In the year that we’ve been writing this column, we’ve managed to offend quite a number of people. In fact, we like to think of ourselves as equal-opportunity insulters. Our target list is large and long — just like we like it — and includes: asymmetrical-top wearers, tube-top jackasses, tanorexic waitresses, 5-7-9, DEB, back fat, black fuck-me pants, spiky-haired gay/not…
The four-month-old Segafredo Zanetti Espresso (see review) is no more a “coffee house” than the American Restaurant is a snack shop. In less-complicated times, a coffee shop was a place where diners could order a potent cup of java from a fairly simple menu: grilled sandwiches (if there was a grill), soups and pie. These days, Marcia Prentiss is struggling…
There’s nothing quite like the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans wafting out of the Folgers coffee plant at Eighth Street and Broadway, which can perfume entire blocks of downtown Kansas City on a warm summer night. But Italy’s Segafredo Zanetti Espresso seems to be confused about a similar fragrance floating near the Country Club Plaza. “The unmistakable aroma…
FRI 11/28 Ida McBeth is a woman, not a monument. A singer, not a fountain. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s one of the most worthwhile attractions in town, and it’s her birthday — which merits celebration.McBeth doesn’t keep her legendary voice quiet. She performs frequently in venues all over town, with a schedule that tends to…
11/28-12/27 If all you knew about Renée Laferriere was that she made the tattooed pigskin garments on display at the Byron Cohen Gallery (2020 Baltimore, 816-421-5665), you might be surprised to discover that she’s a vegetarian.Exploring the process of tattooing, Laferriere needed the closest approximation of human skin she could get, so she took a cue from dermatologists, who…
ONGOING All parents want to see their kids succeed, especially at sports. But what do you do when your kids are just as uncoordinated as you are? If they’re 54 inches or taller, take them down to Sadlers Indoor Racing (325 North Mur-Len Road in Olathe) and see if you have a dose of lead foot in your progeny.Sadlers…
11/28-11/29 It’s hard to imagine that people out there are going hungry, especially during the gorgefest that is Thanksgiving. But Harvesters, the community food network, estimates that 141,000 people in the Kansas City area are “food insecure,” which is a nice way of saying that they don’t know when or where they’ll eat next.The Harvesters food bank manages to…
SAT 11/29 For those about to rock, we beseech you: Bring a toy along. Melding the magic of Christmas giving with the majesty of rock, Benders (1118 McGee) hosts a Toys for Tots rock show Saturday. It’s the rare charity event that encourages drinking, smoking and dancing.Starting at 8 p.m., the members of Federation of Horse Power, As Memphis Burns,…
Aggressively proving that it’s possible to simultaneously salute, parody and reinvent musical theater, Urinetown is not your grandma’s Broadway show. Yet it’s the show’s love of the genre that makes it such a workable piece of theater; simply put, it’s an old formula passionately refurbished. It has good songs, complicated relationships split between good and evil, and a randy…
Thursday, November 27, 2003 After Thanksgiving dinner, why not walk over to the Plaza for the annual lighting ceremony? It is a ceremony wherein lights are turned on. It’s amazing! Have you ever seen colored lights turned on in unison before? No? Well, then, you simply have not lived. This year, the celebrity flipping the switch is Kate Spade,…
Telling people to curb their consumption on the biggest shopping day of the year is like raging against baseball on opening day. Still, Keith Dunn spreads that message at shopping hot spots this Friday. “The primary tactic of capitalism is to convince people that their lives are empty and that they need all this stuff to be happy,” Dunn says….
When the Hallmark Hall of Fame crew was filming the first episode of Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall stories, a chartered bus of Kansas City journalists traveled to a Kansas farm an hour west of town to spend half a day on the set. In their period costumes, Christopher Walken and Glenn Close were made to endure quick…
Conventional-wisdom types often damn electronic music as cold and inhuman, but they have no idea until they listen to Richard Devine. This Georgia prodigy’s astounding sound design achieves unparalleled summits of complexity and density. For those who find Autechre’s recent output too straightforward, check out Asect:Dsect, Devine’s third full-length for Schematic. Like Autechre, Devine abstracts electro into a Tourette’s danse…
Sleek synthpop quartet Stars crafts the sonic equivalent of IKEA furniture: stylish and functional tunes that incorporate both streamlined classicism and the occasional funky flourish. Heart’s soul-melting songs include trip-hoppy fluttering flute loops (“The Vanishing”), muted horns and watery piano (“Heart”) and loping keyboards (“The Woods”). Lead crooner and sometime-actor Torquil Campbell emotes with the soft enunciation of Death Cab…
ZZ Top fans have called Mescalero a return to form after 1999’s dire XXX. But what else could it be, really, when form is all the Top has ever had? The same pounding electro-blues, occasionally rousing itself to a leaden midtempo but usually as slow and regular in its groove and footwork as a drunk pacing past a couple of…
What do Kansas City and Cleveland have in common? Besides being purveyors of wholesome Midwestern values and containing perpetually underachieving sports teams, each city also has a small but thriving indie-rock community. Enter hipster brew company Pabst Blue Ribbon and its surprisingly strong fifteen-track compilation. KC represents with only six songs, but the contributions make up in quality what they…
Scotland has no need for a manned space program — they’ve already got Mogwai. The Glasgow postrock quintet’s earliest recordings embodied the violent beauty of a rocket launch with their cathartic instrumental dynamics, tensely building, then exploding. Rock Action, from 2001, saw the band’s guitar-fueled boosters become less essential, the established chaos tempered by subtle, nearly orchestral instrumentation; tighter, more…
Subterranean hip-hop generally doesn’t trade in platinum, ice, wicked whips and gargantuan stacks o’ cash. The main currency is credibility. And few labels possess more cred than Quannum Projects, home to Blackalicious, DJ Shadow and Lyrics Born. Ever since 2001, when the Lifesavas became the first rap act the superpicky West Coast label had signed in years, the Portland, Oregon,…
High school popularity hierarchies have nothing on the recent wave of adolescent pop queens. If Avril Lavigne is the alternateen swigging beer at lunchtime in the parking lot, and Vanessa Carlton is the prissy, talent-show-winning teacher’s pet, then Michelle Branch is the starry-eyed aspiring rocker with a few years of guitar lessons and a notebook filled with daydreams scrawled during…
Before they became beloved geeks throughout America, Barenaked Ladies were beloved geeks from Canada who were pounced upon by college nerds for their quirky acoustic ditties. The Ladies were awkward teenage boys with goofy hearts of gold on 1992’s Gordon and 1994’s Maybe You Should Drive. The band cloaked its devotions of love with references to macaroni and cheese (“If…
No local band has more to lose from MP3.com’s recent decision to close its virtual doors than the Yards. The Lawrence instrumental ensemble has been one of the site’s biggest benefactors, garnering more than 100,000 plays from listeners around the globe during the last year or so. Those Net surfers were obviously onto something; no mere pigment-challenged neofunkateers, the…
The notion of blending hardcore punk and headbanging metal almost seems quaint in a music industry where this is a commonplace occurrence. But twenty years ago, back when the sonic hybrid was being forged in dank East Coast nightclubs, Agnostic Front was one of the few bands brave enough to go genre jumping. The quartet’s landmark 1986 effort, Cause for…
Leave it to St. Paul to spawn another progressive hip-hop hybrid. Minnesota always gets the forward-thinking hip-hop heads. Hey, Duluth, how about you share some with the rest of us! If nothing else, all those cold winters have given Heiruspecs plenty of time to stay cooped up honing conscientious lyrics and live instrumentals à la groups such as the Roots,…
If authentic, down-home, grits-‘n’-gravy country is your cup of tea, then you might as well stop reading right now. But if you like your strum and twang served with enough spectacle to make Kiss look like a bunch of dudes jamming at Davey’s, then Shania Twain is your gal. Armed with a hefty catalog of easy-to-digest smashes and a body…
