Like innocents in Eden, garage-band devotees will face glorious temptation when this hell-bent retro-rock trio slithers in from St. Louis. Clearly nothing is sacred to these men. Brandishing menacing stage names — Mick Viper, Johnny Venom — and toilet jokes for album titles (It Came From Uranus), Thee Lordly Serpents certainly won’t be winning any humanitarian honors this year. But…
The Stills are up to their perfectly mussed hair in bourdonner. That’s buzz to moi and te. The Quebec quartet hailing from the ville of Montreal has hit the pages of Spin, Blender and Rolling Stone as one of those heat-seeking harbingers of what’s hot in the fickle environs of the music world. Canada’s answer to Interpol has hobnobbed on…
The Prairie Dogg finds the dirt on sex, drugs and the History Channel with Something Corporate guitarist Josh Partington. PD: I just talked with Arvis, the tour manager. Are you jealous you don’t have a kick-ass name like Arvis? JP: Arvis is a pretty great name. Clutch is also a great name. How did Clutch join the one-name ranks? People…
Stacy’s mom has a penis. This may surprise you, it may shock Stacy, and it really might fuck with Stacy’s dad, but it’s not exactly stop-the-presses material at KRBZ 96.5 (the Buzz). Probably because it gave her the penis. The Entercom radio station has also been sticking it to its rivals at Infinity Broadcasting’s KMXV 93.3 (Mix 93) with increasing…
Adam “Superargo” Jeffers was having a tough night. Playing his first live show as a solo electronic artist, he had hauled his desktop computer to the venue, only to find that the sound wouldn’t translate from the hard drive to the stage. The drum tracks disappeared, and a buzzing noise swarmed over the songs. The slide projector, stocked with…
Punk isn’t dead; it’s just waking up. It’s 2 p.m., and Chris Barker is yawning away the cobwebs from last night’s show. In a few hours, the Anti-Flag bassist will face another fist-pumping audience at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina. Another city. Another crowd. Another tinderbox to set ablaze. He just woke up, but Barker isn’t cranky, which…
Remember the Farrelly brothers? Makers of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary? Known for crossing the line of good taste and making fun of the differently abled, but with a sweet streak sufficient to be forgiven? Kinda popular until Trey Parker and Matt Stone came along and one-upped them in every way? Well, they’re back, and that sweet…
omething’s Gotta Give is designed to appeal to older women, and it very likely will. Diane Keaton gives a good performance in it as a postmenopausal playwright who gets back in touch with her libido. The movie will probably make lots of money. Not that it deserves to. Everything about Something’s Gotta Give can be deduced by looking at…
Art of the deal: In response to Theresa Bembnister’s “Sold!” (December 4), I would just like to state that I am a second-semester junior in the painting department at the Kansas City Art Institute, and I can safely say there is nothing unappealing about the painting department’s show/sale. Sorry if we don’t all make $20 mugs, but as a former…
Local Laura Bush protester Bill Douglas is getting a lot of attention for his bold stand against the First Lady this past September. The t’ai chi instructor and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to T’ai Chi & QiGong was arrested on September 16 while trying to cross Washington Street on his way to protest Mrs. Bush’s visit to St….
Westport’s XO Club stands to lose its 3 a.m. liquor license now that Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John O’Malley has ruled in favor of a neighborhood association that claimed the nightclub was a public nuisance. Now comes the real buzz kill: Partying past 1:30 a.m. anywhere in Westport could eventually be illegal. For Jim Grow, the president of Westport…
Venus begins to orbit Keith Ashman, and suddenly the evening enters another dimension. For an hour, the long-haired, chain-smoking Englishman has been scribbling notes and carrying on a conversation in a dingy booth at the downtown bar Benders. Except for the loud music that makes it necessary to shout and the beer sloshing out of glasses on the unsteady table,…
Regular readers of this column might have noticed our penchant for acronyms, such as GNG (gay/not gay) and GNO (girls’ night out). Acronyms are cryptically fun and efficient! However, the most important one in our repertoire — the one that spawned our whole acronym craze — is WC. No, not water closet. Work Crush. The name is self-explanatory. It’s the…
Two weeks ago I wrote about two restaurants that had closed, Scavuzzo’s and the Golden Ox. This week I’m cheerier — despite the crappy economy and the sluggish restaurant business, the downtown Golden Ox reopened, and new places are still planning to open. That certainly makes my job easier, because I occasionally have a nightmare that every restaurant in Kansas…
was driving south on Ward Parkway several weeks ago when I glimpsed the word Red out of the corner of my eye. A new Red Lobster near Ward Parkway, I thought. What an inspired idea! Later that evening, driving back from the movie, I noticed that the new place wasn’t one of the chain seafood restaurants at all but rather…
SUN 12/7 Jordan Wax is what one might call a Jewbilly. The 21-year-old musician from the Ozark borderlands — who performs in both a Cajun band and an old-time string band — started the People’s Republic of Klezmerica. He’s excited because that band is getting ready to put out an album called Shalom, Y’all, a phrase too strange to contemplate….
12/6-12/7 Staying true to the holiday season, members of the Heartland Men’s Chorus sample all things “Angel” during this weekend’s concerts at the Folly Theater, 300 West 12th Street. Executive Director Rick Fisher says “Angel” promises “a wide range of music, from chant to pop … a real traditional holiday show with the stuff people want to hear.” And,…
SUN 12/7 Nothing says “overdoing it for the holidays” like having your pet’s picture taken with Santa Claus. But, hey, if the kids are into it and the dog doesn’t bite, it’s all good.It seems that one of the elves got away from Santa’s North Pole compound and ended up at the Lawrence Humane Society (1805 East 19th Street). Following…
SAT 12/6 Jon Beltram, the sensei in charge of Kansas City Shotokan (2026 Broadway, 816-421-1110) is a hefty man, but he doesn’t belittle the little people. He insists that karate is a martial art that works if you use it correctly, even if you’re smaller than your opponent. Note to the slope-shouldered: He’s not making this up. Do not, in…
12/5-12/28 Playwright Paula Vogel and the Unicorn Theatre have kept close quarters for a while. The theater’s past productions of the riveting The Baltimore Waltz and the troubling How I Learned to Drive hint that Vogel is its reliable go-to gal.So is Cheryl Weaver, who stars in The Mineola Twins, opening this week. “It’s fantastical and absurd,” Weaver says. “And…
The work is rewarding, the atmosphere is great, and I just love my coworkers. Ask most people about their jobs, and this is the answer you’re likely to get, along with some eye-rolling. But Julie Smith isn’t like most people. Every day, this Boulevard Beer hospitality coordinator wakes up feeling excited to go to work. Aside from recovering alcoholics, who…
Thursday, December 4, 2003 With another election right around the corner in 2004, you’d better listen to what commentators have to say about the candidates. Especially if you plan to vote for one of those Democrats, who are beginning to remind us of chocolates in a box — yes, they look similar, but which ones are filled with sweet, marshmallowy…
In the lobby of the Sheffield Family Life Center, one of Pastor Fel Bagunu’s congregants alerts him that a gun is missing. Normally, this would be grounds for concern. But in this case, guns are props in the holiday production of the postrapture play Tribulation Christmas, so it just means that one of the Antichrist’s soldiers will have to…
A pissy Paris restaurant in 1961 is the setting for Michael Hollinger’s comedy An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Boeuf, staged by the TBA Players at Just Off Broadway. The staff is in a tizzy about the impending arrival of Victor (Walter Winch), a regular who never fails to entertain his servers with tales of lush globe-trotting. He…
