Have you ever noticed that a catchy phrase or a snappy advertising jingle lasts much longer in your consciousness than a lot of past love affairs? It does for me, anyway. I can barely remember the names of the heartbreakers I used to pursue, but I can still sing every word from a song written for the “Shake-A-Pudding” TV commercials,…
SAT-SUN When Kansas City’s 125-member Heartland Men’s Chorus and the 160 voices of the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus make beautiful music together this Saturday and Sunday at the Folly Theater, it will mark the most testosterone onstage in the life of the theater — and the Folly’s been around since the early days of burlesque. Double Your Pleasure! includes the…
TUE-SAT Bat Boy — inspired equally by My Fair Lady, 1950s horror films and the Weekly World News — proves that no subject is too taboo for musical theater. The Unicorn Theatre staged it last December, selling out every show in an extended run. So the theater bumped its original June production for Bat Boy’s return flight, set to take…
THU 6/12 Princess Mononoke is a beautifully drawn story in which Lady Eboshi rules an industrial village that fills the sky with clouds of smoke, and Princess Mononoke — raised by wolves — helps the beasts fight her. Meanwhile, in a remote village, it turns out that a monster who terrorizes humans was once a god driven to madness by…
SAT 6/14 It’s not hard to guess the sport when the event is called the Newcastle Brown Ale Invitational. We’re a long way from Scotland, but no distance can destroy the centuries-honored union of dark beer and curious strength competitions. At the Scottish Highland Games, spectators imbibe while brawny athletes from area states compete at tossing 20-foot, 150-pound cabers. And…
THU 6/12 Why does one anonymous, local thirty-year-old male want to take the Communiversity class called Reflections of Society in the Buffyverse? “If I can’t score in a class like that,” he says, “I definitely need to go live in a cave somewhere.” But there are better reasons to sign up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is more than a minor…
All Sean Beaver wanted to do was go ripping across the water at high speeds, being pulled by nothing more than the magical union of kite and wind. But at the first-ever Spring Kite and Kite Surfing Festival at Clinton Lake, he encountered some concerned state employees. Kite surfing — a combination of power kite flying, windsurfing, paragliding and wakeboarding…
Thursday, June 12, 2003 Self-employed musicians can rarely afford health insurance. And although a hot blend of whiskey, honey and lemon juice might cure a hacking cough from nine days of bar smoke, other occupational hazards (getting zapped by an amp, falling off a stage, taking a drumstick to the eye) can require a trip to the emergency room. To…
When the Tivoli shows Akira Kurosawa’s newly restored 1952 epic Ikiru in this month’s Film Forum, the marquee will not translate the film’s title. Some early translations dubbed the pathos-inducing movie Living; others labeled it Doomed. When you can’t decide between those two options, it’s best to embrace the ambiguous place in between. That is essentially what Kurosawa did….
You need not leave the house to know what’s playing in movie theaters in coming weeks. You’ve already seen these films, with titles consisting of letters followed by numbers. There’s no surprise in the dark, just the bumping into of familiar faces, legally blond or largely green, and furious franchises going full throttle till the next Movie Event of…
Sidonie Garrett was a student at Harrisonville High School when her worldview widened from Fleetwood Mac and Harper Lee to include William Shakespeare. She’s been a fan ever since. “I had a great high school English teacher and, when we read Macbeth, she made it clear this was literature to be read aloud,” Garrett recalls. “It just came alive. It…
If we must continue to hear Caucasians “play that old rock and roll” (as this former Royal Trux guitarist titled his second solo set), let it come from Neil Michael Hagerty. Postmodern and sincere, he refracts hoary rock cliches through prisms of irony until The Rock shines like diamonds. Although many of the 21 songs on Hagerty’s third solo effort,…
Electronic-music powerhouse Tigerbeat6 has released its first comedy album. The handiwork of Hans and Uli Bunschlapen and Meister Detlef (actually ex-Pink & Brown member John Dwyer), this record is the soundtrack to Tom of Finland’s in-your-face, up-your-ass homoerotic fantasies. Actually, Submissions is a straight guy’s warped idea of what type of music drives hypersexed, pumped-up gays to get down and…
Radiohead records resemble Far Side comics — esoteric appeal, subtle payoffs, anthropomorphic animal characters — and Hail to the Thief recalls one panel in particular. An upright cow leans against a long-feared fence, reassuring his fellow cattle by saying, “If it were electric, could I do this?” Meanwhile, a farmer watches out his window with his hand on the switch,…
Having years ago exhausted his ability to shock, Marilyn Manson must now search for new ways to terrify the masses. This dilemma — brilliantly parodied by The Onion, which sent Manson door-to-door in Overland Park trying to frighten unimpressed suburbanites — has already depleted Manson’s minor contributions to music’s cutting edge. In fact, the Antichrist Superstar’s most interesting move of…
“This is not an album,” Mac Lethal writes in the liner notes of his new, um, release. The Love Potion Collection, according to Mac, is the first in a series of mix tapes on which the KC-based mic mauler tries his hand at various rap styles. Producing about half the tracks himself, Mac was in a playful mood during the…
The Dropkick Murphys are hockey freaks, not soccer hooligans. Most of their recorded bagpipes come from the creaky Scottish torture device most familiar to us yanks, not the sweeter-sounding Irish variety. Not least, the Celtic lilt of the band’s two singers is a put-on. So despite their clover-brandishing Irishness, the Dropkick Murphys are as American as pizza or chop suey….
In its own special way, Third Eye Blind’s “Blinded” might be the year’s most romantic single. Could there be a more beautiful sentiment than frontman Stephan Jenkins’ confession to a former lover: I want to stay right here and go down on you for an hour? Doubtful. However, like every other song on this year’s Out of the Vein and…
From bluegrass and classical music to funk, fusion and jazz, banjo player Béla Fleck can do it all. After breaking into the scene in the early ’80s as a member of Sam Bush’s progressive bluegrass outfit the New Grass Revival, Fleck quickly became known as a premier instrumentalist. By crossing genres with little regard for the arbitrary boundaries of…
Blessed with a voice tailor-made to sing the blues, vocalist and pianist Marcia Ball also knows a little something about being in the right place at the right time. After her graduation from Louisiana State University in 1970, Ball — ready to watch the Gulf Coast disappear into her rearview mirror — set out for San Francisco. Less than…
Though it never begged the comparison, like, say, System of a Down, the Dismemberment Plan had much in common with Faith No More. Both bands blended genres with such ease that their eclecticism was almost unnoticeable. The Plan’s special blend included indie-rock song structures, power-pop choruses, a rhythm section that simulates drum ‘n’ bass, and a hip-hop-style storytelling approach to…
The Wild Women of Kansas City — vocalists Myra Taylor (pictured), Geneva Price, Mary Moore and Millie Edwards — rank among the area’s sassiest, most boisterous performers. But even though these ladies don’t shy away from singing about late nights and high times, they’re also serious when it comes to dealing with the darker side of the musician’s lifestyle….
DJ Konsept made a local name for himself on the radio as a host for KJHK 90.7’s seminal Breakfast for Beatlovers and One programs, but he’s also known in France, where he toured for three weeks this past winter, culminating with a prestigious gig at L’Anfer. Also known as Edwin Morales, the Puerto Rican-born, Kansas-raised DJ has proven to…
Packing a trunkful of twangy hits and a voice as smooth as newly poured pavement, George Jones is a genuine musical journeyman. With a career that spans four decades, the Texas-born crooner has charted more singles than any other artist in the history of popular music. Through these songs, mostly written by others, Jones has traced his own apocalyptic journey….
