A standout bass line might be a stealthy, almost imperceptible rumble, but if it’s removed, the song feels tinny and feeble. Similarly, bassists, though often underappreciated, play a significant role in shaping their bands’ sounds. Johnny Hamil has walked in Geezer Butler’s mammoth footprints with Eric, showcased his stand-up skills with Malachy Papers, and distinguished himself in the all-bass…
Last year, Sense Field played SpiritFest alongside Eddie Money, Jonny Lang and the Burger King Rock and Roll All-Stars, a roster guitarist Chris Evenson called “the strangest lineup we’ve ever been on.” For its return to the region, Sense Field gets much more reasonable concert complements, such as fashionable, female-fronted pop-punkers Damone and hook-happy newcomers Soundtrak. It’s also pushing a…
In recent years, Anthrax has gotten more press for its unfortunately timely moniker than for its new releases. The erstwhile shredders now stomp at a slower speed, playing melodic, midpaced metal without compromising their intensity. This year’s We Come for You All proves that the group’s longtime lineup fixtures (guitarist Scott Ian, drummer Charlie Benante and bassist Frank Bello) can…
Defying demonic deities is a scary thing. One night after spurning Ozzfest to hang with the hippiesters at Phish, I began to fear the wrath of the metal gods, so I made sure to see Cradle of Filth at the Beaumont Club the next night. With the cherub-voiced Sarah Jezebel Deva in tow, the British band proved that kids will…
Musicians hear it all the time: The Internet has revolutionized the recording industry. Bands need no longer sign major-label deals in order to survive. Simply throw together a Web site, add a few pages of merch and a shopping cart and — presto! — instant income. Were that true, there would be a few thousand self-supported bands right here in…
Few words inspire debate in musical circles faster than traditional. For every audience ready to accept whatever rolls down from the mountain with a country twang, there will always be those who say you have to climb the mountain yourself to hear the real thing. Take that argument about 4,000 miles west to the shores of Hawaii, change the mountain…
For a few minutes, at least, things don’t look so bad. Watching Ben Affleck swagger around as the thuggish title character of Gigli (“Rhymes with really,” he tells us twice) is amusing for a bit. Affleck is eminently qualified for the role, actually — that of a low-level hood pretending to be more important and talented than he truly is….
By the numbers: Regarding Andrew Miller’s “The Numbers Game” (July 17): great article. Sounds like he had a good time hanging out with Bill James. It reminded me of a long time ago, when I was writing for a newspaper in Leavenworth and I drove out to Winchester to do a story on James. Couldn’t have been a better subject…
Anarchists think government is bad. And some Kansas City anarchists haven’t found any reason to believe otherwise after dealing with the Jackson County Land Trust. This past winter, the anarchists formed a committee to raise at least $15,000 to create a library and community center — a headquarters for radical politics similar to the Autonomous Zone in Chicago or CAMP…
Seventeen-year-old frog hunter Justin Breshears grabs his weapon from the bed of the pickup truck: a wooden-handled broomstick topped with barbed, orange prongs the size of steak knives. “It’s my Billy Bob rig,” he says, proudly raising the contraption for inspection. “It looks like something the devil would carry.” Breshears, whose cutoff T-shirt reads “A Score to Settle,” could use…
Flash back five months. It was the last day of February, a windy, frigid day, when we heard the dreaded words from our then-boyfriend: “We have to talk.” All had seemed relatively normal up until that point — especially when we left his house that morning — doubly so, because we were supposed to go to Lawrence that evening for…
Like a good mix tape, the types of drinks that we’ve consumed remind us of the different eras of our lives. For example, in high school we were all about the wine cooler. College was the period of drinksperimentation; after downing various shots and cheap-ass concoctions like Mad Dog 20/20, Purple Passion and Boone’s Farm (as well as discovering that…
In last week’s column, I ranted about the music in new restaurants being too loud, in particular the sound-system volume at the tiny Puffy Taco (10028 North Ambassador), near the airport. But I got an earful of my own medicine, as it were, during a recent supper in the three-week-old Café Trocadero (401 East 31st Street), when my three dining…
There’s a fine art to pan frying chicken, and I’ve never mastered it, despite years of trying. My mother didn’t even bother experimenting; her theory was that if you wanted good fried chicken, you went to a restaurant to get it. Ditto for waffles, barbecue, pizza and anything else that involved more energy than tossing a frozen slab into the…
SAT 7/26 We claim partial responsibility for the insanity of the Burly-Q Girly Crew’s first show. Hundreds of people were turned away because of the size of the crowd that showed up, and not everyone who stayed was prepared for the punk, DIY style of the show. The Girly Crew has tightened its act through a handful of subsequent appearances,…
ONGOING Once we were content just to drink beer. Then we wanted to brew our own. July is American Beer Month, a celebration dedicated to home brewing and the camaraderie that goes with it. For the Lawrence Brewers Guild, nothing could be better, unless it fermented for two weeks in a barrel. The Guild provides members with a vault of…
ONGOING Some kids like going to the museum. These rare, angelic creatures can be left to figure out what they like on their own. But most kids feel fidgety upon entering a museum, and unless you take them directly to the things that are most likely to entertain them, you might never get their attention. So here is a kid-friendly…
FRI 7/25 Sure, locals can hold their own answering questions about the 1991 Chicago Bulls on the sports trivia game at the local watering hole. But what do they know about their hometown teams? Watch them in all their “that’s what I was going to say” glory at the Kansas City Sports Trivia Contest, which involves local celebrity appearances…
THU 7/24 During the recent war in Iraq, peace activist Kathy Kelly was shocked and awed by media coverage of the conflict, which she says embedded journalists grossly misrepresented in their reports. Kelly, who was in Baghdad throughout March, provides her own account of life among Iraqi civilians with her talk “Embedded Humanitarian: Eyewitness to the Iraq War.” In 1996,…
In the back room of Harpo’s on a Wednesday night, the KC Screenwriters get down to business: golf, the musical potential of nuns on drugs, and Frankenstein. OK, so that’s not the real business of the evening. But this stuff is important to the group, which, according to longtime member John Thonen, has only recently adjusted to formalities. In…
Thursday, July 24, 2003, If art imitates life, then a movie called Imitation of Life is an imitation of imitations of life. That’s whack. The 1959 movie is set on Coney Island, where a white actress befriends and then hires a black woman named Annie. Everything is great until Annie’s daughter starts pretending she’s white. This constitutes a slight…
Shari Elf and Her All-Star Seamstress Band are a funny bunch. Ms. Elf, who sometimes goes by S. Elf, is a former seamstress who uses the rhythmic murmurs of sewing machines for percussion during her squeaky-clean folk-rock shows. From songs about finding Jesus in a hardware store to a song about pink, Styrofoam hearts, Elf’s repertoire is unironic sunshine and…
Before artist Marc Chagall died in 1997, he became the only living artist ever given an exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. How he got there is chronicled in The Road to Paris, a theatrical contribution to the metrowide Chagall Project, a multidisciplinary arts program for young people that involves the Children’s Museum, the Jewish Community Center and the…
When he appeared in Kansas City earlier this summer, 83-year-old Wayne Thiebaud received the kind of welcome more common to rock stars. Fans showed up two hours early to get seats for his talk at the Nelson; the auditorium quickly filled to capacity, and hundreds of people were turned away. Thiebaud enjoys such popularity not because his paintings are…
