SAT 2/7 Finding something fun to do outside in February is nearly impossible. It’s too damned cold. Sledding is an obvious choice for maximum fun, but unless you do yoga or stretch regularly, you’re going to get real sore hiking back up those hills after every turn. The last time it snowed, we temporarily located our inner child and got…
2/7-4/18 Back in the mid-1800s, lawyer-turned-artist George Catlin invented the idea of a national park. He dreamed of a “Nation’s Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty.” It was a last-ditch attempt to save the Native Americans and their culture from the swiftly approaching white settlers and the destruction they brought. In…
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, when you walk into the new location for the midtwentieth-century furniture store Retro Inferno, you might think to yourself, My, that certainly is a stairway of unusual proportions. And you wouldn’t be the first. A 1964 article in The Kansas City Star announcing the construction of the building at Truman Road and Grand described the…
Thursday, February 5, 2004 We’re glad we have an Evaporated Milk Society in this town. The integral nature of evaporated milk in many fantastic baking recipes cannot be underestimated. We would be a little more likely to join a society honoring sweetened condensed milk, but that’s just because it tastes so damned good in a refreshing glass of iced coffee….
Rick Bilger doesn’t know what’s going to happen at the Hurricane this Monday. That doesn’t sound like much of a problem until you consider that he’s the promoter behind that night’s one-off collaboration between the weekly Essence open-mic night and his Chop Shop producers’ forum. “You can’t predict what’s going to happen at a Chop Shop,” Bilger says. It’s hard…
If the naked, mixed-gender ménage à trois on the eye-catching poster for Minds Eye Theatre’s production of Albert Camus’ Caligula doesn’t draw audiences, theater is in trouble. Sex sells, as Donald Trump’s girls-versus-boys reality show The Apprentice has made abundantly clear, but there has to be more than skin. You need a slap and a tickle, neither of which Caligula…
Gary Zimmerman’s brilliant and provocative Metamorphoses evokes a compilation of classic songs that have been energetically remixed. Like the Verve label’s issue of old jazz standards tweaked by hot DJs, the show has the gravitas of the old — the myths of Ovid, in this case — throbbing with new beats. Imagine Narcissus as a barista in a stocking…
Davin Watne, the curator of Alias, promised the artists in his show that he would never reveal who they really were. The videographers, photographers, painters, sculptors and other artists assumed other identities to create their work. At the show’s January 16 opening, visitors’ guesses totally missed their marks, Watne says, while the artists could have been standing a few…
Young Ani DiFranco was all nervous energy and open wounds. She fingerpicked and hard-strummed tales of radiant joy and smoldering hurt. But comfort is never as interesting as conflict, and DiFranco as a married woman — jamming out a good time with a full band of friends — seldom held a candle to the raw work of a single girl…
Fantomas has committed commercial suicide by releasing a single 75-minute track for its third album. But oh, what a track it is. Writing about this disc is like trying to review a madman’s dream — rewarding, but very strenuous. Fantomas (vocalist Mike Patton, guitarist Buzz Osborne, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Dave Lombardo) scores what could be a horror film…
After the apocalypse, say in ten years, you’re going to be drilling for the last dredges of crude oil in post-apocalyptic Prairie Village when you happen upon Grammy Nominees 2004. You will give the album a spin and groan. You’ll say, “Shit, not these songs again.” Then you’ll hear Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River,” contemplate suicide and look around…
This album might have saved my life. Indeed, had I not possessed the CD case to Beginners, I never would have scraped enough ice off my windshield to drive home at 3 a.m. on a recent wintry night. Big ups to Mr. Cox for the kick-ass ice scraper. The music’s not bad, either. In the pursuit of epic variety, Beginners…
Do you dig outsider music? You know, the kind of music in which shaky instrumental technique and tone-deaf singing reign supreme and the fidelity is lower than Lou Barlow’s first practice session? Fond of naive worldviews and childlike takes on love? Enjoy simple melodies and tender-pathetic lyrics about unrequited love and cigarette butts? Then you need to check out Daniel…
Westside Connection, please proceed to the next blue courtesy phone. Hello? Yes, 1996 called and said for y’all to stop this foolishness and come on home. Has it really been eight years since this gangsta-rap “supergroup” released Bow Down? So it has. Next question: Who the hell even asked for a follow-up? Not me. It would have been far better…
Christian death metal? It’s actually not a new concept. One could even argue that this music is almost meditative. (I’m still waiting for Buddhist death metal. If it hasn’t happened already, it will.) But a band intent on expressing its spirituality with thought that also has the guts to tour with outspoken anti-Christian acts such as Six Feet Under…
Everyone loves Patty Larkin. Except maybe you. Who the hell is she, you wonder? Ask Michael Stipe. He gave Larkin a shout on R.E.M.’s “Star 69.” Or check with Cher, Holly Cole or any of the numerous artists who have covered Larkin tunes. You can also find Larkin’s alt-folk creations in Harrison Ford and Julianne Moore movies. Hell, the…
Having rocked Craig Kilborn’s Late Late Show last November and gotten a taste of national television exposure, it seems that Cowboy Mouth has gone junkie and started jonesing for another hit of that sweet, sweet promotional crack. Thus, the roots-influenced singing-drummer quartet (best known for “Jenny Says,” from its 1996 album, Are You With Me?) is asking its fans,…
It’s difficult to convert one’s name into a clever anagram, but it’s even more intellectually trying to rearrange the letters until they form an apt critical description of one’s musical stylings. Adam Pierce accomplished this alphabetic anomaly with Mice Parade, which indeed sounds like a festive procession of scampering rodents. From the pitter-patter drum-breaks to the faint, squeaky vocals on…
The lead singer gets all the chicks. The lead guitarist gets all the props. The drummer gets all the mystique. The bass player gets … whatever’s leftover. Seriously. When’s the last time somebody talked about knighting Bill Wyman? Everyone drools over Mick Jagger or the Crypt Keeper formerly known as Keith Richards. Even that one-armed dude from Def Leppard…
Apparently Josh Groban is hot shit, one of those darling little vocalists you’ve never really noticed but are supposed to hyperventilate about for some reason. Evidently Groban’s latest album, Closer, recently topped the pop charts while I was brushing my teeth, taking out the trash, clipping my toenails and listening to last month’s flavor. Aw, gosh — Josh seems to…
The Prairie Dogg finds the dirt on Sugar Ray, a Venezuelan coup and the longest tour ever with Robert “Bucket” Hingley of the Toasters. PD: How long have you been on the road? RH: It’s been 23 years now. We’ll play our 4,000th concert this year. Which averages out per year to … well, that’s something for the punters to…
Fuck Lawrence. I’m not being cute. Or flippant. Or showering you with salacious shrapnel by tossing a gratuitous f-bomb. If I was after shock value, I could accomplish a lot more by poking fun at cripples or commenting on the confluence of necrophilia and narcolepsy. Besides, I didn’t say it. Mac Lethal did. “Fuck Lawrence,” Mac shouted. “Come on, Kansas…
O’Shea Jackson 5010 11th Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90043 Dear O’Shea, I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson. You were for real. I don’t mean to make you or your daughter cry. I apologize a trillion times. But you’ve fallen off. And today is not a good day. I saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp, and they read: “Ice Cube’s a wimp.”…
It’s always something,” says a laughing Derek Miller through a dying cell phone. “Every time we release a record, it’s always, ‘What the fuck happened?’” Such is the life of a guitarist for one of the world’s most beloved — and hated — hardcore bands. If you listen only to the first forty seconds of any song from Poison the…
