Country musicians have always liked to sing about God and the old homestead, so it makes sense that they’re regularly drawn to Christmas material. But rather than modern teeth-grating collections such as Kenny Chesney’s All I Want for Christmas Is a Real Good Tan, nobody seems to have done it better than the originals. Indeed, with the exception of Bing…
It’s rare when a single song makes an entire album worthwhile. Rarer still when that album is a Christmas collection. And completely unfuckingheard-of when the song is an epic rock plea for a Motley Crüe lunch box filled with sticky buns. Enter Tenacious D with Sum 41. Singer-actor-all-around-portly-fun-boy Jack Black leads a thundering “Things I Want” with screeching Led Zeppelin…
You wish. You hope. You pray that you’ve been nice or naughty or whatever the hell it will take for that chortling fatty in the red suit to give you a holiday album that either guts traditional covers or delivers something fresh. Granted, it’s just a Christmas record, but you harbor futile hope that someone will set Bing Crosby fare…
Don’t mistake Aberdeen for the California group that trades in shimmering sunbeams of keyboard-based melancholia: These Kansas City musicians are scene veterans celebrating their band’s first decade of existence in 2004. Named after the city in Scotland — vocalist Cash actually hails from nearby Edinburgh — the quartet cranks up the guitars and the catchy choruses instead of twee postcards…
I still feel bad for Lou Diamond Phillips. The guy was huge back in the day. A movie star tearing up roles in La Bamba, Young Guns and … um, well, Young Guns II. Then his wife left him for Melissa Etheridge. Ouch. Now poor Lou D.P. is, uh, well … I don’t know what he’s doing now. Etheridge, though,…
You, there. Yeah, you. Ever eaten a dog? No? OK. How ’bout a cat? Never? Not even as a kid? Let me smell your breath. OK, you’re clear. Just keep off the pets. Otherwise, there’ll be no Jeff Scheetz Band Christmas Concert for the Animals for you, pal. Scheetz and his merry band, along with special guest Boomstick, are suiting…
Big Metal Rooster bassist Derek Hein knows the secret to the universe. We know it, too, because he shared it with us down at the soda fountain over a chocolate malt. Actually, we read it in his online diary. And diary, in this context, means journal because diaries are for chicks and former professional baseball player Goose Gossage. Right, Derek?…
Yeah, it’s indie, it has a cute name and its guitars chime more than they crunch. And the group shares a hometown with Dressy Bessy and Apples in Stereo. But being pop — pleasant, complex, unshowy pop — doesn’t mean Thank God for Astronauts is twee, and it certainly doesn’t mean the riffs in “1,000 Guitars” and “Shovel in a…
As Old Man Winter hovers over the Midwest like the thick haze of smoke hanging over the audience during a Phish set break, it’s time to remember that even the roving tribes of the jam-band jet set have an off season. Always ready, willing and able to satiate the Kansas City masses, area improv-rock artists Grand Fiasco and Brother…
Mike Ireland can’t be killed with conventional weapons. The Kansas City native hated country music as a kid but became one of the sharpest voices in the alt-country underground. He began as an indie rocker and first made national noise with the Starkweathers, a politically pointed country-rock outfit named after a serial killer. But that band disintegrated after Ireland caught…
I’m not going to do it. Not going to pander to your prurient interests. Not going to lower myself to taking potshots at a certain embattled former member of the Jackson 5. No cheap jokes. No snide comments. I’m here to talk about Tito Jackson. The second-oldest member of the Jackson 5 and a solo artist in his own right,…
I should have known it was an abnormal week when the first person I saw at the Jane’s Addiction show at the Beaumont Club on December 8 was the most Star-struck of reporters: Hearne Christopher Jr. It’s up to the He-man to dazzle “Cowtown” by shaking hands, kissing babies and humping celebrities. Not just a local gossip columnist. The local…
OK, Nancy. It’s less than a week until D day, and you still haven’t twitched a butt muscle to find the perfect gift for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza or . Yes, the holidays are a scam to bilk working folks out of hard-earned cash for things none of us really requires. Sure, all that money would be better spent on solving…
The Mona Lisa Smile in question belongs, of course, to its star, Julia Roberts. Why? For no particular reason, actually. It’s just what Italian professor Bill Dunbar (Dominic West) calls her — Mona Lisa. But the filmmakers, deciding this is not reason enough to name their film Mona Lisa Smile, tack on a discussion among know-it-all, have-it-all Wellesley College women…
In the beginning, there was The Evil Dead, and Stephen King looked down upon it and saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let there be Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, that the message of writer-director Sam Raimi be spread across the land!” So it was written, so it was done. Then those who had beheld the…
You know how it’s often the ones we love whose flaws are most apparent? Well, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I am smitten. This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It is a profound testament to the extraordinary power of…
Grow out of it: Regarding Ben Paynter’s “Last Call?” (December 11): How can an intelligent person purchase a home in a “club district” and then be surprised by occurrences related to the presence of these establishments? When driving around the Westport area, it’s hardly a stretch of logic to realize, “Wow, there sure are a shit ton of bars here!”…
The Strip wants to confess that it has committed blatant plagiarism. That’s right, this meat patty is going on record — it’s a lowdown thief, a journalistic scalawag, and it doesn’t care who knows about it. What this unrepentant kleptomaniac has done is lift last week’s editorial by Kansas City Star columnist Yael T. Abouhalkah and reprint it here nearly…
In order to get anything done, the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council members need to talk with one another. But they’re having a hard time figuring out how to do that. For much of the past month, the topic of discussion at the council’s usually gabby business sessions has been the discussion of topics. At issue is the formerly freewheeling…
She’s on his leg. Linda Turner, in a flowy, sleeveless aqua top and a short black skirt, glides over the dance floor in high heels. Riding Evern Thrower Jr.’s leg. Thrower — everyone knows him as E.T. — guides her effortlessly. The tall, silent man had spent most of the night sitting by himself at Pete’s Place, a Grandview nightclub…
Mary Susan McCrae feels electricity in her marionette controls. Not the electricity that keeps the lights on but rather the juice that a dyed-in-the-wool entertainer feels onstage gazing out at a packed house. McCrae felt it the first time she stepped in front of a crowd with a marionette. “It really, truly was like an electrical circuit,” McCrae recalls….
Awhile ago, a friend gave us some very good advice about men: It’s either on or it’s off. That strategy is so breathtakingly simple that it’s brilliant. Either they want you or they don’t, which is signaled by things like, say, asking you out as opposed to issuing what our friend Cat calls the limp-dicked invite (e.g., “A bunch of…
Motivation is valuable, no matter how you get it,” the photographer Peter Beard once said. “Even by a slap in the face.” It took more than a slap for the Golden Ox (1600 Genessee Street) to get a long overdue cleanup and reorganization. The oldest steakhouse in the city closed last month when owner Jerry Rauschelberg shut the doors to…
My old man spent most of his working life in the wholesale booze business, making calls on restaurants, bars and liquor stores. He liked to throw back a few with his customers, but I only saw him completely intoxicated on a few occasions — all of which ended badly for me, a mouthy and obnoxious teenager. He’d chase after me…
