If only we had a dollar for every time we wrote up another preview for a preeminent Native American blues-rock band. We’d have about seventeen cents. The members of Indigenous grew up on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota before launching themselves into the contemporary blues scene with their 1998 debut, Things We Do. What they do, and do…
Father knows best. Well, at least he does when pop is legendary bluesman Luther Allison. That kind of pedigree didn’t hurt when Bernard Allison began teaching himself to play the guitar by listening to his dad’s albums. Of course, the chip off the old block has a style all his own, perfected in Europe, where Allison the Younger was a…
Write down the name Riley B. King. You may hear big things about this kid someday. As it is, the strapping young lad from Itta Bene, Mississippi, has been creating a buzz with his animated guitar virtuosity and amiable stage manner. King — his friends call him B.B. — has been heralded as a brash upstart in the blues world;…
Niener’s is gone, but for those who made their names at the self-proclaimed true home of rock, the stigma associated with the venue dies hard. There were plenty of nights when that club hosted bad haircuts and worse music, but it wasn’t all mullets and moron metal, especially once rap-rock’s evil influence started to slip. One of the most promising…
Jesus, it’s torture living in Seattle. All that fresh air, furry trees, flannel shirts and foo-foo lattés. Must be a bitch. Vendetta Red uses its hometown as inspiration for carrying on the woe-is-we tradition, becoming yet another platoon in the multiplying army of young bands with their hearts on their sleeves and punkish alternative rock on their brains. The boys…
The Prairie Dogg finds the dirt on Richard Nixon, whores and the state of the union with Brother Wayne Kramer, former MC5 guitarist, revolutionary and temporary resident of the Hyatt Regency in Wichita. PD: Are people surprised to find you on tour with Cheap Trick? WK: Before I’d play for 150 hardcore fans, but now I can play for 2,000…
Punk-ass bitch. That’s what a guy like Fat Tone might call a guy like me. I don’t know Fat Tone. He doesn’t know me. He hasn’t come over to the house lately for meat loaf and Pictionary. I haven’t sent him a get-well-soon card. Anthony “Fat Tone” Watkins might be a sweetheart. He could read to senior citizens. Volunteer at…
Fuck Vibe, fuck Source, fuck Double XL/All those pretty fashion magazines are stupid as hell, rants Deep Thinker rhyme-slayer Aaron Sutton on “Rock the Beat,” a standout track from the Lawrence duo’s sophomore effort, Necks Move. The 23-year-old Sutton, who rhymes under the moniker Brother of Moses, has always been outspoken when it comes to the commercial elements of his…
Tours characterized by single-gender participation and consistently abysmal quality are nothing new. For recent examples, see the all-male suckfest Family Values or the prune-provoked geriatric stool sample known as the Kiss-Aerosmith tour. These events are seldom billed using gender-specific terms, such as Boys Gone Wild or Sleazy, Slimy Grandpas. By contrast, when several shitty female-fronted groups decide to pool their…
The riddles of identity that drive Philip Roth’s fiction usually focus on contemporary Jewish characters whose conflicts between self-absorption and self-loathing remain poignantly (and often hilariously) unresolved. But in The Human Stain, the first Roth novel to be adapted for the screen in three decades, the author takes on an even more daunting task — the saga of a black…
Russell Crowe to his agent: “More Oscar bait. Now.” Agent, considering his cut of Crowe’s $20 million payday: “Yes, sir.” A possible scenario, anyway. Thus, Crowe is back in another iconic, self-serious performance, and his beefy mug will stare down upon us from this season’s heroic movie posters until Tom Cruise socks him in the knee and Viggo Mortensen…
b>Under the gun: Regarding Tony Ortega’s “Half-Cocked” (November 6): I never read your rag before, but a friend called and told me you were in the process of making me famous, so I thought I’d log on and see how you painted me. Given your self-evident proclivities and the demographic the Pitch appeals to, I suppose all the penis references…
Kansas Citians are so freaking generous. Maybe it’s the good feeling going around because the Chiefs look practically unbeatable. Or maybe it’s the rapidly approaching Christmas season. Or maybe it’s just some heartland kind of thing. Whatever it is, look no further for an example of the bleeding-heart nature of your friends and neighbors than the November 4 election, when…
In June, a northeast Kansas City resident called police, fearing that a mentally retarded neighbor was being harassed by a family who lived next door. By mistake, however, officers responding to the complaint went to the wrong house and became convinced that the mentally retarded man was the suspect in their call. The result: Darrell Sterling, a custodian, was beaten…
Among the city’s legions of skateboarders, hip-hoppers, break dancers and Art Institute kids, it was an anyone-who’s-anyone-will-be-there event. And the Next Space, a hollowed-out storefront on 18th Street between Locust and Cherry, was the perfect place to stage a visual battle between male and female graffiti artists. Two rooms were separated by a hallway — all the boys’ pieces would…
While we were at Amerisports Brew Pub on October 26, watching our soon-to-be-8-0 Chiefs pulverize the Bills, we found our minds wandering a bit. Don’t get us wrong. We love watching the Chiefs, and we especially love a good thrashing, particularly when it’s magnified on multiple plasma screens and giant TVs mounted in every conceivable space — even the booths….
he coffee swilled at the new Red Star Tavern (see review) is a company-commissioned blend from Boyd’s Coffee in Portland, Oregon. But Red Star’s owners, the Chicago-based Restaurant Development Group, ought to consider serving a hometown brew. After all, Danny O’Neill — who has created signature blends for more than 200 restaurants in the United States — has been grinding…
No one’s ever going to mistake the new brick shopping complex in Kansas City North — called the Shops at Boardwalk — for a little slice of Atlantic City. That’s too bad, because it would have been an unexpected thrill if the developers had copied some of the New Jersey Boardwalk’s more vulgar qualities. Instead of a traditional shopping mall…
THU 11/6 If you caught last summer’s USA Network concert Willie Nelson & Friends: Live and Kickin’, you might have noted that Nelson apparently failed to rehearse with any of his big-name guests. But if you really thought about it, you might have realized that the true problem was that Norah Jones, Diana Krall and even Steven Tyler were hopelessly…
FRI 11/7 To help the Evaporated Milk Society get its winter production of The Queen’s Story on its feet, the unorthodox theater troupe needs to raise a little ransom. Laura Frank, who appeared in the company’s Hamlet in 2001, has booked a number of similarly eclectic musicians for a benefit Friday night at the Paragraph Gallery, 25 East 12th Street.Once…
11/1-12/28 The timing seems a little trigger-happy, but, as far as the American Heartland Theatre is concerned, the Christmas season started last Saturday. That’s when the theater company debuted its stage adaptation of A Christmas Story.Amid the glut of seasonal programming, fans have always been able to recognize the movie version as soon as they heard its most popular…
TUE 11/11 What’s the difference between men’s Division I and Division II college basketball games? For ticket buyers, it’s $15.General admission seating for the NCAA Division I exhibition game pitting the University of Kansas against Pittsburg State is $30; floor seats for the Division II University of Missouri-Kansas City versus Quincy University game cost $15. KU’s Jayhawks may have a…
SUN 11/9 Most drivers passing through minuscule towns along the highway opt to keep a steady pace rather than stop and explore the unfamiliar surroundings. Randy Mason, Michael Murphy and their friend Don the Camera Guy aren’t like most drivers. They created a television show by mining every promising stop for curiosities and characters. KCPT Channel 19’s Rare Visions and…
Art school, to the nonart student, is a mysterious place. Our college memories include neither tree trunks made to look like they’re wearing socks nor condoms sitting unpackaged on classroom tables. But regardless of how much kookiness one may encounter on a field trip to art school, few visitors expect to enter a padded room, as we had the recent…
