Thanks a bunch, Sting and Annie Lennox. You two have collectively crapped all over the rumor we started — the one that claimed you guys were the same high-cheekboned, clipped-haired, tantalizingly tantric person. Just had to put your heads together and come up with a powerhouse concert pairing, didn’t you? Bloody hell. Ah, well. We always knew the rumor didn’t…
Rufus Wainwright has taken to joining Ben Folds onstage lately to cover “Careless Whisper.” But even though the prospect of this latter-day George Michael and Andrew Ridgely is exciting, local Wham purists shouldn’t start inking protest signs just yet. Wainwright’s last stop on the tour comes just before Folds rolls into the City Market. Instead, maybe fans could emblazon some…
Terrorism has quite a stigma attached to it these days. But aural terrorists — the Blood Brothers for instance — are incredible to watch as they destroy and redefine what it means to confront your audience with hardcore punk. Native sons of peaceful Seattle, the Brothers bring one of the most in-your-face live shows around. There is no middle ground….
The accordion doesn’t get a lot of love. Sure, its squishy sounds sweetened the already adorable Amélie, and it amused as an accomplice on AMG’s unique square-dance rap. And it ensures that hilarity ensues when “Weird Al” Yankovic covers angsty alt-rock hits. For the most part, though, the accordion’s esteem could be best illustrated by the heckle that greeted it…
Journalists don’t get take-backs. Your glowing recommendations survive for eternity through Google searches and glossy press kits. Take this writer’s enthusiastic endorsement of the Killers in these very pages (“Nice Guys Finish First,” April 15). At the time, the Las Vegas foursome was surfing a wave of prerelease hype for its synth-singed debut, Hot Fuss. Cool-as-ice keyboards and leering, new-wave…
It’s a torrid affair. Clandestine and seedy, even. Infatuation and addiction prove one and the same. Dependency is the ultimate crush. Consequently, My Chemical Romance has people clamoring to mainline its music. You couldn’t afford its pure hardcore beats, so the band did you a favor and cut it with some gothic, modern rock. It’ll even lace the stuff with…
You can always tell when you stumble upon a great storyteller. It’s not just the words but also how they convey the passionate punch of every thought and every syllable. John Hiatt is a great storyteller. The man has been lauded by some of the best in the business and has had his songs covered by Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King,…
Caped crusaders fight the evil forces of depression, negativity, angst and the greatest evil of all, self-importance! If the Aquabats had their own cartoon — they have their own coloring book, so don’t think it’s beyond them — the BAM! POW! intro sequence would go something like that. The Aquabats are anything but self-important, and the band members hardly…
PD: I thought musicians didn’t wake up until noon. JDM: Well, I usually get up way earlier than this . But I’m still getting used to a new time zone. So you’re a morning person? I guess I’m an all-day person. If I were your lackey, what would you have me pick up at Starbucks? A nonfat grande double-shot latte….
You can shoot them (see Lennon, J. and Shakur, T. ), choke them with vomit (see Bonham, J. and Scott, B. ), crash their plane (see Holly, B. ; Skynyrd, L. ; Redding, O. ), give them a sandwich (see Elliott, M. Cass), don’t give them a sandwich (see Carpenter, K. ) or just let them do themselves in (see…
The reputation of the Icarus Line precedes its music. Perhaps it all started back in 2002, when the Los Angeles quintet infamously broke a glass case in the Hard Rock Café at the South By Southwest music festival and filched Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar — without asking permission from the aghast staff beforehand. Or maybe it’s because the group is…
Ahmir Khalib Thompson is the coolest motherfucker on the planet. Musician. Producer. DJ. Actor. Talent scout. Social commentator. Svengali behind the Okayplayer hip-hop community. A man who can pull off punctuation in a stage name: ?uestlove. The kick-ass drummer of the ass-kickingest hip-hop collective on Earth. Oh, yeah. And then there’s his hair. The man has spectacular hair. Iconic even….
If you’re wondering how Hollywood could possibly adapt Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, a collection of similarly themed short stories bound together by the slenderest of common threads, the answer is that it hasn’t. The credits for I, Robot read “suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book,” but the canny sci-fi fan will notice several other “suggestions” from more familiar sources. There’s the…
It’s charming. It’s hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It’s Napoleon Dynamite, the first feature film from 24-year-old Brigham Young University student Jared Hess, and if there is any justice, it’s going to be huge. Remember that kid who was always drawing mythical beasts in his…
Preacher’s pet: C.J. Janovy’s “The Preach and the Prep” (July 1), on the race for Missouri’s 5th District congressional seat, should be required reading for every constituent of the district. Jamie Metzl, complete with a Harvard law degree and a Ph.D. from Oxford, is running against local icon and former Mayor Emanuel Cleaver. Cleaver seems to be taken aback that…
Threads Off the rack and on the town. Kona Grill, 11:30 p.m. Thursday We hear women talking openly about other women’s clothes, hair and mannerisms, but men don’t seem to judge each other that way. The Pitch’s official fashion expert, a straight guy named Bud, wants to know how other guys size up the competition. We’ve come to Kona Grill…
Still feeling red-blooded after last week’s 4th of July festivities, the Strip thinks this ungrateful nation pays far too little attention to the men and women who love this country. This patriotic plank steak has in mind one unsung American in particular. Just your average hero, the kind of guy who doesn’t think twice about coming to the defense of…
With its empty prairie of cracked parking spaces, Bannister Mall is one of the saddest places in town. When Bannister opened in the early 1980s, it was the first mall in the city to have four major department stores — Dillard’s, the Jones Store, J.C. Penney and Sears. Now Dillard’s is closed. Penney’s is empty. There’s still shopping to be…
Dear Televiewer: You have been selected to participate in a survey whose findings will directly influence what you see on television in the future. You have been selected to evaluate not-yet-released television material that is being considered for nationwide broadcast. You have been selected to help represent the television viewing preferences of the entire country. So begins the letter that…
To find the best baseball story in Missouri, you must drive roughly 6 hours southeast from Kauffman Stadium, where a struggling team sheds salary, or 3 hours south from the home of the St. Louis Cardinals, whose first-place run has galvanized the game’s self-described best fans. After a numbing stretch of highway billboards for historic downtowns and quaint, country-cooking eateries…
Just as everyone has a tequila story — i.e., a tale of woe about why he or she can’t drink that shit anymore — everyone has a Velvet Dog story. For example, we’ve mashed with a friend on the third floor, run into a past hookup (and somehow resisted the urge to maliciously exclaim in a cheerfully obnoxious voice, “Hey!…
There’s more in common between Don Pepe¹s Spanish Cuisine and the distinctly less formal Island Spice Caribbean Cuisine (10 West 39th Street) than the fact that both restaurants occupy buildings that never were meant to be dining rooms. But the spatial connection is an interesting one. The Don Pepe’s location, like many other culinary venues along Southwest Boulevard, started out…
Jose “Don Pepe” Fernandez’s life would make a great TV movie. He starts off working for his uncle, a talented chef in Madrid. The ambitious Jose grows up and lands a coveted position as a private chef to Aristotle Onassis. Later, he moves to the United States and winds up in — of all places — Kansas City. In this…
7/9-8/14 The Day After Tomorrow was just a zygote when Ron Megee first started talking about a Late Night Theatre salute to those perversely sentimental disaster movies of the 1970s. Late Night had such a show on its 2001 calendar until September 11 made comedic air disasters a tad distasteful. “We were going to open in November of 2001,” Megee…
