Before film audiences ran off to see what would come ambling down the mountain after the release of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, they were basking in the lush, tropical tones emanating from the heart of Havana. During American guitarist Ry Cooder’s journey into the proud history and rich traditions of Cuban music, which produced the Grammy-winning 1997 album The…
Like its Washington, D.C., neighbor Trans Am, El Guapo executes its homages to ’80s electro, synth-pop and postpunk with tongue-in-cheek flair. What’s more, in El Guapo’s clever sonic universe, there’s room for electronics and accordions, for computers and oboes. Further setting El Guapo above its peers, all members sing instantly catchy melodies in unison. Whether creating mock-reggae songs using accordion…
Which lucky lady gets to be wined and dined by Mr. Biggs? Mack daddy is large. Mack daddy aims to take you shopping, girl. Buy you everything. Take you away in a convertible under cherry rain. After a glass of Beaujoulais, he’ll draw your bath. There will be body lotion, bearskins and a fireplace. Then sweet mack daddy will lay…
With the fate of Kansas City’s official jazz and blues festival up for grabs, the Gladstone Chamber of Commerce has brought together a strong and respectable lineup for its annual Summertime Blues Festival. Headlining the Friday night festivities for the two-day event is Austin, Texas, guitarist Chris Duarte. Boasting extensive experience as both a skilled sideman and a capable frontman,…
Kansas City is known for being a crossroads for the urban aesthetics of jazz and the traditional flavor of rural blues. More recently, however, the syncopated sounds emanating from our very own vibrant Hispanic community has found its way into the city’s jazz clubs, infusing the scene with renewed vitality. Fueled by a fiery fusion of jazz, rock, salsa, merengue…
A pupil tired of standing in his mentor’s shadow will eventually assert his independence — or vice versa. British blues master John Mayall has schooled Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac’s Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, and former Rolling Stone Mick Taylor. Now approaching his seventieth birthday, he appears to be taking steps to establish a legacy outside of his work with…
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then the affections of Phish fans must be nearing critical capacity. Yet the fanfare generated by the Vermont quartet’s return from its two-year hiatus has led to unreliable presale ticket lotteries and increased prices, which in turn have left some of the band’s faithful out in the cold. Fortunately, there’s a Boulder, Colorado-based…
Some people will always hate metal: mild-mannered next-door neighbors who hear it wailing through their walls, paranoid literalists who fret about becoming the victims of Satanic rituals, hip-hop fans who rightfully resent riffers who try to rap. Recently, though, the genre’s most public offerings have been hard for anyone to love, even — perhaps especially — hard-core fans. Metallica’s infuriating…
D.C. headbangers who favor Swedish death metal, the members of Darkest Hour have been grinding out gloom-and-doomsday meth-rock for eight years. During this time, the hard-touring outfit has endured the sort of tribulations that somehow always seem to plague seriously scary bands: record company woes, lineup shifts, uncooperative stage gear and audiences that just don’t get it. A few years…
Walter Reed is a man of many pseudonyms (Lord Messiah, Iron Sheik from the Middle East, Chief Chancellor) but it’s the Killah Priest moniker that has earned him the most attention. The Brooklyn-bred MC made his first appearance on Return to the 36 Chambers, the debut solo album from official Wu-Tang Clan crackpot Ol’ Dirty Bastard. In the ensuing…
For a bunch of self-proclaimed media haters, rock stars do a lot of press. They’d probably play a benefit show for, say, Rolling Stone if it were on the brink of bankruptcy, because how else would a nation of readers learn about their political views or witness their transformations from singer-songwriters to scantily clad sex goddesses? However, on the local…
Don’t call it a reunion. That’s the ploy Kiss is always trying to pull. These Danger Bob dates actually open the second leg of the group’s farewell tour. Semantics aside, it’s a gimmick shameless enough to be routinely exploited by Cher, but hey … whatever works. The formerly Lawrence-based band announced its breakup in 1999 and was last seen…
The full-length debut disc by the Stretchmarxxx pays loving tribute to the Brick, where you can see some cute boys at the show and everyone gets laid. When not penning valentines to venues, Camilla Medulla Oblongata and Venus Starr sing about wise guys, green-eyed monsters and starsuckers, their voices alternating between charmingly coy and defiantly bratty. Often they’re both…
With a room whose acoustics magnify every percussive pound and gargantuan riff, the Hurricane might be the perfect venue for loud bands. Jazz, however, seems like an unexpected fit. High volume isn’t exactly key in this improvisational art form, which encourages the use of mutes on trumpets and wispy brushes on drums. And unlike the smoke-free Blue Room, the Hurricane…
To the uninitiated, AFI must look like the quickest overnight success since the Strokes. The band’s latest release, Sing the Sorrow, opened in Billboard’s top ten and scored enthusiastic lead reviews in major music magazines. AFI, abbreviating A Fire Inside, now has a radio hit in “Girl’s Not Grey.” It’s coheadlining this year’s Warped Tour, and lead singer Davey Havok…
In “The Driveby,” one of several skits on storied hip-hop producer Prince Paul’s clever new concept album Politics of the Business, Paul finds himself confronted on the street by a hyperactive, exasperated fan. “I did the worm, man. I used to break dance, man. I fuckin’ popped, locked and rocked, man. What I got to do to get in the…
The number of boring, uninspired studio pictures hitting today’s multiplexes is getting depressing. To add insult to injury, many of these mind-numbing creations come from formerly talented writers, directors and actors. Last week saw Hollywood Homicide, a tired, lazy buddy-cop-action-comedy written and directed by Ron Shelton, the considerable talent behind Bull Durham and Tin Cup. This week it’s Rob Reiner’s…
He’s 12 feet tall. He’s ripped. He’s quick as a tiger and fierce as a dragon. Lit by his fury to a dull-green glow, the guy is sheer, boundless power. Any NFL team would love to start him at middle linebacker. But as art-house director Ang Lee would have it, this outsized, computer-generated, big-screen Hulk is also a sensitive…
Yawn and garden: This is a response to a response (“A Thug’s Life,” Letters, June 5). There’s a reason the middle and upper classes vacated downtown in the last two decades. Out here (down here?) the only time you see a police helicopter overhead in a park is when a jogger loses a fanny pack. The only loud “bangs” you…
Clay Chastain wasn’t happy with our recent story about public transportation (“Life in the Fast Lane,” June 5), so your Kansas City Stripper agreed to meet him at Muddy’s on 39th Street to set the record straight. Chastain was standing outside the coffee shop, beside a table decked out with charts and statistics to support his latest (read: fifth) petition…
Since Congresswoman Karen McCarthy’s drunken fall on a Washington, D.C., escalator in March, chatter about her political future — or possible lack thereof — has been growing louder. The tumble alerted the press and Kansas City’s newspaper-reading public to a problem McCarthy couldn’t deny. With the gash in her head healing, McCarthy pleaded for forgiveness, labeled herself an alcoholic…
Jayme Findlay wants to go to the moon. First, though, he wants to send others — 2,016 people in all, every last one of them cremated upon their deaths and enclosed in individual capsules, each the size of a computer mouse. Attached to each capsule will be a 6-foot flag, and each flag will have its own foil epitaph with…
When traveling to a foreign country, we try to learn the rudiments of the language so as not to seem so tackily American. In our experience, the two key phrases to know are ¿Habla Inglés? and ¡Más cerveza, por favor! Such was the case with our recent trip to Spain — where, we’re delighted to report, the manpri (male capri…
Historically, the red-brick building at 423 Southwest Boulevard has been a man magnet. For the first third of the last century, it housed either a barber shop or a billiard hall. For one spell in 1934, it had both. By World War II, the building had become a saloon. And it stayed a saloon — Tony’s Tavern — for three…
