SAT 5/3 Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto contains one of the best-known arias of all time, “La Donna e Mobile.” The pompous tune is one of the few bits of opera that would sound familiar to just about anyone, thanks to its use in pasta-sauce commercials and at fancy Italian restaurants.It’s sung in the opening act by the Duke, a womanizer who…
SUN 5/4 On Sundays from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. at Joe D’s (1815 West 39th Street), musicians pair up with painters for an unusual kind of live performance. The idea came from Ray Narbaitz (of the band Simon Wonder Brown). When the owner of Joe D’s asked him to perform on Sunday nights, Narbaitz decided to use the low-pressure…
FRI 5/2 Paul Mesner Puppets does something a little different with its latest show, giving a nod to the creative genius flourishing among its young fanbase. Page to Stage Productions, a collection of short plays based on seven winning stories submitted by children in the area (and even one in Athens, Greece), goes on at 10 a.m. and 7…
SAT 5/3 In some circles, navigation is actually an organized sport. Orienteering, the art of racing through the wilderness to plot unfamiliar territory, is done around the world on foot, on skis, on mountain bikes and in canoes.The practice, which began in nineteenth-century Scandinavia as a military training tactic, involves craftiness, compasses and detailed maps with symbols for rocks, landforms,…
WED 5/7 Lunchtime is recess for grown-ups, a much-needed break from the daily grind. But how much fun is an hour spent picking up fast food, standing in line at the company cafeteria or mowing down leftovers in a cramped cubicle? Downtown workers have another option. Every Wednesday, the Grand Avenue Temple (205 East 9th Street) presents brown-bag concerts…
Watch out, Dan Savage. The organisms who write to Dr. Tatiana give new meaning to the phrase “getting some tail.” Take “Perplexed in Cloverhill,” the queen bee whose lovers’ genitals literally explode upon ejaculation and plug her up. Or “I Like ‘Em Headless in Lisbon,” a European praying mantis who enjoys coupling much more when she bites off her paramour’s…
Thursday, May 1, 2003 Any profession that has apprentices is pretty badass. And an International Sheet Metal Apprentice Contest? Even more badass. The two-day competition starts today, testing metalheads at sheet-metal drafting, welding and architectural interpretation. Jason Ferguson of Edwardsville, Kansas, represents his home state as well as Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska in the second-year-apprentice division. You may scoff, but…
Kahla Wheeler has always been interested in the healing potential of herbs, but it wasn’t until she left a stable career at Sprint in 1995 that she was able to get in touch with her roots. That year she traveled to New York state and lived in a tent for six months to study with noted herbalist Susun Weed….
He claims to be blacklisted and close to busto. Thirty years in the film biz, with a cult bigger than David Koresh’s and a disemboweled body of work that would make any studio boss blood-red with envy, and still he kvetches in a voice so eerily similar to that of Mel Brooks. The cable networks, which once loved him,…
Monique Maes is on a tear. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the Blue Valley High School senior is standing in a classroom at the Coterie Theatre delivering a blistering, unscripted monologue stemming from her feelings about the war in Iraq. Her sentiments are not fuzzy; she speaks of the insanity that sends a friend — a former Blockbuster clerk only…
With his decade-old work with his sister, the late superstar Selena, A.B. Quintanella made a musical case for the loping cumbia rhythm as a bridge between the West African sounds that shape Latin music and the hip-hop sensibility that flavors pop radio. This, the third studio album from his own group, ups the ante considerably. Collaborations with similarly eclectic innovators…
KC’s Raenaldo “Ensyght” Torres splits the difference between poetry and hip-hop on Quiet Nites, which gyrates between a cappella spoken-word musings and rhythmic raps set to atmospheric backing tracks. A veteran of area slams and open-mic nights, Ensyght’s prose is marinated in local flavors, including references to Bannister Mall and the intersection of Troost and Linwood. Ensyght’s literary leanings mandate…
Can a record be too consistent? If the record is Rosanne Cash’s Rules of Travel, her first fully realized album in a decade, the answer is yes. Producer John Leventhal, Cash’s husband and the Shawn Colvin confederate who guided that singer to a commercial, Grammy-courting sound, sands away what grit remained after Cash’s glossy-but-bossy 1993 effort The Wheel. Leventhal, who…
The Derailers, almost imperceptibly and perhaps unconsciously, have moved from their longtime Buck Owens meridian to an undeniable Lennon/McCartney axis — a move that makes clear how much those icons had in common. With singer Tony Villanueva and guitarist-vocalist Brian Hofeldt still anchoring the group (bass player Ed Adkins and drummer Scott Matthews make up the rhythm section), the band…
Along with the Anticon collective, L.A.’s Mush Records is bringing large doses of head-scratching weirdness to hip-hop’s underground. This label package tour features motormouth raconteurs Busdriver and Radioinactive (as the Weather), stoned free-associator AWOL One, and ethnodelic-dub agitator Andre Afram Asmar, all of whom are supporting strange and fascinating new albums. On The Weather, paranoid-android wordsmiths Busdriver and Radioinactive flow…
In 1999, Eric Johnson (not the Grammy-winning guitar perfectionist or the former Archers of Loaf member) paddled away from his previous outfit, I, Rowboat. After a fortuitous hook-up with Fruit Bats, which had enlisted Johnson to play guitar and banjo, the band released 2001’s Echolocation. Fruit Bats’ lineup now features Johnson, Gillian Lisee and an ever-mutating crew, and its sound…
UK punk legends Slaughter and the Dogs are graduates of the class of 1976, when the Manchester quartet famously opened for the Sex Pistols. Vocalist Wayne Barrett and guitarist Mick Rossi might have gone on to be the Mick and Keith of the Britpunk movement, but the pair’s combustible music making was fueled by equally turbulent offstage behavior. This intraband…
Behold Essex Green, the Elephant 6 band for people who don’t like Elephant 6 bands. Perhaps the most fully realized of all the outfits lumped under that umbrella, Essex Green resurrects the age of psychedelia, unironic cocktail jazz and pure, powerful pop. Its second full-length, this year’s The Long Goodbye, avoids any too-cute pitfalls, sounding more like a lost vintage…
Speculation about Widespread Panic guitarist Michael Houser’s health reached a fever pitch when he stepped out of Widespread Panic’s lineup a few shows after the group’s appearance at the 2002 Bonnaroo Festival. Out of respect for his wishes, Houser’s bandmates remained tight-lipped about his condition. A month after Widespread’s appearance in Kansas City last July, Houser confirmed fan fears with…
Using only a dog-eared copy of “Book Your Own Fucking Life” — Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll magazine’s annual almanac of underground dives and punk-friendly watering holes — Party of Helicopters staked its claim to indie fame in true DIY spirit. The Kent, Ohio-based artcore quartet, which has issued a string of highly touted singles and full-lengths, reaches new heights with…
They used to earn tips delivering cheesy pizzas in Austin, Texas, but now the four members of Riddlin’ Kids are knocking on the front door of the music industry. The Lone Star State punks’ 2002 major-label debut, Hurry Up and Wait, featured a peppy mallcore minihit about heartache (“I Feel Fine”) and a light-speed cover (R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of…
It should be noted (just to get it out of the way) that Pieta Brown is folk-blues singer Greg Brown’s daughter. His influence is audible on her debut CD, especially in her sly, slightly offbeat sense of lyrical humor and in the way she holds on to stray syllables — just a little bit — and lets the big ones…
Stupid calendar. Cinco de Mayo falls on a Monday this year, so for those who really have no business celebrating it in the first place but will still glom onto any holiday involving mass quantities of alcohol, Viva la Fiesta should come as sweet relief. At this Cinco de Mayo-themed pre-emptive party thrown by the O.E. Ellis Society and…
The green-slime-tinted camp-horror-flick blurb projected onto a screen behind the Hurricane’s stage warns of “The world’s most terrifying monster.” The film cuts to an image of President George W. Bush detailing his plans for post-invasion Iraq. The implications aren’t lost on four burly brawlers in the crowd, whose hats identify them as competitors for the College Wrestling Championship crown….
