The old Italian ball-tossing sport known as bocce is becoming hipper by the year. Prada makes bocce sets. So does Restoration Hardware. Ebay is a gold mine of vintage sets that come with classy, rounded-vinyl or canvas totes. Are these replacing bowling-ball bags as the new geri-inspired fashion accessory? We think so. Martini-swilling twenty- and thirtysomethings have long enjoyed bocce…
Pardon! We didn’t mean to tease you with tales of Parisian holidays. If you aren’t able to vacation abroad this summer and Bastille Day leaves you wanting more, here are some places where you might be able to get a taste of the pastry shop on Montparnasse, the cheese-and-wine picnic in Tuscany or even the beer-and-kilt in Scotland — if…
Barbara Rafael hasn’t figured out all of the details for this year’s Bastille Day celebration at Le Fou Frog, her cozy, authentic French café on the eastern edge of the River Market. She’s certain, however, that she won’t be spending the day dressed as Marie Freaking Antoinette. She did that the first year the restaurant was open. Big, poofy, lace-up…
The buzz of the lawn mower, the smell of twilight perfumed with lighter fluid and charcoal — ’tis the season to throw backyard parties. Unless you live in an apartment, right? Take comfort, loft lovers. You need no longer grouse on the sidelines pretending you are the one person on earth who does not love the aroma of a…
Let’s get this out in the open: Some people just aren’t into the Fourth of July. That doesn’t mean they don’t value sovereign nationhood. They simply recognize that the way most Americans celebrate this holiday lacks taste. Stars and stripes on toothpicks. Crowds of sweat-drenched shorts-wearers. Events hosted by local television personalities. Limp windsocks. And then there are fireworks. Maybe…
SAT 5/22 So, the Three Tenors — you know, Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and the third guy of Seinfeld fame — are old. Sure, they’re talented and all, but … they’re old. And they aren’t really reaching out to a younger demographic, which is sort of necessary if they want to keep their genre thriving a few years from…
SAT 5/22 To some, the word benefit might conjure up images of snooty, black-tie events involving gargantuan ticket prices. Happily, for the approximately 89 percent of us who can’t afford such highfalutin shindigs, there is a less fancy-schmancy affair for the masses on May 22, when the hipster triad of Birdies (a specialty undergarment shop), Second Honeymoon (vintage clothing)…
5/20 & 5/24As much as we hate to admit it, the Royals aren’t exactly off to a stellar start. For die-hard fans, there is no alternative to hunkering down at Kauffman Stadium and hoping for the best. But for baseball fans with not-so-intense allegiances to Major League Baseball, who just want a good time in a nice atmosphere at a…
SAT 5/22 Ever wish you understood brains better? Specifically, the mush inhabiting the head of that attractive person you met on Friday night who still hasn’t called? Maybe you’ll find answers at Brain: The World Inside Your Head, the latest exhibit at Union Station (30 West Pershing Road). It opens Saturday. The exhibit displays a real human brain, and…
Creating public art is a difficult task. An artist typically has one chance to manufacture a single creation that effectively summarizes what he or she wants to say about experience, environment, or … flying horses. This year’s fifth annual Avenue of the Arts lets six artists take a shot. For “Cowboys and Indians,” Laura Berman, a printmaking instructor at…
Thursday, May 20 Tonight is Young Friends of Art’s latest offering — Sip n’ Shop. They’ve actually managed to combine our two very favorite hobbies (um, OK … so they’re our only hobbies). The event starts at 5:30 p.m. at Aixois (301 East 55th Street) and goes until 8 p.m. at the Crestwood Shops (55th Street between Oak Street and…
Big Noise wants to put a new perspective on your daily dose of war. “Everything about the way the corporate media shows us conflict is about distance, is about creating distance between us and the things that we’re seeing,” says Rick Rowley, founding member of the Big Noise Collective, a volunteer, nonprofit media coalition based in New York. The collective…
Blue/Orange The Unicorn Theatre takes on race and medical bureaucracy in British playwright James Penhall’s preachy Blue/Orange. The arguments between two psychiatrists (one rivetingly played by Brian Paulette) about a black patient on the cusp of discharge aren’t without merit, but Penhall stuffs too many issues in the bag without giving any one of them fair play. Jamaly Allen’s…
The African Art Experience It isn’t often that Kansas City audiences have a chance to see a collection of non-Western art as diverse as the one on display at the Belger Arts Center. The majority of the pieces in The African Art Experience are three-dimensional objects made of wood, clay, metal or natural materials such as woven and dyed textiles….
From the band’s name to its kitschy, gory album cover to calling its frontwoman Nekroman, Horrorpops risks coming off like warmed-over Cramps. Unless you pop the disc in, of course, in which case you’ll learn the group rocks like God on fire. These good-spirited, dog-collared perfectionists sweat over every headlong punk riff and yell-along backing vocal. Nekroman boasts a great,…
Well, whatever, Never-Never Land. This ain’t no tweehouse fort. This ain’t no Disney-go-round. But savvy counselors at a cult day camp might broadcast Sung Tongs over the PA during ‘shrooms-and-cookies hour. Animal Collective’s fuzzy-wuzzy instigators, Avey Tare and Panda Bear, sacrifice folk, cracked Beach Boys vinyl, Hawaiian skirts, tribalistic hoo-ha and sanity in the service of what can only be…
This oddest entry in the !K7 label’s acclaimed DJ-Kicks series is marred by mediocre mixing and awkward segues; its auteur — Norwegian Erlend Oye — never touches a cross-fader or adjusts the pitch control. Instead, the geeky Kings of Convenience singer selects tracks and sings over several of them in a modest Nordic voice that coats everything in a gray-matte…
Kudos to Zero 7, the British production duo of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker (old chums of Nigel Godrich; all three were apprentice studio rats together), for having the guts to make an album that shifts into seriously down-tempo gear and stays there. We’re talking really slow and really somber. As a result, When It Falls may be too challenging…
Lineup changes are a bitch. Just ask Fear Factory, the Los Angeles quartet that helped pioneer the now moldy concept of mixing industrial with full-throttle metal. But after a string of relatively successful releases, the Factory splintered a few years ago, and all its members have since spiraled into side-project purgatory. Last year, the outfit reformed (minus longtime guitarist and…
Written during homeless stretches in Alabama and California and recorded in Kentucky (hence the title), Brightblack’s first album ventures to precisely those places. Long canopies of pedal-steel drone overhead as Brightblack principals Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes move slowly through guitar and piano riffs, harmonizing like malnourished drifters who remain hopeful despite weathering a few too many sudden squalls and…
The posse album is an enduring hip-hop tradition that shows little sign of going away — no matter how hard we wish it would. No one actually believes that yawnfests from G-Unit, St. Lunatics or D12 are better than anything issued by the rap superstars who made their existence possible, but they give the superstars in question platinum for their…
Fred Eaglesmith looks and sounds like a man who’d be as comfortable onstage as he would with the logistics of detangling a busted serpentine belt on a ’78 Ford pickup. A rural, working-class (his latest album’s called Balin’) alt-country songwriter from Ontario, Eaglesmith wears his love for normal folks as comfortably as Tom T. Hall ever did. And like compatriot…
Quirky Japanese-chick punk is practically a genre unto itself. And like a three-headed Hello Kitty cartoon come to life, Ex-Girl rocks and reels and rambles its way into your heart with a smile and a song. The trio sports funny little costumes made up of everything from rubber wigs and frog-head masks to funky flowerpot dresses, and its sunny ditties…
Just as the words colour and color don’t mean quite the same thing, there are no American analogs to Syd Barrett, XTC, Robyn Hitchcock, David Sylvian or the Legendary Pink Dots (acid reference almost certain). The Pink Dots emerged from England in 1980, moved to Amsterdam (legal cannabis influence almost certain) and began to release wild and weird album…
