Last week in this space, we touted Angst as the next Puddle of Mudd, proposing a far-fetched scenario in which this local trio rides its unassuming grunge to stardom. Little did “Around Hear” know that an area duo had already followed POM’s formula to the letter, hooking up with a modern metal icon, breaking away from an established Kansas City…
Last month, on a Wednesday night, in the middle of Westport, Californos’ normally peaceful deck was making a joyful ruckus. Hip-hop beats and rhymes, which could be heard from the street, seemed to put a lift in the step of those headed for the club and extra air under the skateboarders gliding down the nearby sidewalk. On the tropically…
Zakk Wylde swears the 2002 Ozzfest isn’t cursed. But Ozzy Osbourne’s longtime guitarist and songwriting partner has seen his fair share of ups and downs in the last several months. First, there was the abrupt departure of the Chris-Cornell-led Rage Against the Machine. (“I guess Chris just said, ‘Go fuck yourselves; I’m outta here,’” Wylde explains diplomatically.) Then, there was…
The poster for Blue Crush is fantastic. It has a great color scheme; actresses Michelle Rodriguez (Resident Evil), Kate Bosworth (Remember the Titans) and Sanoe Lake (a professional model and surfer making her film debut) look as good as they’ve ever looked grasping their long, hard boards; and, yeah, they’re wearing almost nothing. It was probably inevitable that the movie…
Like George Clooney says in Ocean’s Eleven, do the math: four Canon XL1 digital cameras, one dual 800 MHz Power Mac G4, editing software Final Cut Pro 3, eighteen shooting days, a $2 million budget, one Best Director Oscar-winner and nine high-profile actors (among them Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, David Duchovny, Catherine Keener and David Hyde Pierce) who drove…
Word Pay West Side sorry: Thank you for Allie Johnson’s article regarding the West Side community center (“All Wet,” August 8). It is my hope that more awareness will bring solutions to the many problems that are there. Unfortunately, however, the cover illustration headline was very derogatory to Latinos. Why would you use the word “wet” when “wetback” is a…
On election night, it felt as if the only white folks in all of Kansas City, Kansas, were the three grimy hookers sitting on the Bethany Park sign on Central Avenue — and the four oily lawyers standing in front of a few hundred angry property owners at Memorial Hall downtown. “Let them build a casino!” the mob shouted at…
An officer’s cap, an 11-inch dagger, three military medals and an armband. It is an unremarkable collection of war artifacts except that they bear the broken black cross of Hitler’s Germany, the swastika. And the fact that they were found in the possession of the Missouri National Guard’s “ethics advisor.” Lieutenant Colonel John Keller has served as staff judge advocate…
On the first weekend in August, the listless late-night air in Westport finally exploded. Movement is always the first sign of trouble, and it started around 2:30 Sunday morning when a few cops, standing around on Westport Road between Mill Street and Pennsylvania, heard a message on their radios and took off toward America’s Pub to break up a shouting…
I was excited by recent news that the 75-year-old President Hotel was slated for renovation. The development plans called for the hotel at 14th and Baltimore to include restored versions of the Drum Room restaurant and lounge as well as the famous Aztec Room, the hotel’s posh meeting room. Last seen intact in the 1990 film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,…
The first time I visited Paris, I acted like a high-strung puppy trailing my worldly and sophisticated friend Rita. I was a glutton for every sensual experience I could get my hands on (food, wine, pastries, Gitanes) or around (I was as promiscuous as the poet Paul Verlaine had been a century earlier). Rita cared only for shopping. During…
Kansas City’s most famous female exports might be women like Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford and Dee Wallace Stone. But has everyone forgotten Betty Jean, Linda Kay and Margy Paige? What about Betty Rose? Only a vintage-clothing collector would be familiar with these Betties, Lindas and Margies, whose labels used to be sewn into ready-made fashions. Kansas City’s garment trade was…
Jennifer Osborne, now in her midtwenties, is learning to do flips. Did she ever try them as a kid? “Nohoho,” she says. “And I am too old to be starting, but I’m working up to that point.” For the past five years, Osborne has been practicing capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that looks more like dancing than fighting. Osborne says…
A press pass, reporter-turned-novelist Gregory McDonald once said, is good for one thing: It allows the journalist to ask very smart people very stupid questions. Certainly, that’s how it feels after this 45-minute drive from downtown Dallas to the Allen home of Stan Liebowitz, professor of economics at the University of Texas at Dallas and a very smart man long…
“I was looking forward to seeing Marc Boerigter. But after he had that appendectomy, that’s probably not going to happen this camp. I like to see tall white receivers that are fast. I like to see things like that that you don’t see too often.” — Danyelle Sargent, the new reporter for Metro Sports, WHB 810 GH: Sargent appears unafraid…
In a season when the Royals have lost 60 percent of their games and fan enthusiasm has dropped lower than man-on-the-street interest in Bistate II, pumped-up fans are few and far between — up to 13,000 miles, as it turns out. Yoko Yamashita, an assistant Buddhist priestess since age fifteen, likes the team enough to have traveled from her home…
On this compilation of international hits, mixmaster Steven Last uses a hip-hop pulse as his anchor. Last seems fully aware that the music born on the streets of Philly and the South Bronx already has influenced the entire world and remains a key to bringing that world together. Last’s most extreme juxtapositions are his best. “Like an Angel,” a simultaneously…
Chicago’s Screeching Weasel spent more than a decade trying to convince its underground audience how much the world sucked. After the group disbanded for the umpteenth time last year, primary songwriter Ben Weasel seems to have had a spiritual awakening of sorts, as evidenced on his full-length solo debut. Like SW’s hook-a-minute ditties, Weasel’s songs are abrupt and infectious, barely…
It’s too perfect that Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen’s label backs this big-screen-ready project: four beautiful Latin women who sing street-savvy pop like vocally enhanced versions of J-Lo. Unfortunately, in this case, four times the talent means at least four times the problem. Great pop requires more than simply a pretty package, but that’s all For All Time delivers. Soluna sings…
Though Deerhoof’s latest release is bereft of brass, the aptly titled Reveille evokes the kind of emotion induced by a bugle call at sunrise: You might appreciate the sentiment, but the jolting nature of the noise leaves you feeling edgy. At times, listening to the San Francisco band’s fourth album is like laboring through a short story that shirks all…
Germany has always had a dysfunctional relationship with rock music. The country that once deported the Beatles later kept Falco and the Scorpions. Though the Scorps aren’t rocking many hurricanes these days, Germany’s appetite for ’80s power metal hasn’t abated one squealing, screeching lick, as evidenced by the fifth full-length from native sons Iron Savior. Red is a full-blown sci-fi…
On Mary Timony’s solo debut, Mountains, the former Helium frontperson flitted so far into her enchanted forest that many listeners got lost in the mist. On The Golden Dove, she considerately leaves some bread crumbs to mark her trail — even as she winds through a lyrical menagerie of peacocks, owls, lambs and tigers. Timony first showcased her fantasy side…
Try again is one of the most complicated phrases in English. It often pops up in banal situations, even in the infuriatingly false comforts of an electronic voice informing us that all circuits are busy or that we have not, in fact, won any jackpots. Those two little words might be all the c omfort a struggling, tearful child needs…
When a band’s name focuses on a single member, it seems silly to carry on under the same moniker in that performer’s absence, even if the rest of the group is perfectly capable of writing its own material. So after a three-day send-off, Mr. Marco’s V7 will hibernate until its guitarist, Marco Pascolini, returns from Washington, D.C., during the winter…
