7/8-7/11 Brazilian director Jose Pahilda’s tense 2003 documentary Bus 174 has been screened locally only once, at last year’s FilmFest Kansas City. Its appearance this week at the Screenland Theatre in the Crossroads District backs up Screenland owner Butch Rigby’s promise to show films that, he says, “will not otherwise see theatrical exhibition in Kansas City.” The film chronicles…
SAT 7/10 As avid fans of sports/not sports (i.e., any activity that can be played while drinking beer), we were excited to hear about the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s badminton tournament to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of its shuttlecock sculptures. Starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, 32 teams of two battle it out on the south lawn at 4525 Oak in…
FRI 7/9 We have mixed feelings about the Whitney Biennial. Although we agree that it’s one of the nation’s definitive art exhibits, it’s also gorged with the work of New York and Los Angeles residents, as if the flyover states offer only boring landscape painters. But folks who dare to make cutting-edge art in the Midwest deserve the celebration. They’re…
You never know the myriad bounces, shocks, flops and jiggles your body is capable of radiating until you make it run — naked. Naked in the sun, amid the wagging encumbrances of a couple dozen fellow sprinters whose unmentionables you won’t even notice, thanks to your thirst for speed and your passion for the prize. Hell, if you’re fast…
Thursday, July 8 Mercury makes people crazy. Eat too much mercury-tainted tuna, and you have this to look forward to: soft, spongy gums; loose teeth and mouth sores (umm … ew); wide mood swings, during which you’ll become irritable, frightened, depressed or excited very quickly for no apparent reason; and hallucinations, memory loss and inability to concentrate. You also…
When most readers think of science fiction, they’re probably thinking about spaceships, lasers or wookies. Years of sloppy application have turned the genre into a catchall for anything that takes place in space or involves robots, despite major authors’ insistence to the contrary. “It’s the literature of change, brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, with a significant…
Annie For all its utility as a punch line, Annie is a rock-solid piece of musical theater. Its source is the comic strip about a feisty little redheaded orphan who’s adopted by rich mogul Daddy Warbucks. Though it’s a publicity stunt at first, Annie and Warbucks eventually build the foundation of an unconventional family. Directing is local theater veteran…
Avenue of the Arts “Silly” seems to be the overwhelming theme of this year’s Avenue of the Arts, a temporary installation of six public-art pieces along Central Avenue downtown. Kansas City Art Institute printmaking teacher Laura Berman’s “Cowboys and Indians” has a ‘zine-aesthetic-meets-the-USDA’s-latest-fruit-campaign feel, along with a 1950s-nostalgia twist: Large-scale, black-and-white, photocopy-quality images of children in cowboy and Indian costumes…
When Elaine Mills gets pissed off, she paints. Watching the election debacle of 2000 got her blood boiling, and making art was one way to release her frustrations. “I would go down in my studio every night when I got home from work, and I would do a new drawing,” Mills says. “It was amazing to me how the mainstream…
Since the end of Kevin Bacon’s glory days, white kids have been trying to come to grips with their inability to dance. Now they don’t have to. DJ Shadow and Jurassic 5’s Cut Chemist manage beats that are somewhat undanceable but irresistible to head nodders and fist pumpers alike. Product Placement is an infusion of funk, soul and hip-hop that…
Timing is everything, and boy, do the Pixies know it. That’s why the band released its self-titled DVD a week before its second greatest-hits album dropped, in the midst of its reunion tour. The DVD includes a newly remastered show from the 1988 Surfer Rosa tour, music videos, a documentary and behind-the-scenes tour footage. The live set from the Town…
Lead screamer Rob Halford returned to Judas Priest just in time to celebrate the pioneering metal act’s thirtieth anniversary with a reunion album and a high profile slot at Ozzfest. Nostalgic Priestheads will be forced to shell out additional cash for the band’s boxed set, Metalogy, to get their hands on the coveted DVD release of this legendary 1982 Memphis…
All was quiet when Barry Manilow took the stage at the Kodak Theatre and began to sing “Ready to Take a Chance Again.” Then he arrived at the chorus, and the band started to swell, and the audience members rose to their feet for the first of many standing ovations. Or at least that’s how it would seem from the…
You gotta hand it to a death-metal band with restraint. But death-prog outfit Opeth takes it to a new level by making its audience sit through no fewer than nine acoustic selections before launching into heavier stuff. Granted, the move isn’t that radical — Damnation (which the Swedish-Latin American outfit plays in its entirety, along with three songs from Deliverance…
Is there such a thing as too much metal? Dude! No way! Not if this punishing two-DVD set has anything to say about it. And all metal — goth, death, thrash, power, prog, etc. — is represented here. Cradle Of Filth? Check. Children of Bodom? Yup. Morbid Angel, Meshuggah, Lacuna Coil, Sepultura, Sevendust, the Haunted? Present. But Monsters also contains…
There isn’t something in the water. Liverpool is Beatlerific and all, but name four world-class musicians other than the Fab Four to come out of the talent pool. Frankie Goes to Hollywood? Nice try. Atomic Kitten? Surely you jest. Melanie C from the Spice Girls? Stop, I’m going to pee my pants. But Sporty Spice is the fifth Beatle compared…
Wearing their supernerd costumes of plaid shirts and Buddy Holly specs, They Might Be Giants cofounders John Flansburgh and John Linnell single-handedly created the geek-rock genre now popularized by the Shins and Death Cab for Cutie. The proof is in songs that range from science lessons (“Why Does the Sun Shine?”) and history-referencing ditties (“James K. Polk”) to indie breakup…
The first Bikers Ball is a veritable who’s who of ’80s hairspray mainstays. The bill includes reunited me-decade phenomenon Twisted Sister alongside Quiet Riot vocalist Kevin DuBrow, whose recent all-covers album isn’t nearly as embarrassing as it should be. But perhaps the most intriguing act is the newly retooled Warrant. The band trawled the club circuit for years trying…
Judging from some early good buzz — such as a cover feature in Alternative Press — Fall Out Boy is well on its way to the top of the emo mall-band heap. And why not? The band’s lyrics are tailor-made for teenage bitterness (I wish that I was as invisible as you make me feel), with quasi-disturbing imagery that encapsulates…
People throw around the term “hardest working man in show business” so much that it hardly means anything. There’s no telling if Texas guitarist Wayne “The Train” Hancock is the hardest worker out there, but he sure does work. The guy hits the road hard, manages his own affairs and routinely passes the 3-hour mark at shows. The first…
If the question “Care for a frosty beverage before you fuck my wife?” ever crosses a straight man’s lips, odds are, the guy on the listening end is country fox Tim McGraw (or possibly his foxette wife, Faith Hill). The man’s got something for everyone. He’s hot enough to scorch retinas, but he ain’t above using a tractor key to…
Technically, the Allman Brothers Band hasn’t existed since November 1971. But the band forged on less than a month after guitarist Duane Allman’s death in October of that year. Thirty years later, this pioneering Southern-rock institution keeps pace with the packs of protégés it has spawned while fostering a loyal fanbase that rivals the legions still celebrating the once-grateful Dead….
Hey, remember That 1 Guy? The one who showed off his homemade all-in-one instrument? The same guy who somehow coaxed fierce music from a concoction of galvanized steel pipes, a bass string, sampler triggers and a helluva lot of pedals? Yeah, him. His name is Mike Silverman. He’s That 1 Guy. And one is all he needs. His music is…
Starlite Desperation resides in sun-kissed Los Angeles. But the band has also done time in tough cities like Detroit, which undoubtedly contributed to the white-knuckled riffs and dark jams on albums such as Go Kill Mice and Show You What a Baby Won’t. Residue from other rough environs (Salinas, California) also explains the quartet’s feral sound on its latest EP,…
