In our quixotic quest to make Waldo the new Westport, we recently checked out Lew’s Grill & Bar at 75th Street and Wornall Road. We’d heard about it back in May, thanks to a tip from stellar reader Jacki Schmittou, who touted Lew’s martini list and a “mixed atmosphere with UMKC kids and local (single) professionals.” So we recruited one…
About America’s fascination with the all-you-can-eat buffet, Ellen DeGeneres said it best: “We don’t need all-you-can eat! We’re not bears! We don’t hibernate for the winter. When we wake up the next day, we eat the same amount of stuff.” That’s essentially true, unless you’re a yo-yo dieter like me, who eats a healthy salad and a Slim-Fast bar on…
“The Girl From Ipanema” will never lose its allure. The smooth and sultry bossa nova number, from the Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto album Getz/Gilberto, immortalized the dulcet tones of Gilberto’s Brazilian-born wife, Astrud, who wasn’t a professional vocalist and got to sing on the session only because her English was better than her husband’s. It was one of…
SUN 8/1 Other than the fact that both bands formed in Chicago in the 1960s and that they share a bill here Sunday, we can’t figure out what connects Earth, Wind and Fire (pictured) with Chicago. At first we thought maybe this was the Underrated in ’04 Tour. But then we realized that both groups have sold tons of…
MONDAYS Open-mike nights can be brutal. Just try having a relaxing drink with friends while some kook stumbles through “We Are the Champions.” It’s hard to have fun when you’re desperately trying to ignore someone whose misreading of the motivational anthem is so awful that Freddy Mercury himself might any minute rise from the grave to snatch away the…
SUN 8/1 When August rears its ugly head, many of us would rather watch Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns than work out. There are people, however, who actually take pleasure in pushing their bodies to dizzying limits. For these fools more machine than man, we present the Midwest Meltdown. The Meltdown, Sunday at the Kansas Speedway, includes the “Hotter Than…
7/29-8/26 Like the dichotomous blend of structure and improvisation in jazz music, Kansas City: Paris of the Plains, an exhibit at the Kansas City Public Library (14 West 10th Street), moves the viewer from one highlight to another in a current of text and imagery. Described by a flier as a show that remembers when “Kansas City was considered…
The way Walter Mosley tells it, his formula for writing a book is remarkably simple. “I sit down with a character in mind, and wherever that first sentence takes me, that’s where I go,” he tells the Pitch. That first sentence is what drove Mosley, who worked for 15 years as a computer programmer, to write in the first place….
Thursday, July 29 Today the Kansas City Art Institute launches a new artsy-fartsy (in a good way) film program called Digital Lounge. Curators from the H&R Block Artspace choose feature films, documentaries about art and artists and their own favorites from the genres of animation, narrative shorts and videos. Today’s offerings are Werner Herzog’s My Best Friend (1999) at…
The biggest problem with swing dancing is that Hilary Wright can’t do it by herself. Before the Gap seized the retro trend in the late ’90s with a commercial featuring khaki-clad dancers swinging to Louis Prima’s “Jump, Jive and Wail,” Wright didn’t have many peers on the dance floor. “The commercial gave me the opportunity to dance swing even…
Polly Apfelbaum Like any good artist, Polly Apfelbaum makes complex work. But it is also dazzlingly beautiful, which in the past has caused some snooty art-world folk to dismiss it as mere décor. “People don’t want you to deal with beauty,” Apfelbaum says. “I was interested in the decorative arts. I was interested in the everyday. Screw you. If it…
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s Realism and Abstraction: Six Degrees of Separation closes on July 31. The show mixes the museum’s permanent collection with modern and contemporary paintings and sculpture. It’s an effort to ask which is more real: paint creating an illusion of the “real world” on a two-dimensional surface or an abstract work depicting a psychological experience?…
Adulthood, it’s said, is like high school with more toys. The adage ridiculously assumes that the high school experience is unanimously playful, ignoring that percentage of teens who find the locker-partner years akin to psychic water torture. Onstage in the Black Box theater at Johnson County Community College is irrefutable evidence of the scars it leaves behind. Stephen Belber’s…
Kudos to the members of this Brooklyn hardcore-jazz-tech-metal-hip-hop-spazz-out hybrid for coming back for more after a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler. The aftermath of the crash, which caused critical injuries for some of the band members, is documented on the album cover with photos of the band’s demolished van. It may seem like a cheap ploy for sympathy (or macho…
The Fiery Furnaces made its debut in 2003 with the mesmerizing Gallowsbird’s Bark, which promptly slipped through the cracks before regaining steam earlier this year. Lead singer Eleanor Friedberger’s nonsensical prattle sizzled atop eruptions of chortling twin guitars, epileptic piano and pumping synth. But on Blueberry Boat, Friedberger and her brother Matthew decided to put last year’s good-time-on-the-psych-ward boogie through…
Kill Creek will probably never get its own page in rock history. But for some, the band was as meaningful as any of the “important” bands of the ’90s. The Will to Strike is a generous and frustrating two-disc, 45-song gift to those who didn’t snag Creek releases the first time around. Disc one begins with the 1996 watershed Proving…
What’s an avant-metal outfit to do when its seemingly unintelligible brand of hyper-technical harshness leads it to become one of the most celebrated underground acts in the world? And what if it has been almost 5 years since its last full-length, Calculating Infinity — time punctuated by a vocalist change and an EP with Mike Patton? The answer is simple:…
Orinoka Crash Suite is the name John Dwyer files music under when he’s not fronting the Coachwhips, lampooning as Revenge’s drummer or explaining to interviewers why his no-wave duo, Pink & Brown, broke up last year. Left to his own devices, Dwyer brews intimate, fumbled melancholia from banjos, acoustic guitars, samples and whatever odds and ends are nearby at the…
The Beastie Boys were rap pariahs in 1989 when they reached their creative peak with Paul’s Boutique, one of hip-hop’s genuine masterworks. A few years later, Check Your Head changed the game by adding live instrumentation and punk to the mix. Ill Communication repeated the formula, and the Beasties officially began treading water. Hello Nasty was a half-hearted effort bogged…
Brother Ali has built a reputation as a commanding MC, both in the studio with Ant (of Atmosphere) and live (with DJ BK One), providing beats that float like a butterfly as Ali’s tongue-lashings sting like a … you know. And (sigh) yes, the guy is an albino. But skin pigmentation is about all he lacks. Released by Atmosphere’s Rhymesayers…
Power has obviously gone to your head. The punch line to Doris Henson’s most absorbing song should land like an uppercut at this MoveOn.org benefit, with Bush and Cheney suddenly the targets of the previously apolitical barb. Exit Out’s intent (dispensed in violent 2-minute bursts such as “Corporate Fixture” and “Who Cares 2000?”) has always been obvious, but this show’s…
Oh, New Jersey. Some may see you as the redheaded stepchild of New York, but to ska-punk lifers everywhere, you’ll always be bridge-and-tunnel beautiful. After all, you gave us Catch-22. and One Cool Guy. And between those bands, you gave us Streetlight Manifesto — a six-piece implosion of horns, bass, drums, guitar and, oh, those rapid-fire punk vocals. Streetlight’s lineup…
It naturally follows that Darryl White, professor of trumpet at the University of Nebraska, would take a break from his day job and bring his quintet south to make a live record, especially with local sax hero Bobby Watson pitching in. A 9-year-old White first fell in love with the trumpet when he saw Louis Armstrong play on TV, and…
Junior Brown made a name for himself by blasting out lightning-paced country tunes that recalled the topical roots of the genre — getting drunk, dodging cops (often unsuccessfully) and surviving heartache. Armed with his famous “guit-steel” (a hybrid between a traditional six-string and a steel guitar that was invented by Brown one night in his sleep) and a voice as…
