The newest gambling joint in the area, the Wyandotte Tribe of Oklahoma’s claustrophobic 7th Street Casino, is located in a glamourless mobile structure at 7th Avenue and Ann Street in downtown Kansas City, Kansas. The staff couldn’t be friendlier, but there’s nothing to eat unless you want to throw some coins in a couple of vending machines for chips, candy…
Seventy years ago, Kansas City was already a town filled with restaurants — nearly 200 of them — but few had snappy names. The 1927 city directory lists lots of restaurants, but surprisingly few memorable business names, such as the Sanitary Sandwich Shop, the Egyptian Tea Room and the Electric Waffle Shop. By the 1940s, however, it was a completely…
TUE 9/16 For fans of retro Americana, a Deke Dickerson and the Ecco-Fonics show is the sonic equivalent of a journey back in time. The California trio plays something from every genre of roots-rock Americana that has a clean, echoey guitar sound; that includes rockabilly, Western swing, surf rock, garage and good old rock and roll. The setlist isn’t the…
SUN 9/14 Lewis Black rants and raves so hard, sometimes it looks like the pissed-off comic might drop dead from anger-related causes — not in a few years, but RIGHT NOW. During his “Back in Black” editorial segment on Comedy Central’s Daily Show, Black’s shoulders tense up. His fingers take on spastic lives of their own. He sweats. He stutters….
FRI 9/12 With Día de los Muertos celebrations just a few weeks away, now is the perfect time to start hepping your kids to how much Mexico has contributed to our heritage. To aid you in that effort, Johnson County Community College’s Carlsen Center (12345 College Boulevard in Overland Park) presents the Ballet Gran Folklorico de Mexico. Friday at noon…
SAT 9/13 There’s a whole lot of ice out there, and members of the Kansas City Curling Club aim to fill it. A healthy curling club should have about 40 members, and as it stands, KC’s is coming close with a whopping 32 — more than we might have expected, truthfully, but not quite enough. That’s why the group is…
9/13-9/14 Thinking of heading to Japan but can’t afford the ticket to Tokyo? Well, the Greater Kansas City Japan Festival (10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 to 5 p.m. Sunday) may be your cup of tea. This year’s festival offers traditional and popular Japanese cultural events. Even if you lack the sumo physique, you can still attend a…
One of the first cultural creations stemming from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was a play by Anne Nelson called The Guys. Starring Sigourney Weaver and Bill Murray, it opened less than three months later at New York City’s Flea Theatre — just blocks from Ground Zero. It can’t have been easy to perform or to watch. But Nelson knew…
Thursday September 11 You-know-what happened two years ago, and there’s just not much to say about it that hasn’t already been said. Here at the Pitch, we neither endorse nor discourage sentimentality; however, it’s out there if you want it. The City of Fountains Chorus presents a special program to honor Kansas City’s firefighters, paramedics, EMTs and office personnel…
Stan Brakhage hated video. Patrick Clancy, a Kansas City Art Institute professor who works in photography and video as well as in film, is all too aware of his friend’s disdain for the evil medium. “He actually put a plant in front of a television, and it died, of course, because of the limited spectrum,” Clancy recalls with a…
Class distinctions between the aristocracy and the serving class blur in messy and merciless ways in Princess Squid’s intense production of Miss Julie. Portrayed by Sayra Player, Julie, the daughter of a count, is a woman bored with propriety. Restless, horny and tired of what’s right and wrong, she’s a countess on a hot tin roof. August Strindberg’s classic drama…
With the launch of his ninth season as the music man of Quality Hill Playhouse, J. Kent Barnhart has scooped off the cream from a crop of Tony-winning musicals. And because he has 53 years from which to draw — from the organization’s first honoree, Kiss Me, Kate, to this past season’s justifiably Tony-hogging Hairspray — the new show,…
Launching a successful showbiz career from Ohio ain’t easy. Just ask Cincinnati quintet the National, which relocated to Brooklyn in 1996 to seek greener musical pastures. In the ensuing years, the rootsy outfit has released a pair of lauded full-lengths, including its recently issued sophomore effort, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. At the heart of the National’s musical center is…
On “Popstars,” from Rooney’s self-titled debut album, the five-piece outfit takes the unprecedented, bold step of totally sticking it to Britney Spears and ‘N Sync. Hey, baby, you’ve hit me again one more time/You said, CEBye, bye, bye, bye, bye, good-bye’, the song starts before reaching its conclusion: These are the words of the unsophisticated money machines. Rooney protests a…
With his sturdy frame and next-door-neighbor smile, Wayne “The Train” Hancock doesn’t exactly look like the next step in the Bob Wills musical line, even with his classic vintage shirts. But he’s been lauded by (and played with) the surviving Texas Playboys, and his latest, Swing Time, recorded live at the Continental Club in Austin, Texas, proves Hancock knows the…
You gotta give it up to ex-Pantera singer Phil Anselmo, who departed that band because he thought it was getting soft around the edges. Pantera, soft around the edges? Hardly. But Anselmo’s latest side project, Superjoint Ritual, offers brain-bruising adrenaline shots that are every bit as fucking hostile as those of his former outfit. Ritual is a supergroup with an…
David “Honeyboy” Edwards is to Greenwood, Mississippi, what Claude “Fiddler” Williams is to Kansas City — that rare musician officially recognized as a national treasure. Born in 1915, Edwards was first recorded in the field by musicologist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1942, but he’d already had a long career by then, having played with legends such…
Once upon a time, a kid named Ben Lee wrote a song called “I Wish I Was Him” about Evan Dando, and it’s understandable why. In the early ’90s, Dando was the heartthrob du jour among the Sassy crowd. His band, the Lemonheads, wasn’t half-bad, either, even if its mainstream claim to fame was a remake of Simon and Garfunkel’s…
After five distinguished albums for the Deep Elm imprint, the Appleseed Cast has signed to New York indie stalwart Tiger Style. The Lawrence quintet (keyboardist Jordan Geiger earned official membership last year) is taking critical lumps for its latest opus, Two Conversations, with some pundits deriding AC for bypassing the expressive experimentation that garnered heaps of praise for its Low…
Had Manda and the Marbles existed two decades ago, the group might have tangled with the Go-Go’s for sun-kissed supremacy in an old-fashioned showdown at the New Wave Corral. Though they hail from the decidedly ocean-free Columbus, Ohio, the Marbles channel the carefree beach breeziness of that ravishing quintet’s SoCal power punk. Joe A. Damage’s chugging riffs zig-zag like choice…
I’ll admit it: I like Cinemark’s decision to turn its Plaza Palace into a no-kids-allowed haven for older folks who want to watch their movies in peace. And I live for adult swim, not only the Comedy Central animation block of that name but also those tween-free ten minutes at area pools. I can empathize with the youngsters who protest…
When he’s not peddling decks, trucks and wheels to northside skate rats, Adrian “A-Train” Frost is trying to change the definition of hip-hop. “People have always said there are four elements to hip-hop: MC-ing, DJ-ing, B-boying and graffiti,” says the 27-year-old Frost, co-owner of Escapist Skateboards. “But there’s actually a fifth element: beatboxing. That mentality has always been on the…
R.E.M. made me sick. It fell to me one Thursday afternoon in February 1989 to secure a line number to buy R.E.M. tickets the following Saturday morning. It fell to me because neither of my two friends was willing to fake pre-vomit panic and bolt from our seventh-hour class to the bathroom. To maintain the illusion of nausea long enough…
Another week, another film festival. Just a day after FilmFest KC packs up its prints, Halfway to Hollywood starts its own run through ten days’ worth of fringe fare. In the past, Halfway has complemented the drama-heavy FilmFest, emphasizing camp and amateurism over subtitles and cineaste-courting formality. This year’s Halfway program adds a couple of FilmFest-style squares to its…
