with no collars and dogs with no manners. You think of empty lots with large slabs of broken concrete and weeds that cause hay fever. You think of dictionary definitions — of “deteriorating conditions” and “injury marked by withering.” And…
I was having dinner at the new Thai Place (see review) with friends one night when chef Tim Doolittle of the recently-closed Stolen Grill walked in. Doolittle, along with the rest of the staff at the five-year-old Stolen Grill, was abruptly given last call on June 20. We eagerly cornered him to find out the real story behind the demise…
used to eat a lot of lunches at the Bangkok Pavilion at 97th and Metcalf, where I had a favorite waitress: the slinky, attractive and witty Ann Liberda. I knew that Ann had been born in Thailand’s Udon Thani province, that she had been a beautician and that she’d moved to the United States in 1975. One day I went…
Tony Curtis couldn’t be any prouder of his best film roles if they were his children. And in a way they are. In a phone interview with the Pitch, he’s eager to mention Some Like It Hot — which he brings to Starlight Theatre next week in a musical adaptation once called Sugar — but also reminisces about Spartacus, The…
As a girl, Courtney Bates was drawn to the spotlight over her grandparents’ fireplace. “I’d make all my relatives sit down — and I’m from a big Catholic family — and I’d perform,” she recalls. “When I hinted recently to my mom that I was performing in a show at a club, she said, ‘Just like in front of the…
They stream in and out, all day and all night, one after the other: band members, producers, business associates, friends, family, strangers, hangers-on who stare at the familiar face made infamous long ago. The tour bus, this parked sanctuary where he can roll his joints and drink his bottled Starbucks frappucinos and watch his motocross home videos, is never quiet…
“Take it from me. The good old days, they weren’t always so good. You want to know about baseball’s Golden Age? Well, let me tell you this: You’re living in it right now. Yeah. Today.” — Buck O’Neil, New Jersey Star-Ledger GH: Isn’t it sad that the Golden Age of baseball is now, when the Royals are suffering through their…
The Royals rank near the bottom in virtually every offensive category in the American League this season. The baseball players’ union is threatening to strike and kill what’s left of America’s pastime. David Glass wants $150 million to upgrade Kauffman Stadium so he can increase his revenue and allow Allard Baird to overpay more free-agent castoffs like Chuck Knoblauch and…
During the past decade, the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival has grown from one play that ran for two weeks to a summer staple offering two plays for four weeks. Along the way, Shakespeare purists have found fault with a high-tech Measure for Measure and a decadent Macbeth (in which one of the witches was still in elementary school)….
“Anguished Scream (for Vengeance),” the third track on Susperia’s Vindication, neatly summarizes the Norwegian death-metal supergroup’s approach to music-making. Susperia is quite anguished and screams about it at length on its sophomore effort. And while these five haunted-house fashion rejects certainly rawk with bludgeoning conviction, they also do so without imagination. Oh, there’s heaps of demonic vocal sermonizing, scalloped-fret finger-tapping…
If you were listening to Ian Hunter and Lou Reed in the mid-’70s, it’s enormously significant to hear Alejandro Escovedo cover Mott the Hoople’s “I Wish I Was Your Mother,” Hunter’s “Irene Wilde,” Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” and Reed’s “Street Hassle.” These choices reveal an intimacy with the albums that would prefigure the punk/new wave insurgency of which Escovedo…
Known for swanky costumes reminiscent of vintage B-52s and beneath-the-bunker rock that echoes X in its glory days, the Selby Tigers have made plenty of noise in only a few years together. The outfit’s 3-D sound juxtaposes angular guitar clatter and gum-snapping backbeats with the sassy sandpaper pipes of Arzu “D2” Gokcen and hubbie Nathan Grumdahl’s relatively tamer voice. While…
When one of the most important bands in the history of both rap and industrial music decides to return to the fundamentals, it’s time to listen. The players behind the Sugarhill Gang, Afrika Bambaata, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and Tackhead have focused on guitarist Skip “Little Axe” McDonald’s blues roots twice before, with 1995’s The House That Wolf…
No Use for a Name might become a household name after all. Formed in 1987, the San Jose, California, quartet struggled through numerous lineup shifts and record-company changes before landing on Fat Wreck Chords a few years back. The group’s numerous near-misses might explain why it has opted to issue its most unabashedly commercial effort to date. Rock Bottom is…
Opening with what sounds vaguely like a Timbaland remix of “I Am the Walrus” and ending with something like a Wu-Tang-style reimagining of “Dear Prudence,” Constant Elevation promises more than the typical DJ compilation. Yet for all its imaginative approaches, it’s the collection’s clarity of vision that distinguishes it from most turntablist efforts. Constant Elevation flashes back to 1989, right…
Jon Dee Graham has spent the past half decade quietly assembling a body of songs and recorded work as varied, vivid and distinctive as any you could name. A onetime member of the Texas roots-rock band True Believers and a former sideman to John Doe, Graham is now touring behind his latest effort, Hooray for the Moon, an album that…
Hadden Sayers, the frontman of a blues power trio comfortable with both the fiery side of Stevie Ray and the languid soul of Delbert McClinton, is in that “in-between” blues zone. His music works anywhere, from the smokiest roadhouse to the smokiest coffee house. With his live surf-guitar medleys and Texas-tested ax work (he’s from Houston, after all), Sayers can…
Unfortunately We’re Not Robots, the new full-length from Sin City’s favorite metal trio Curl Up and Die, would instantly convince just about any listener that these instrumentally inclined ogres were nothing more than desert-baked Hessians. Mike Minnick’s unintelligible vocals and the group’s distorted guitars and drums hearken back to grindcore’s glory days. But the blend of dry wit and social…
Keepers of the Carpet might be the most successful band ever to have originated in an abandoned hog barn. In 1996, the quartet started jamming at bassist Zack Smith’s parents’ farm in northern Iowa, developing its fuzzed-out goofball nerd-rock sound. At Californo’s, it’ll be more goof than fuzz; the venue hosts acoustic Storytellers-type performances. There’s no need to explain…
