They were loud once, deafeningly so—and dumbingly so, if such a thing is possible. They wore skins of leather stuffed with cucumbers of foil, towered over dwarves who danced around a Stonehenge made of pebbles, sang about women who fit like flesh tuxedos and explored the majesty of rock and the mystery of roll. These men, sitting here on…
The Coterie Theatre’s last nostalgic trip to the ABC Saturday morning cartoon shorts known as Schoolhouse Rock brought a certain panache to the elementary-school lesson plan. Phonics, grammar and mathematics aren’t exactly riveting, but directors Ron Megee and Molly Jessup ignored that fact completely. The duo returns with Schoolhouse Rock Live Too!, proving yet again that conjunctions and multiplication…
On Friday night at the Old Post Office Gallery, twelve college students will celebrate the first issue of Vault Eleven, a magazine they’ve spent two semesters creating. Although there will be plenty of music, food and beer, something will be missing from the magazine release party: the magazine. Before 20,000 issues of the 64-page, full-color glossy can roll off the…
Fifteen-year-old Alana Parrish’s name ought to be spelled out across the marquee of the Folly Theater in the biggest letters money can buy. She’s a superstar. It’s just that no one knows it yet. “I want to be a big actress-singer person,” she says, brushing back her long, black hair. “Because it’s cool. I want to be funny and exciting…
Thursday, April 24, 2003 From a lecture titled “The Motion of Skydivers, Baseballs and Gymnasts,” Kansas Citians with a thirst for sports-related knowledge about bodies in motion can find out all they ever wanted to know. Be warned, though: Answers involve words that have the potential to transport people back to high school science class. Gravitational force. Aerodynamic drag….
Chef Cody Hogan pauses as he chops shallots for fig vinaigrette. “You can tell it’s late in the season,” he announces. Just by the smell of the shallot, Hogan can pretty much tell when this particular member of the small-onion family was picked — and that he’ll need only half of what the recipe calls for. His note-taking students…
Imagine a large, dead Saint Bernard with its bones removed. Then visualize a hefty bellows inserted into it from behind, with a gorilla hopping up and down on it, causing the huge dog’s baglike corpse to twitch spasmodically, wheeze and croak. Voila — meet today’s Nick Nolte. What’s amazing is that even though he makes Chewbacca sound like Charlotte Church,…
When you see a glamorous movie star like Kate Beckinsale tying back her hair and wearing glasses, it’s surefire shorthand that she’s an uptight soul. But just in case you aren’t familiar with all the usual signals, writer-director Lisa Cholodenko gives a couple of even more obvious ones in her second feature, Laurel Canyon. As medical grad student Alex,…
Long before this gig as a professional bar hag, the Night Ranger once worked for a company in Boulder, Colorado, that actively supported the brilliant concept of summer hours. We could leave at 3 p.m. on Fridays, and we would head immediately to one of the college town’s many bar decks for happy hour (or FAC, as they called it…
The home of the Boulevard Grill (see review) wasn’t particularly lucky for most of its predecessors. Another Overland Park venue, a few miles south at 7148 West 80th Street, has the same story. For much of the 1960s and ’70s, it was occupied by the home-style John Francis Restaurant. “It was the place for Johnson County power brokers and bigwigs…
I had an epiphany while eating a fat, greasy onion ring at the Boulevard Grill. I was dipping that puffy, fried bangle into a white cup filled with a slightly pink sauce of melted cheese and chorizo sausage when I said to myself, “I’m really too fucking old to be pulling off this stunt. Beer-battered onion rings and cheese…
Although you’d have a right to be wary of this compilation’s generic title and faux-primitive graphics, you could do worse when the time comes to check out drumcentric CD surveys. (And you know that time will inevitably come.) Mondo Beat 2 rounds up popular stickmen such as Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones), Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead) and Airto Moreira (Miles Davis,…
Longtime Ozzy Osbourne sidekick Zakk Wylde probably wishes he hadn’t hooked up with the Prince of Darkness at the height of the ’80s hair-metal explosion, when names like Rikki Rockett were all the rage. Now that Wylde has made the transformation from Sunset Strip wanna-be to bearded, burly rocker, he probably hates introducing himself by his hair-metal moniker. But that’s…
Selling four million copies of your full-length major-label debut in nine weeks can mean only one thing: Time to milk the cash cow. At three tracks, 50 Cent’s The New Breed is light on music, but the accompanying DVD includes two hours of goodies that hard-core fans won’t want to miss. In addition to videos for his popular tunes (“In…
Other than plugging in and rocking out, the most surprising thing acoustic instrumental duo Linda Thomas and Dan DeLancey could do after twenty years would be to add vocals. On the aptly named A Turning Point, they’ve done just that, with Thomas (on hammered dulcimer and piano) and DeLancey (on flatpick guitar and banjo) arranging folk and bluegrass standards from…
Cory Branan is quick to own up to his influences, which somehow makes the leap from his death-metal/Black Sabbath-cover-band beginnings to his wide-eyed discovery of Leonard Cohen seem logical. Take the attitude of the former with the contemplative regard of the latter, and Branan’s work makes perfect sense. The real question is how the 27-year-old Memphis, Tennessee, upstart covered such…
After Autechre’s Sean Booth and Rob Brown issued Confield in 2001, many fans wondered if the British duo had lost its mind in a labyrinth of software plug-ins and hallucinogens. That disc and its follow-up, 2002’s Gantz Graf, set new standards in anti-social digital-sound splatter and polarized the electronic-music community. The scuttlebutt: Either the lads were executing an elaborate…
Even though she works in a genre known as commercial country, it’s disconcerting at first to hear Deana Carter fill her new disc, I’m Just A Girl, with so much product placement. She name-checks Levi’s, Coca-Cola and Miller Lite, not to mention Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen tunes, but the kicker comes on the title track, when she sings…
If its pop-punk predecessors offer any indication, Sum 41 has a few years left to live the good life. With irresistible hooks and a mean rhythm section that belies its nice-guy Canadian ‘tude, Sum 41 is arguably the most engaging of the radio-friendly punk acts that arrived around the turn of the century. Success, age and other factors notwithstanding, the…
Thomas Mapfumo, the “Lion of Zimbabwe,” was born in 1945 as part of the Shona culture in what was then white Rhodesia. From that country, torn by oppression since his birth, Mapfumo has been spreading his sometimes eerily still, sometimes pounding chimurenga (the Shona word for struggle) music around the world. Mapfumo’s songs build on his gently gruff voice, chiming…
Oprah Winfrey beware: There’s a new book club in town. Granted, the talk-show mogul probably won’t have to sweat the competition created by Carrie Newcomer’s online reading group, which was designed to connect the folk singer’s audience with literary works that influenced her songwriting. On the other hand, Newcomer bills herself as an “activist, mother and teacher,” a résumé…
Too often, the words local musician trigger an automatic value judgment on merit and talent. They can’t be any good if they’re still local, right? And if they are good, what the hell are they doing here? Singer-songwriter Gary Kirkland pummels such snobbery with a one-two punch of talent and down-home dedication. Kirkland, who cut his first album, As Is,…
When rock snobs snipe at DJs, they often point to the turntablists’ lack of classical training. “Without working knowledge of chords, scale and theory, how can you call yourself a musician?” scoff the bar-band-backing bullies. Lucien Foort derails that argument, thanks to the orchestral training that’s readily available to schoolchildren in countries such as Holland, his homeland. He spent eight…
One of the most gifted melodic improvisationalists ever to pick up a saxophone, James Moody remains both highly respected by his peers and highly lauded by jazz aficionados. Known primarily for his long-standing association with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and smaller side projects, Moody also knows how to strike all the right chords as a bandleader and a solo artist….
