Occasionally, people will enter the Mountain Music Shoppe without any concept of its mission, having discovered it in the phone book or spotted it while cruising down Johnson Drive in Shawnee. They’ll march to the counter and ask for clarinet reeds, or a piano bench or drum sticks. “We don’t carry that,” they’ll be told. They’ll wonder: What kind of…
It’s two nights before the Wild Flowers open for the British duo Floetry at the Epicurean: Phase II club at 85th Street and Troost. Ten blocks up the road from that venue, Kate Hightshoe and Somilia Smith rehearse in a nondescript studio that reeks of fresh paint. It’s so newly renovated that the general contractors answer the bell and open…
One of the keys to Kathleen Edwards’ sudden success is the way her tales of busted-up love could have come from almost anywhere. For that matter, so could her album art. The cover photo of her debut disc, Failer, shows Edwards slumped against the front of a well-worn truck, its hood up, her chin down. It captures a specific…
Not everyone can make it to the French Riviera for the glitz and glamour of Cannes, but the ingeniously titled Kan Film Festival gives local filmmakers their own chance to shine. Now in its eleventh year, the competition for Kansas and Missouri residents or students (with an extra category for professionals working nationally) showcases films in several genres, including drama…
If grown-ups were meant to watch Walt Disney cartoons, God would have kept us all in the third grade for two or three decades. Still, somebody has to drive the SUV when the Disney folk decide to lure the little ones to the multiplex, and as long as the actual movie experience is more pleasant than, say, having the Marquis…
It was Friday, May 2 — this month’s First Friday. More than 300 people were packed into the Your Face gallery at 17th and Madison, just a few blocks from the more populated art-opening parties around 20th and Baltimore. At Your Face, the Ssion — a band whose act involves punk music, performance art, video animation and something akin to…
It’s late on a Friday night. More than twenty cars are parked beneath the red and blue lights of the Lewis and Clark Memorial statue in Case Park at the northwest edge of downtown. White warning beacons blink against the dark sky as planes descend toward the downtown airport while, high on the bluff, pickup trucks bump Latin music…
“What kind of people ride buses? Kids and poor people.” James Ellroy, the author and former Kansas City resident, stands in front of a filmmaker on a city bus that stops and starts and farts its way through downtown Los Angeles with all the unromantic herk and jerk of metro buses everywhere. “I have wheels of my own now, so…
OK, we might have been a little crude last week when we wished that bachelor at the Clarette Club a horrible wedding night and called his man tribe a bunch of Baldy McBalds (“G Hits the Spot,” May 15). But why in the world do these guys think it’s appropriate to come up to a girl — a complete stranger…
God knows I hate missing a great meal and a lively time (which don’t necessarily go hand in hand), so I spent one morning kicking myself after my acerbic friend Ned — who rarely has anything good to say about anything or anyone — called me, oozing with praise. “Darling, it was the best dinner I’ve ever had in my…
I’m always drawn to unusual words on a menu. Typically, they’re misspellings, like the turdle soup I once saw (but didn’t order, just in case the spelling was correct) listed in a Florida restaurant. Ditto for French-fried skimps, chocolate molt and hot-and-sour slop. But one can never assume a word is incorrectly spelled, particularly at an ethnic restaurant, where…
FRI 5/23 Luqman Hamza, heralded by many as the classiest singer-pianist in town, performs from 8:30 to 12:30 tonight at the Blue Room at 18th and Vine. His quartet, which makes regular appearances at both the Club at Plaza III and the Blue Room, brings an element of smoothness to the venue as the preeminent balladeer of Kansas City. Endless…
WED 5/22 Tango lovers — folks who love the tango and lovers who tango together — congregate every Wednesday night at Fedora’s Club 210 (210 West 47th Street). At 7 p.m., novices take free lessons on the Argentinean brand of the saucy dance. The milonga, or open dance, begins at 8, as old pros start across the floor with…
MON- FRI The Hoofed Animal Enclosure at Fleming Park (two miles east of I-470 on Woods Chapel Road) is home to bison, elk and white-tailed deer as well as a whole bunch of native grass. Although the park’s Native Animal Safari Tours aren’t quite as daring as a journey into the African bush, it’s pretty cool to have a staring…
DAILY If you’re in search of a cure for everyday anxiety, you could do a lot worse than visiting the Bullet Hole and firing off a few boxes of hot lead. The giant log cabin that houses the Bullet Hole sits in a quaint suburban neighborhood, the serenity of which is broken only by the pops of handguns being fired….
MON-SAT In the tradition of Holbein the Elder, Holbein the Younger and Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles comes German-born painter and unlikely exponent of the American low desert Waltraud von Schwarzbek. The German-born artist studied in Munich and began her career as an illustrator for United Artists, working on posters advertising the European releases of The Great Escape and Dr….
On the Kansas City Bicycle Club’s Double Nickel ride through Jamesport, Missouri, cycling enthusiasts have discovered that bicycles are the perfect mode of transportation for traveling through Amish country. “It’s amazing when you’re riding and you can look at the houses, and there are no telephone lines,” says Heather Jordan, who owns the Wheel Cyclery and is vice president of…
Thursday, May 22, 2003 People who missed part of the Las Vegas season of The Real World, in which the “Sizzling Seven” lived in Sin City, can make up for lost time when three cast members swing through town to bartend at Have a Nice Day Café (4115 Mill Street) beginning at 10 tonight. Guys get to compete for the…
Brian Nold is building a boat out of barrels, Pepsi containers, four-by-fours and a mast. He’ll use the Hillbilly Hobi Cat for his second river adventure along the Missouri. “Basically, it’s a floating garbage pile,” Nold says. He isn’t worried about whether it will get him where he wants to go; he’s just glad he doesn’t have to worry about…
Like proverbial apples, twigs don’t fall far from the family tree. Traits and tics both good and bad get passed down generation after generation, like heirlooms with chromosomes. In the American Heartland Theatre’s production of George Furth’s Twigs, a cranky old lady and her three grown daughters prove that the adage “like mother, like daughter” has life beyond its roots…
I should have been careful what I wished for. After several similarly patterned cabaret shows, Quality Hill has finally staged a real musical — and the result is as hip and up-to-date as tie-dye. Watching the five dizzyingly talented actresses in A … My Name Will Always Be Alice tear into this fluffy and musty material is a bit like…
One has to be skeptical about the merits of a performance-art troupe that plays Las Vegas, frequently appears on The Tonight Show and garners gushing reviews from USA Today and Time. Now, Blue Man Group might be an awesome spectacle in the azure-tinted flesh, but I can judge them only on the music and video encoded on The Complex. Blue…
Detroit’s Adult — Nicoloa Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller — has been plying its driving synth rock for six years. The duo’s determination has been rewarded: The zeitgeist finally has come around to welcoming Adult’s chilly evocations of postindustrial electro, for which its hometown provides the ideal backdrop. Kuperus’ detached monotone is an understandable reaction to the Motor City’s bombed-out…
Best known as the savants who flash the visuals behind Coldcut’s live performances and craft the eye candy for that legendary duo’s CD-ROMs, Hexstatic’s members also create their own perverse brand of funk. With Listen and Learn, the second installment of Coldcut’s Solid Steel mix series, Robin Brunson and Stuart Warren Hill prove they’re able DJs, too, albeit on CD…
