The Strip is grateful that Congressman Sam Graves has helped this meat patty understand the feel-good side of biological evolution. Here this tenderloin was under the impression that the animal kingdom was taking a beating from humanity and its polluting, development-crazy ways. But no, it turns out all the hand-wringin’ over disappearing animal species has been a waste of time,…
Social Distortion, one of the most prolific and influential groups in American underground-rock history, established the pop-punk template that more polished outfits such as Green Day and Offspring would eventually convert into multiplatinum success. It later settled into a grizzled country-punk hybrid, best exemplified by its 1990 hit cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” The group celebrates its 25th…
He ran the first part of the scam solo. Twenty-year-old Wayne Giles started working inside the 6,000-square-foot, black-lighted video cave at the Great Wolf Lodge near the Kansas Speedway last August. As an arcade tech, his job was to walk the parlor floor, collecting tokens from more than 100 machines and fixing tilted games. The scene was familiar. Over the…
If there’s one trend that we thought would have died by now, it’s the mania for all things ’80s. But nooo — VH1’s I Love the ’80s Strikes Back is still sucking us in, and even though our own Have a Nice Day Café closed, other retro bars flourish elsewhere. So say what you want about the nostalgia factor or…
had never heard of the Hotel Albany before I ran across a faded photograph of the 19th-century building that once stood at the corner of Ninth Street and Charlotte. The photograph, probably from 1900, revealed a gorgeous brick structure, designed by Louis Curtiss. From a balcony hung one modest sign with the words Chop Suey. It just proves that some…
I’ve always had the hots for hotels. I like the concept of room service, beds magically turned down at night, fresh towels every morning and the sense of mystery that comes from sleeping in a strange bed in an unfamiliar room. I love hotel dining rooms, too. There was a time when some of the best restaurants in any town…
For more Kansas Citians than we can count, St. Patrick’s Day is among the year’s most sacred holidays. Not all employers share that opinion, though, and when the holy March 17 falls on a weekday, not everyone is lucky enough to get the day off. Revelers ourselves, we’ve been wondering how a hardworking leprechaun might stay in his boss’s good…
SUN 3/14 Two things you’d expect Darren Keen to have learned from his year touring the country as a cornhusking hip-hop destroyer: (1) Do not fight the opening act. Even if the group is called Dirty Virgin Deluxe. Even if the band members are being rude during your set. Even if you’re performing in Lubbock, Texas. Do not smack the…
3/11-5/23 In the rush to document the cuteness of your friend’s newborn baby, you begin taking pictures over a previously exposed roll of film. Two weeks and a trip to the Fotomat later, your mistake reveals itself with a stack of half-dog, half-baby photos. Upon contemplating this eerie composite, you recall that, prior to the infant snapshot session, you were…
3/11-6/3 Lewis and Clark weren’t dummies. They knew they were going to need a big, fluffy friend to accompany them on their tireless journey into the unknown. Before heading off to search for the fabled Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis purchased a dog for $20 and named him Seaman. There is no record in Lewis’ journals of the canine’s color or…
SAT 3/13 There is perhaps no holiday more anathema to the long-distance run than St. Patrick’s Day. That is, unless you consider that both the athletic event and the drinking holiday require special forms of endurance and that both can turn you unnatural shades of green. Or unless you think that being drunk might help you overcome a fear of…
3/11-3/31 In 1968, popular uprising was the thing to do. One of that year’s least understood was the Czech resistance to the Soviet occupation of Prague. The new leader of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party was unbuttoning the government’s top buttons, relaxing it just enough to allow more freedom in the arts and such. But the party’s older, more conservative element, unhappy…
Every current reality show has a better program as its template. The early-’80s version of American Idol, for example, was Star Search. And for every performer who went down in flames on that show, there was a winning comic like Rosie O’Donnell or an impressive singer like Sam Harris. With his gravity-defying hair, oversized clothes and soaring renditions of such…
Thursday, March 11, 2004 Beware the question-and-answer session that mysteriously transforms into a platform for shameless self-promotion. It seems almost impossible for some audience members to ask simple questions of a speaker without somehow relating the query back to themselves. We shuddered in vicarious shame at UMKC last month as a line of aspiring entertainers babbled on about themselves in…
Moviemaking became a misguided medium not long after the birth of film. With the opening salvo of D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, movies trafficked in the stereotypical images of African-Americans as servants, minstrels and other equally racist amalgams. Movies shifted with the culture, and advertisements papering theater lobbies transformed as well. Close Up in Black premieres this…
Imagine an ambitious show with a massive scope — nothing less than the entire history of the blues, from its roots in Africa to its pervasive influence today. Wouldn’t that be terrific? Well, keep dreaming. Because It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues, the Missouri Repertory Theatre’s latest import, which purports to accomplish just that kind of sweeping scale, ain’t…
At the Kansas City Art Institute, students spend long hours working in their departments’ studios — painters with painters, ceramists with ceramists, illustrators with illustrators — a setup ideal for forming close friendships between artists working in the same medium. After spending four years on a campus of 500 students, it’s possible to go through graduation ceremonies certain that…
Mylab is one of those albums that gives eclecticism a good name while refuting the axiom that too many cooks spoil the broth. Veteran avant-garde keyboardist Wayne Horvitz (Zony Mash, John Zorn) and studio sorcerer Tucker Martine have gathered fourteen of their closest musician friends (including Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang, Bobby Previte, and Skerik) to forge a sonic travelogue that…
Wendell and Sherman Holmes and their soul brother Popsy Dixon have been making music longer than most of their fans have been alive. The group spent 25 years backing the likes of John Lee Hooker, Clyde McPhatter and Jerry Butler before its belated recording debut arrived in 1990. That experience has been evident on the Brothers’ half-dozen releases since, but…
It’s early, but I’m nominating this album as 2004’s feel-bad dorm-sex debut. The Dots come on hot and heavy, sounding just like what you’d expect from a no-bass garage trio made up of former Slant 6 and Bikini Kill members. But soon, half-articulated feelings of pain have killed the early buzz and the album blooms into something more interesting, something…
Ticket-clutching Microphones fans anticipating an assaultive live show full of the clattering drums, lightning-bolt electric guitars and coed harmonies found on record are often surprised to be greeted only by head Microphone Phil Elvrum with little more than an acoustic guitar to keep him company. Stripped of Elvrum’s nylon-string maelstrom, we’re left with his unsteady voice, constellations of bum notes…
This album should come with an alarm clock and a straitjacket. Given the barbiturate-slow tempos and haunting atmospheres it conjures, one-third of listeners will likely be lulled into slumber and another third driven mad with deranged cosmic visions. But if you can stay awake and sane, you’ll find that the cult-favorite French duo has assembled a tolerable palette of laid-back,…
Incubus finds itself in full-blown Beard Mode well past the midway point of its lauded career. Beard Mode can’t be helped. It’s an inevitability for any rock band with a shelf life of more than three albums. Beard Mode generally kicks in when an ego-swelling mixture of critical raves, designer drugs and platinum sales transforms a brash garage act into…
First, Phantom Planet was That Band With Rushmore’s Jason Schwartzman on Drums. Then the quintet scored notoriety for proving a three-minute pop gem could be edited to thirty seconds for a television theme and lose exactly zero key elements. That’s what happened when “California,” the piano-laced opener from 2002’s The Guest, became the theme song for Fox sensation The O.C….
