Although the creative gap between the folkies at the local coffee shop and the cats at the jazz club around the corner can typically be measured in light years, Ani DiFranco can bend the laws of time and space and make that distance seem like a scant few steps. It’s all part of a prolonged progression that’s seen the loud-and-proud…
Combining the mania-inducing power of highly concentrated caffeine with the inhibition-loosening ingredients of lady liquor, the Daily Dose Bar and Coffee House would figure to be an animal house. In reality, though, it’s a mellow hangout (see this week’s Night Ranger). So instead of enlisting Ehren Starks’ soul ‘n’ roll revue the Gadjits, the venue opted for his low-key piano-and-cello…
The dark constellation of singer-songwriters formed by Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and Tom Waits is no place to go poking around if you can’t stand a little self-indulgence. So pomp-averse listeners beware: Crooked Fingers might well get on your nerves. The latest earnest enterprise from former Archers of Loaf singer Eric Bachmann, Red Devil Dawn has its share of apocalyptic…
In the early days of indie rock, there was no greater insult than the dreaded s-word — sellout, not the one an irked Roy Williams occasionally uses in interviews. Bands that bill themselves as classless working stiffs once earned this tag if they signed with major labels, but now they’re lauded as the Rockin’ Hoods of the record industry,…
There’s no doubt about it: Red Elvises are Siberia’s greatest surf-rock band. Granted, the frigid Russian hinterlands probably don’t produce much in the way of hang-ten rockabilly, but the Red Elvises rule anyway. Founding members Igor Yuzov and Oleg Bernov have built an underground following that can’t get enough of the Elvises’ old-school approach to modern music. Though the group…
You gotta love the Onion. A recent headline in the parody paper summed it up succinctly: “Merle Haggard, haggard.” And it’s true that the 66-year-old country-music legend has seen better days, but he’s still as vital and ornery as anyone with a three-decade string of hits has the right to be. The Oakie from Muskogee’s résumé boasts a stint in…
SoundsGood’s 2002 debut wowed listeners with nimble hot-steppers, beat-heavy tongue twisters and jazz-flavored space jams. KC mic-slayer Joe Good and Lawrence producer extraordinaire Miles Bonny showcased an adroit yin-yang chemistry — Good’s brow-furrowed complexities were offset by Bonny’s wry way with a beat. In the ensuing months, SoundsGood has proven to be one of the few area rap outfits…
Some bands just need to be experienced live, and Kinski is almost universally cited as one of those acts. On disc, the Seattle-based group sometimes struggles when shifting between snoring and soaring. It starts with simple melodies, smothers them with blips, bleeps and dizzying distortion, heats the mix to a noisy boil, then lets it simmer and cool before restarting…
As a young jazz player, Bobby Watson was impatient. He couldn’t learn new scales and sounds quickly enough to satisfy his cravings for instant improvement. Between bursts into his brass, he’d angrily exhale, frustrated that he couldn’t find a suitable shortcut to saxophone mastery. After witnessing one such demonstration, Watson mentor and legendary drummer Art Blakey told him, “Bobby, Rome…
It’s been a decade since Uncle Tupelo released its major-label swan song, Anodyne. In the passing years, the Belleville, Illinois, band’s two frontmen — the sullen, grieving and earnest Jay Farrar and the eager, hoarse and earnest Jeff Tweedy — have seen an entire genre, called “alternative country,” emerge in their wake while they’ve each gone on to new projects…
The Duet With David contest rolled into Independence Center on April 5 to celebrate new Berry Burst Cheerios, which combine the traditional life-preserver-shaped cereal with freeze-dried fruit. They come in both Strawberry Berry Burst Cheerios and Triple Berry Berry Burst Cheerios, two more spin-offs for what’s become the Wu-Tang Clan of breakfast foods. Contest entrants are required to write…
Can we please, for the love of God, declare a moratorium on the use of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” in movies? (“We Want the Funk” can go, too.) At the very least, if the plot of the movie in question features an uncool white guy who undergoes a quest for respect, let’s use the Vanilla Ice version. Robbie…
The Harry Potter phenomenon — on the page, in the movies, at the bank — has aroused in publishers and studio heads alike a sudden new appreciation for our children’s needs. These people understand that no consumer is more motivated than a kid in the heat of a craze, so every last one of them is struggling to come up…
Portrait of the artist as a young woman: I enjoyed Deb Hipp’s recent article on Peregrine Honig (“Panty Raider,” April 3). She draws beautifully and has been an asset to the city. However, I would like to speak on my own behalf, as I apparently played a small, though negative, bit part in her rise to notoriety. I am mentioned…
We’re so glad we paid our taxes this week. We’re also thrilled that, thanks to Missouri Senator Kit Bond’s porky influence in Washington, D.C., thousands of Internal Revenue Service employees are moving to the old Post Office at Pershing Road and Main. Kansas City cheerleaders say the 6,000 IRS workers will bring certain salvation for downtown. A couple of thousand…
Few people seemed to notice when Royals pitcher Jason Grimsley took the mound against the Chicago White Sox on March 31. When the announcer intoned Grimsley’s name at the start of the seventh inning, it triggered a few instinctive boos and jarred a few alcohol-addled memories, causing a scattered spell of flashbacks to last year’s ugly labor dispute. But…
She’s in court because her property looks like a junkyard. It had been vacant before she bought it — with its sunken gutters, shoddy paint job, broken windows and boarded doorways — and now codes inspectors finally have someone to hold responsible. The City Hall enforcers drove to the block just west of Troost near Brush Creek and took pictures…
We admit it. One of the first things we do every Friday morning is read the Star’s Preview section. We’re amused by its groan-inducing attempts at hipness, like “Noted Without Comment.” (Note this: It sucks!) We were reminded of this tendency yet again when we read Lauren Chapin’s recent review of Kona Grill. The Star’s food critic proclaimed that “the…
“Rumi?” That’s what my friend Herman asked as we passed the former garage at 3903 Wyoming that once housed the grungy Otto’s Malt Shop. “Isn’t rumi that appetizer made of chicken livers and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon?” No, that’s rumaki, I explained. Rumi was Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), the Persian scholar and poet whose ecstatic, magical writings have never fallen…
Since the economy is so lousy, people who once treated themselves to dinner and a movie are now scrimping and just going to a movie. Or just out to dinner. Or going to dinner and, maybe, renting a movie. Or, in the case of the new Cinzetti’s Italian Market Restaurant, going out to dinner and feeling like they’re in a…
In Pedro Almodovar’s Oscar-winning Talk to Her, a beautiful young dancer lies comatose in a hospital room, entirely dependent on the male nurse who massages her, does her hair and keeps up a flow of conversation. The viewers observe this “relationship” through the sympathetic eyes of a journalist who comes to the hospital when a female bullfighter he’s been courting…
Thursday, April 10, 2003 Like Rod Stewart, Dr. Richard Wiseman (who reads from his new book at Unity Temple on the Plaza at 7 p.m.) wanted to know why some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pain, some guys get all the breaks and some guys do nothing but complain. Unlike Rod Stewart, Wiseman did more…
Banish any images of Britney Spears’ sultry gyrations that come to mind when contemplating belly dancing. In Anya Lahara’s classes, all physiques are embraced — she even encourages students to “let it jiggle.” Her Start Belly Dancing! workshops provide women with an introduction to belly dancing techniques as well as to Lahara’s personal philosophy of femininity. “I hate the self-loathing…
Maybe all you want out of your pop music is a few minutes of escape, a radio-friendly respite from the heavy humdrum of your workaday existence. Maybe you likes to hang with 50 Cent, who survived a few gunshots (and doesn’t let you forget it) to party another day; or maybe you go for a spin with Celine Dion, the…
