There’s not much in the way of memories — or tableware — left at 904 Westport Road to remind visitors that this midtown storefront was once the Stolen Grill Restaurant. Several of the remaining tables have been pushed together to serve as desks for the current tenants: future restaurateurs Paul Boesche, 36, and Jim Crandall, 25. Boesche (who attended a…
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, Rose Rudi, the assistant manager at Stephenson’s Old Apple Farm Restaurant, had booked more than 1,200 dinner reservations for November 28. She was expecting a hundred more. And why not? If one restaurant in Kansas City captures the robust flavors of early pioneer cooking and a décor that’s as all-American as Main Street at Disneyland,…
From the street, Armando Diaz’s paintings look pleasant. They appear to be happy urban landscapes — outlines of buildings filled in with brightly colored stripes — with patterns of blues, greens and grays over here, reds and fuchsias over there. Up close, however, something else emerges from the enticingly cool patterns. In each painting, an armed military figure is…
A traveling exhibit spotlighting retro visions of the future seems like a natural match for a big city. In Kansas City, pockets of ironic hipsters would appreciate the kitsch value of such a spectacle. That’s why it’s a bit of a surprise that Yesterday’s Tomorrows is on display in Atchison, Kansas. But Yesterday’s Tomorrows is part of the Smithsonian’s…
University of Missouri-Kansas City basketball is as foreign to most area residents as the school’s kangaroo mascot is to the streets of Kansas City. The ‘Roos’ average attendance last season was 3,549 inside downtown’s Municipal Auditorium, which can hold nearly three times that many people. This means that a lot of area basketball fans have yet to see Michael Watson,…
The Coterie Theatre’s latest (and last) dip into the Little House on the Prairie canon takes a different tack from its previous approach, which involved adaptations of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. A Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas is based on the author’s life, as if the books themselves had been scraped clean of everything usable. The cow apparently stopped giving…
As a general rule, artists on tribute albums either hew too closely to their inspirations or louse up perfectly good songs in the name of artistic adventure. Red Hot + Riot, a new homage to Nigerian musical pioneer Fela Kuti that pairs progressive American rappers and soul singers with a stellar crew of world-music stars, tends toward the first pitfall….
By the time the Rolling Stones fled original label ABKCO, following 1969’s Let It Bleed, the group had evolved from an ignored quintet of reverent Chicago-blues interpreters to a homemade-riff-fueled flying wedge that had vanquished its British Invasion brethren and outlasted the Beatles. Along the way, the Stones made three albums no collection should be without (Bleed, Beggars Banquet…
Taking the singer-free route hasn’t made Joe Satriani a household name, but every guitarist on the planet knows him well. Satch first found fame as instructor to ax-wielding superstars such as Steve Vai and Metallica’s Kirk Hammett. One of the numerous Eddie Van Halen clones of the ’80s, Satriani accomplished the one thing his Floyd-Rose-happy peers didn’t: evolution. Satriani’s primordial…
At a recent show here, Jon Dee Graham, still stinging from what he described as a “soul boiling” gig in Lawrence, entertained his followers (and himself, it seemed) with the kind of big, sweet rock and roll nobody plays anymore. Graham wears his past lives as a former True Believers member and touring guitarist (John Doe, Kelly Willis) comfortably, but…
Stephen Ashbrook is to Tempe, Arizona, what Jeff Black is to Kansas City — a man whose songwriting talents took him to the heights of acoustic music, but who had to leave his hometown to pursue his music (and a little mountain climbing). Ashbrook’s muse took him to Portland, Oregon, where his latest, American B-Sides, has gained a steadily broader…
Laptop techno isn’t normally a genre that produces thrilling live performances. In fact, it’s usually associated with grad students who hit a few buttons on their iMacs and unleash a series of bleeps, modem noises and other abstract sounds. But few performers of any style work harder to entertain you than Cex. And if you don’t feel like dancing to…
Drop the needle on the Explosion’s Flash Flash Flash, a long-player in name only that speeds through 14 songs in 28 minutes, and you’ll initiate a serious late-’70s flashback by way of the Buzzcocks and Stiff Little Fingers. Getting together circa 1998 in Boston, the punk rockers put together a six-song demo that eventually became their self-titled debut in March…
Rumors surrounding the demise of the Last of the V8s have been greatly exaggerated. While local gossip mills have been buzzing about the band’s whereabouts, the group has kept busy touring the left half of the country, where it has built a sizable audience. Following the departure of guitarist Steve Murphy earlier this year, the group is now a quartet,…
Coalesce might go down in local music history as the band that refused to die. But even though the on-again-off-again quartet has broken up more times than a cell phone call from Jupiter, fans of thoughtful hardcore don’t mind waiting out the downtimes. Coalesce’s lethal combination of assault-and-battery guitar clatter and Sean Ingram’s sandpaper roar belie the intelligence that’s…
With so many groups constantly performing with prizes on the line, the area’s music scene can feel like an extended reality show, with hidden cameras tracking rivalries and some trying-too-hard host keeping score between quips. After weeks of preliminary rounds, one such event recently ended with a flourish of superhuman solos, magnificent manes and rumbling rhythms. In front of…
The Human Cropcircles’ very existence might offer one of the strongest testimonies to the vitality of Kansas City’s current hip-hop renaissance. Every movement must have its avant-garde, punching holes in the boundaries to let new ideas into the mix. And the Cropcircles’ music is all about fresh concepts, even if the group is sometimes as puzzling as the wheat-field phenomena…
Equal parts demure grace, fiery passion and refined elegance, Kansas City’s resident diva Ida McBeth has crafted her remarkable gift for interpretation into an art. For 35 years, she has played a vibrant and active role not only in furthering the city’s enduring reputation as a fertile breeding ground for vocalists, but also in preserving its rich musical heritage. Yet…
It’s doubtful Robert Louis Stevenson imagined his Treasure Island populated by cyborgs and scored to Goo Goo Dolls outtakes; and one has to wonder what the author would have made of his characters’ being turned into talking and walking dogs and cats who, gulp, copulate and reproduce mangy hybrids. Far as I recall, there were no galaxy-galloping black holes…
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a novel penned by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem. Nonetheless, the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. After all, someone attempting to make a new Wizard of Oz, for instance, or Gone With…
Blue caller: I’m very disappointed in Casey Logan’s “Screwed by Sprint” (November 21). With businesses everywhere having difficulties due to economical and other reasons, it is a shame that a local company, which still employs many local employees, is the target of bad publicity from a local publication. Shame on Casey Logan and shame on the Pitch. You should be…
Men around town might want to be careful with all that white meat this weekend. Eating meat can seriously damage a guy’s sexual performance. At least that’s the latest outburst from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — though cowtowners might not hear the distressing news. Last week, Viacom officials in Kansas City told PETA that the billboard company…
First a flood struck Rodney Gordon’s business, then a whirlwind. On September 12, the owner of Talkn Headz hair salon walked downstairs to his Talkn Threadz clothing store and found himself shin-deep in water. Outside, a water pipe at the corner of 71st and Prospect had burst and flooded the intersection. After Gordon surveyed the damage downstairs — boxes of…
Shit rolls downhill. “That’s what I tell people,” says Paul Danaher, who was the ninth child in a family of sixteen. “My brothers were tough older brothers.” Amid so many siblings, Danaher learned early to stand up and fight for what was his — his fair share of dinner, his shoes, his dignity. On his first day of kindergarten, one…
