When the stripper walks onto the stage, “Olly” Oliver knows what to do. Other guys gawk. Some hoot. And when that 5-foot-10-inch blonde unzips her denim one-piece, for some of them time probably stops altogether. Not for Olly. For Olly, the passage of time must remain rhythmic, a continuous four beats per measure. Olly does what he always does:…
Kansas City had the best balls. The small ones were perfectly round, like marbles, only they were made of steel. The big ones were the largest in the United States, up to 5-1/2 inches in diameter and weighing 26 pounds. Copper and gold miners threw Kansas City’s balls into giant tumblers with ore blasted from mountains in Utah and…
With the mayoral election over, we felt it was our civic duty to pay a visit to Stanford & Son’s in Westport. More specifically, we were curious to visit Studio 504, the club attached to it. All we really knew was that whenever we walked by on weekend nights, there was always a huge line. That, and it seemed to…
Since it’s the largest city in Johnson County, Overland Park has always been a magnet for new restaurants — like the second Golden Ox location, on Metcalf (see review). Neighboring Shawnee is an older town, but it’s never had much allure as a dining destination — even though it has lots of chain restaurants and the weirdly retro Leona Yarbrough….
Kansas City’s steak joints — the famous ones — have such distinctive styles that it’s easier to describe them to folks who haven’t tried them yet by giving each restaurant recognizable human identities. The Capital Grille, for example, is a well-dressed Republican snob. Ruth’s Chris Steak House gives the impression of a showy chorus girl who inherited lots of money….
Twyla Tharp is 61. She has choreographed for classical ballet companies — the prestigious American Ballet Theatre in particular, where she collaborated with Mikhail Baryshnikov — but she’s also ventured outside the classical dance world, working on movies like Hair and Ragtime in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Later, she created a landmark piece for the BBC in which…
Thursday, April 3, 2003 The trouble with romance these days is that no one is ever stealing away for a moment of privacy. In Shakespeare’s time, any couple worth reading about was forever slinking in and out of the shadows, out of necessity or just as a fun pastime. Alas, today there are few roadblocks to intimacy. Balconies were…
For many teen-agers, the prom is one of those make-or-break experiences, like getting drunk for the first time or finally having sex. For most high schoolers, to go or not to go is the question. For others, like one cynical lad in Hali Lee and Peter von Zeigesar’s terrific documentary Prom Night in Kansas City, the ritual represents “all…
March 21, 2003—though he never knew the precise date, it was the very day Nile Southern had been waiting for longer than he cared to remember. On that day, Southern went into the Chelsea Mini-Storage facility on Manhattan’s West Side, grabbed the largest dolly he could find—it looked like a small boat with wheels—and began piling box on top of…
Thrift stores and attics aren’t the only places to find antique kitsch anymore. Happy housewives and other aged cultural icons have been popping up in contemporary art for quite some time now — it’s easy for disenchanted 21st-century audiences to get a quick laugh out of the hunky-dory images of yesteryear. By this point, however — especially as ad agencies…
Justin Harris and Luke Solomon have witnessed (and created) much dance-music history, both in DJ booths worldwide and in studios as producers. More so than most of house music’s observers and participants, the two Brits have legit reasons for airing their scathing views of the genre’s status woe. The Man Who Lived Underground lambastes dance music’s blandness and creative stagnation…
Tim Hecker’s third album under his own name solidifies his position as one of the world’s finest ambient-music producers. Allegedly a concept album about Hecker’s 1996 trip to Honduras, the disc embodies the innovative spirit of digital tone-sculpting heard on Oval’s 94Diskont and Fennesz’ Endless Summer. Hecker further explores the shattered-mosaic principle that informs those two classics while also mirroring…
Somewhere between Sugar Ray’s pasty-faced Afro puffs and Crazy Town’s tighty-whitey posing lies Hot Action Cop. Head HAC Rob Werthner relocated from New York to Nashville, ostensibly to delve into the country music capital’s allegedly thriving hip-hop scene. As a rapper, however, Werthner sounds like he’s spent most of his time in Hollywood, peppering his pedestrian mic attempts with tall…
Mush Records continues its head-scratching trajectory with Slanguage, a uniquely odd document from L.A.’s hip-hop underground. These dudes — fixtures on the city’s thriving subterranean scene — must’ve followed Spacemen 3’s ethos of taking drugs to make music for people to take drugs to, because Slanguage is a devious derangement of hip-hop’s usual tropes. AWOL One’s voice is a sandpapery…
Along with the Sex Pistols and the Clash, Buzzcocks essentially invented British-style punk rock. The Manchester quartet lacked its peers’ political worldview, relying on high-octane energy to mold brilliant pop songs that — for better or worse — helped pioneer the now-waning Sum Green-182 movement. Dispirited by ongoing record-company battles, the group split in 1981 at the height of its…
What do Ronnie James Dio, John Denver and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs have in common? Yup, you guessed it: All have been the subject of tribute albums, one of rock’s most common and least interesting pastimes. At least the Ramones deserve a sonic homage, though this one turns out to be a total embarrassment. Rob Zombie (whose half-speed,…
Booming cannons, English schoolboy uniforms, Gibson SGs, American thighs — these are the ingredients of an AC/DC concert. Recorded at various dates on the band’s 1990-’91 tour, Live captures a past-its-prime band still delivering the goods like rock’s own UPS. No metal fan can deny the King-Kong power and raw-boned energy that the group unleashes, both in the studio and…
Seems we’ve reached an impasse in hip-hop’s never-ending navel-gazing; the complaints about the genre’s clichés have become every bit as hoary and tired as the clichés themselves. Yes, hip-hop wallows in senseless violence, misogyny and bigotry, we know that. Yes, yes, it obsesses over money and guns and sex, and, uh, money. It does all of those things — except,…
Listen blind to a few tracks from the gorgeous Son, and some questions spring to mind. Like, “Did Elliott Smith release a new album?” And, “Hey, when did he go back to Kill Rock Stars?” And, “Wow, who’s the lady with the pretty voice he’s got singing with him?” The punch line is that Smith hasn’t put out a new…
Now that nü metal is öld news, it’ll be interesting to watch the timid re-emergence of the platinum-planked wonderboys who defined the genre. Limp Bizkit and Deftones are due for new releases in the coming months, and if Korn’s last record was any indication, tough times lie ahead for mook rock. Papa Roach, which crowd-surfed all the way to triple-platinum…
The Village Voice’s Robert Christgau just included the new Aislers Set (pictured) disc, How I Learned to Write Backwards, among his Consumer Guide duds, so it’s gotta be good. At barely more than half an hour, it sure isn’t long. But the group’s minimalist approach never feels unnecessarily brief, and leader Amy Linton’s songs color outside the lines of…
Bright Eyes is a hypersensitive singer/songwriter who has mastered the musical equivalent of nervous breakdowns. He’s a decongested Bob Dylan who basically cries on key. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, be very sure never to check out Wolf Eyes by mistake. This trio’s glass-shredding output forcefully jerks tears instead of shedding them. On its more than forty…
It makes sense that Big Smith’s latest effort, Gig, is a double-live CD, because this is one of those bands that you just have to see live to understand. By the end of its shows, when the gospel singalongs kick in, there’s something holy going on — something big enough to be audible on a live recording. On the surface,…
As if the historic first-time combination of delicious real berries with nutritious-breakfast cornerstone Cheerios together in a box for groggy morning ease wasn’t enough, now there’s yet another reason to love new Berry Burst Cheerios. That reason is a shot at singing live with David Cassidy, a most-likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Would-be dueters must write fruit-and-cereal-related lyrics to the tune of…
