SAT 12/13 Although the Banjo Ghost looks a lot like Randy at Music Exchange, he’s someone else — in spirit. That’s why he goes by the name Banjo Ghost, not Randy, when performing. “When I play the banjo, I feel like it’s someone else doing it,” he says. “It’s like the ghost comes upon me.” The Banjo Ghost plays an…
WED 12/17 Last year’s Bentley Film Festival — for which brave souls turned in undeveloped 8-millimeter film they had shot and didn’t see the results until the audience did — was nerve-racking for Kit Shea. She had never made a movie. “I just sat there and drank the whole time,” she says with a hearty laugh.What did she think when…
ONGOING top hiding the fact that marbles are toys — and not just decorative items displayed in glass vases — from your kids. All those marbles sitting on tabletops, and you’ve never mentioned games like Groundhog, Pyramids and Off the Wall?They’re not electronic, and they come without theme music, but marbles can still provide hours of entertainment for kids old…
ONGOING People who don’t play golf avoid it for a reason, and that reason is usually that golf is just a lame country-club sport for the rich. Also, golfers wear some jacked-up gear.But if it’s cool enough for Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper and Glen Campbell, then there’s gotta be something more to it than smacking a dimpled ball. Does the…
ONGOING “It’s 2:30 in the morning, and there’s a drunk guy who just threw up in the bathroom, and we’re eating greasy, filthy numbers at Chubby’s, and I’m thinking, Merry Christmas!” exclaims Stephanie Agin.Agin, the visual manager at Anthropologie (531 Nichols Road on the Plaza), is sitting with her team in the shop’s basement, recounting a dinner break during the…
Back in the mid-’80s, darts were huge in Kansas City. Then technology came along and changed everything. “There used to be dart bars everywhere. There was even a league team in Lawrence,” says Bill Pittman, a Kansas City firefighter and darts organizer. “The electronic dartboards have taken a number of players from the steel-tip leagues.” The plugged-in dartboards — with…
Thursday, December 11, 2003 There’s a Curtis Mayfield song called “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Gonna Go.” In that case, we’ll just come right out and say it: Nuns horrify us. It probably has a lot to do with Sister Mary, the teacher who scared the bejesus out of us in the first grade. A lifetime…
Those white male painters were so clever. Had they never come along, ladies would probably still be making pictures by needlepoint, unaware that paintbrushes were available. Thanks also to Larry Flynt, for showing us the clitoris. Who would ever have guessed where it was without him? Well, wait. Some people don’t see anything wrong with using embroidery to create textured,…
This being the end of the year, and since none of the people I wanted to write about this week felt it necessary to return any of my calls, from the leftover heap comes this collection of random topics I considered tackling this year but lost interest in after 200 or so words. This is the assembled errata in…
If you think the marriage of James Carville and Mary Matalin makes for strange bedfellows, think about the task of actor Cheryl Weaver, who plays politically opposite twin sisters in the Unicorn Theatre’s zesty romp The Mineola Twins. At least the Carvilles likely have a spare room for when things get ugly. Paula Vogel’s comedic tour de force, directed with…
Right from the opening track of Late Night With Conan O’Brien trumpeter Mark Pender’s debut disc, there’s little doubt you’re in for a funky ride. I’m excessive, it’s just the way I feel/Excessive, you know the deal, Pender belts. Though excessive might not be the right word to describe the buoyant brassman and Kansas City native — effusive is more…
The Dave Matthews Band has always been a favored “too” target of elitist music geeks — too corporate, too banal, too many frat boys in the audience. Those criticisms have merit, but the cool kids refuse to concede that the band is an engaging live act that’s amassed a strong catalog of worthwhile material. Billed as Matthews’ solo debut, Some…
If ghostwriting and hands-on hit making ever become as de rigueur in the world of mainstream rock as they are in hip-hop, NYC’s Darediablo stands to rake in some serious coin. Feeding Frenzy sounds less like standard issue bracing, overintellectualized Southern Records fare than it does the guitar-drums-keyboards equivalent of one of Kanye West’s beats-for-sale CD-Rs. Somewhere, an A&R rep…
Most DJ compilations are rush CD-R jobs that your thirteen-year-old brother could have burned in the garage with a Playstation 2, destined for short lives as fancy beer coasters. Lawrence mixologist Josh Powers pressed all of 500 copies for the first, and likely only, edition of Sceneboostersoundsystem, Volume 1. But Powers succeeds where others have failed by taking time to…
Bonus Album was an unfortunately apt title for the Blow’s 2002 debut. How better to describe what amounted to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hodgepodge of Olympian folk and nursery-school rhyming topped with a listless Wolf Colonel cover? The Concussive Caress finds Blow nucleus Khaela Maricich giving her musical vision more dimension and, thanks to a newfound fascination with jagged keyboards and organs,…
Ludacris doesn’t give a rat’s ass if Bill O’Reilly finds him tasteless, which is why the Atlanta rapper uses the conservative windbag for cannon fodder on his third full-length effort. Last year, Luda was dropped by Pepsi after the right-wing blowhard made an on-air stink about the rapper’s endorsement deal. O’Reilly won the battle, but Luda clearly intends to win…
Free dope and porking in the streets! Well, not quite. But the second installment of the United Tour, the inspiration of Pigface and Invisible Records founder Martin Atkins, serves up the next best thing in the form of heaping helpings of chaos and apocalyptic release, not to mention noise. A kind of traveling circus for underground bang-and-clang enthusiasts who need…
On December 16, 2003, Matt Davis (pictured) would have turned 27. The Wichita native and Ten Grand singer died of a seizure in August, but several of the musicians he toured with will pay tribute to Davis on his birthday with a series of shows. There are eight gigs in all, in venues from California to Chicago. The Lawrence…
Mannheim Steamroller’s enduring popularity is as perplexing as it is disturbing. The brainchild of one Chip Davis, an Ohio native who eventually settled in Omaha, Nebraska, the Steamroller uses Davis’ new age deconstructions of Christmas carols to sound like Howard Jones whooping it up during a solemn midnight mass. Cheesy keyboards, hymnal organs and computerized rhythms bursting with dramatic…
Does anyone, especially someone who lives here, need two more versions of “Kansas City”? When the recording artist in question is Jay McShann, the answer is: absolutely. On his 2003 release Goin’ to Kansas City, the 87-year-old vocalist and pianist joins with guitarist Duke Robillard, who turns in a surprisingly subtle supporting performance, and fellow legend Johnnie Johnson, whose duets…
The blues has always been a family affair for the Vaughan brothers. In a genre that defines itself on pedigrees that can be traced back to elder statesmen such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, Jimmie Vaughan is bound by bloodline to arguably the most influential modern master. Though three years older than his late brother Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie…
Leon Russell is a man who knows the value of proper hair care. Does Leon deep-condition? Hell yeah, he deep-conditions. Does Leon blow-dry? Hell no, he don’t blow-dry. Would Leon be caught within 100 yards of a synthetic bristle brush? Shit no! He heat-masks, he seaweed-wraps, he trims split ends with teensy scissors. He never succumbs to fads of crimping,…
We have a lot of time metaphors to work with here. Let’s see … the Clocks have stopped? Maybe. The Clocks are running late? Perhaps. The Clocks are almost out of time? Keep talking. But first, we have to turn back the clocks to 1983. Reagan is in the White House munching jelly beans and mumbling incoherently. Ah-nold is Conan…
rtlenecks in buzz, but much that was said about the Stills above also rings true for the Prids. The trio has origins in a St. Joseph band called Death Tech for Teens. The group resurfaced in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was a staple of the Omaha scene that produced the Faint and Bright Eyes. It then took a sharp left and…
