One great thing about seeing old friends is the “Oh, my gawd! I had forgotten about that!” moment. On a recent trip back to Boulder, Colorado, our dear friend Cindy reminded us of one such long-repressed memory: our unfortunate tendency to fall prey to alcohol-induced heatstroke. She had witnessed this phenomenon a couple of summers in a row. So we’ve…
With his new restaurant Gia’s (see review), Frank Macaluso isn’t the only longtime Kansas City restaurateur making news downtown. The Cascone family — Frank, George and their sister, Mary Lou Treece — opened the doors to the new Cascone’s Grill at 17 East Fifth Street two weeks ago. After three decades across the street in a 42-seat diner inside the…
Back when I was waiting tables, I liked to end my shift with a couple of stiff drinks at the bar, then wander over to Jimmy and Mary’s Steakhouse at 34th Street and Main — it used to serve food until 3 a.m. — for a plate of ravioli, a tossed salad and two buttered slabs of Roma bread…
FRI 8/29 If Kenneth Lonergan had done nothing with his career besides the superb film You Can Count on Me, he could rest on his laurels. But his beguiling play Lobby Hero is also quite good, and the Unicorn Theatre opens its thirtieth season with it. The dramedy is about four New Yorkers — a ritzy apartment security guard…
MON 9/1 About a month ago, Brodie Rush announced that Brodioke — the screwball karaoke night he’d been hosting at the Brick — would come to an abrupt end. The people wept and mourned. They resorted to singing in their cars. The situation seemed hopeless. What many Brodioke lovers still don’t realize is that Maygun Metzger and Shay Broockerd…
DAILY Parents always get out of foolish endeavors like riding the tiny train or crawling through a jungle gym because their world and the kids’ world never agree on size. Nascart Indoor Racing (325 North Mur-Len Road in Olathe) is the rare kid outing that parents can fit into — and they do so giddily. Racing high-powered go-carts around turns…
8/29-8/31 Remember when you could show up late for a Royals game, park close and stretch your legs out into the seats in front of you? Those were the days. Nobody believed, and the promotions department at Kauffman Stadium had to lure spectators with promises of fireworks, discounted food and free stuff for the kids. Kansas Citians may have…
SAT 8/30 As kids, we found it incredibly annoying that, on hot days, boys could take off their shirts but girls could not. Either we haven’t grown up much, or we were onto something. Sometimes, you gotta show a little boob. Breast-feeding mothers, especially, have cause to bust one loose every now and then. So nursing moms will be suckling…
Todd Karnahan is a house painter, and on the average weekday you’re likely to find him in paint-splattered workpants, wearing a bandana on his head and a cowboy hat over that. In his silver briefcase, however, you will find no paint supplies. Instead, you’ll find American Greaser Supplies. That is, four kinds of pomade and flattop wax. Some are traditional,…
Thursday, August 28 It is a Labor Day tradition here at the Pitch to provide the working person with outings and adventures that won’t break the bank. We want you to have your day off and enjoy it, too. So you’ll note that no event mentioned in this week’s day-by-day picks costs more than $6. Most of ’em cost…
For most of the Sho-Me Squares’ ten years, the stodgy realm of traditional square dancing has existed on the other side of a tall picket fence, in a field where straight deer and antelope play. But about a year ago, the gay Squares — who meet on Sunday nights at the Spirit of Hope MCC — began venturing beyond their…
A respected comedy writer sits over lunch with a man who, in the late 1960s, was very, very famous. This man, slender and balding, was a comedian who, with his younger brother, hosted a network television show that caused quite a ruckus—they talked too much politics, and pot, for prime time. For his sin of spouting off to the…
In China, people use human hair to make medicine for anxiety, crushing it, then administering it in pill form. Chinese-born artist Wenda Gu uses human hair as a material for artworks that feel like a giant dose of Zoloft, capable of easing global society toward a utopian state that peacefully melds cultures and nationalities, ancient traditions and progressive ideas….
A Silent Ending encapsulates the entire Warped Tour into one fourteen-minute debut disc: All that’s missing are the merch booths. For the album’s first thirty seconds, the Kansas City quartet’s quick-tapping drums and melodic guitar leads brand it as yet another of NOFX’s illegitimate spawn, but then it abruptly departs from that accessible path and chooses a rockier road. Rough…
Rancid’s last eponymous LP was a punk-rock pissing contest: All serrated guitar, crotch-grabbing grunts and enough velocity to qualify the band for the Formula One circuit. The group’s latest tones down the teeth-gnashing and picks up where 1998’s diffuse Life Won’t Wait left off, working in organ, steel drum and sad-eyed break-up songs with the chest-pounding punk expected from these…
Once a crucial component in France’s downtempo electronica scene, Air now resembles Obscured by Clouds-era Pink Floyd and Serge Gainsbourg more than it does the passé acid-jazzers with whom it used to share deck time. City Reading is a brave detour for Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin: They provide music for Italian author Alessandro Baricco as he reads three grim…
You know the remix craze has gotten out of hand when bands on Omaha’s indie/emo stronghold Saddle Creek Records start hiring superstar DJs and other electronicists. The Faint’s members just couldn’t leave well enough alone; they had to dole out tracks from 2001’s Danse Macabre to Paul Oakenfold, Tommie Sunshine, Junior Sanchez, Photek and others so they could turn most…
Ego War sounds like a savvy British A&R man’s dream concept: some Streetsy Cockney raps full of sensitive bravado, some gimmicky Beck/Gorillaz-style funk, a cyber-update of the Specials’ edgy skank, some bumpin’ Basement Jaxxlike house with instant sing-along choruses. But it’s a London fing, innit? Can Audio Bullys’ elastic electro funk and yobbish, hook-laden house excite Americans outside this country’s…
One of hip-hop’s great strengths is its ability to call attention to the pressing social issues of the day. Whether it was N.W.A. ripping L.A. cops on “Fuck tha Police,” Public Enemy lambasting urban medical care with “911 Is a Joke” or the Coup shredding corporate bigwigs on “Fat Cats, Bigga Fish,” rappers have always been music’s most outspoken soapboxers….
Now that Nelly has become the crowned king of Midwest rap, a slew of consonant-slurring emulators has stepped up to the batter’s box for a quick coattail ride. The most successful to date is Chingy, the tween rap phenom who’s currently rocking white America with “Right Thurr,” a syrupy anthem that celebrates the joys of being Chingy. It’s a topic…
Millions of movie fans have heard Gaelic Storm without realizing it, because this was the band that helped Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio whirl below decks in Titanic. Based on the sunny shores of California, this Celtic ensemble incorporates instruments such as bodhran, fiddle, accordion and mandolin into its acoustic variations. Singer Patrick Murphy possesses a pure Irish tenor, and…
Ever since Charlie Parker first took flight, Kansas City jazz audiences have been interested in players with sax appeal. Banking on this public penchant for the reeds, the Kansas City Jazz Ambassadors have assembled a powerhouse trio of local saxophonists for their upcoming “Battle of the Saxes” at the Grand Emporium. Nationally renowned local favorites Ahmad Alaadeen (pictured), Hal Melia…
Like Deftones and Garage A Trois, Jive Turkeys is a great band saddled with a clumsy, misleading name. The quartet stuffed its recently released EP Seis Sonidos with swirling psychedelic pop; foggy, feedback-drenched garage rock; and peppy, piano-powered glam — basically, everything but the awful white-boy funk its name promises. With local all-stars the People and Doris Henson also on…
Mississippi native Jeff Bates is the rare country artist who isn’t afraid to spit in the dust and take a stand as a traditionalist, the kind who points to Elvis and Twitty as inspirations, the kind who opens his first CD with the declaration If you … don’t turn it up, it ain’t country enough. With a deep growl and…
