Diana Krall is known these days for her marriage to Elvis Costello. That’s too bad, because her recent The Girl in the Other Room is an artistic change of direction for Krall, containing her first original material in a catalog built upon reinterpretations of jazz, blues and rock standards. In concert, Krall is something of an anti-Tori Amos, replacing the…
If any ambassador of hardcore deserves to still be kicking after 20 years, it’s Sick of It All, a band with the depth, dimension and heart to fuel such longevity. Though singer Lou Koller looks like a leaner, meaner version of Bobby De Niro circa 1973 and the band members never let you forget they’re from New York, they are…
Oceans of Fun. Backyard barbecues. Dave Matthews Band at Verizon. These are the elements that make for a quintessential Kansas City summer. DMB hasn’t issued a proper studio album since 2002’s Busted Stuff, but a number of solo releases (including a full-length outing from the group’s namesake) and live projects have kept the quintet in the public eye. And though…
The Seattle quartet Kinski has friends in high places. Not just any American band can pluck a legend like Acid Mothers Temple main man Kawabata Makoto to join it on tour and lend guitar supernovas to its outward-bound instrumental rock. Opening the tour in Seattle on July 31, this Japanese-American alliance elicited both the roar of asteroid belts and the…
Sassy girl/boy rockers the Soviettes are more fun than a bottle of vodka and way more exciting than living on the other side of the Iron Curtain. On the band’s latest album, LP II, the Minneapolis foursome barrels through 14 songs like the Rezillos on a bar-hopping bender with X and the Go-Go’s. Unlike other bratty new wave punkettas, however,…
Wow. This is so unexpected. I didn’t even prepare a speech. But … I did write a few things down on the back of this roll of toilet paper I took from the crapper. First, I’d like to thank the Academy. Much love to Allah, the Charmin bear, Daphne from Scooby-Doo, Nelson Mandela, my baby’s momma (we did it, girl!),…
You have to be wary about a guy who calls himself “The Shaker.” Is he jonesing for a drink like Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas? Maybe. Is he tweaking on bathtub meth? Possibly. Does he like to grab infants and give them a good, vigorous jiggle just for the hell of it? Perhaps. But Pete “The Shaker” Bones…
When Sean Connery talks, you best listen. Those seeking to understand the nature of victory and defeat at the Pitch Music Awards Friday at the Uptown can absorb the sage advice proffered by Connery in that most triumphant of escape-from-Nicolas Cage (or was it Alcatraz?) movies, The Rock: “Losers always whine about their best,” Connery noted in his thick Scottish…
Behold, ye underachieving, Internet-surfing cubicle dwellers of corporate America: Your next great workplace distraction awaits. For I have invented it: Fantasy Rock Stars. Fantasy Rock Stars aims to combine two of modern society’s most debilitating obsessions — celebrity worship and fantasy sports — into one fabulous national pastime. For the uninitiated, the latter involves rounding up eight to twelve of…
Greece is the word. And as the Summer Olympics hits Athens for 16 days of glory, it’s the only word you’ll hear. Nothing but Achilles this and Aristotle that as sportscasters reference Sophocles and kalamata olives during epic badminton battles between Laos and the Federated States of Micronesia. Greece hasn’t hosted an event this big since Yanni played the Acropolis….
To make Blind Shaft, a film about a pair of itinerant miners who profit from a gruesome extortion scheme, writer-director Li Yang risked his life. He and his crew spent countless hours 700 meters below the earth, filming in illegal Chinese mines. He had to fib his way out of an encounter with the police, whose guns were aimed to…
Winner of the Dramatic Audience Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Maria Full of Grace is an uncomfortably realistic look at a 17-year-old Colombian woman who, desperate for a job, agrees to swallow capsules of heroin and transport them to New York. Although a work of fiction, the film (in Spanish with English subtitles) evinces the power and…
Bad meat! Oh, come on! Making Johnny Dare’s bar sound racist is just silly! (KC Strip, ” Johnny on the Spot ,” August 5) Following this line of logic, you would complain about any bar in Westport that is not aimed at the hip-hop crowd, making any person opening a nonhip-hop club racist. Your logic is flawed like an E….
Take My Picture! Some folks we know were thrilled with the results of Kansas’ 3rd District congressional primary last week. The race was too close to call until all of the provisional ballots were counted, which meant more media exposure for the dreamy Kris Kobach (right) and Adam Taff (left). Then our sources pointed out that the two burly, clean-cut…
ATTENTION ALL QUEERS. Quit your goddamn whining, already. Last week’s vote to amend Missouri’s constitution to ban queer nuptials was a slam dunk, and even though more Demo- crats than Republicans showed up at the polls, more than 70 percent of your voting friends and neighbors have put an end, once and for all, to your pipe dream of getting…
For years the Downtown Minority Development Corporation has battled the perception that it lends taxpayer money to minority businesses and then doesn’t bother to make sure that the money is repaid. The DMDC, a city-affiliated nonprofit started in 1978, has seen its reputation suffer in recent years. In 2003 it halted lending altogether until an audit of its books could…
It’s supposed to be the perfect hit. The target: A 130-pound, bleach-blond kid sitting in a dimly lighted kitchen, fiddling with his laptop. He is surrounded by potholder-decorated walls and shelves stocked with fresh vegetables, fruit and a can of Ovaltine. The wrecking crew: a three-person SWAT team of NFL-sized guys dressed in masks and black combat gear. One will…
For the second Saturday night in a row, we ended up at the News Room, a gritty midtown dive that draws an entertainingly sketchtastic crowd after the first wave of bars herald last call at 1:30. Decorated with old-school typewriters, historic front pages from The Kansas City Times and other tchotchkes that journalism nerds appreciate, the bar offers up cheap…
My friend Bob can’t walk past the elegant Capital Grille at 4740 Jefferson without growing nostalgic about the 15 years he spent working in the same building, back when it was Gilbert and Robinson’s flagship Bristol Restaurant from 1980 to 1995. In the past 9 years, the venue has undergone a couple of major renovations, first for the ill-fated Jules…
The three owners of the one-month-old Café Trio have given the restaurant a dramatic makeover (and long-overdue deep cleaning), and the space looks completely different from any of its previous incarnations. Until recently, though, I continued to have a keen sense of déjà vu whenever I walked through the door. Nineteen years ago, as a low-paid suburban journalist, I got…
SAT 8/7 The Olive Gallery and Art Supply (15 East Eighth Street in Lawrence) has a smart marketing scheme: Encourage customers to buy more paint and sketchbooks by showing what truly talented artists do with theirs. This month the gallery hosts Vacillations of the Art, mixed-media collaborations by Tony Pontius and Jenn Dierdorf. (He paints; she adds collage elements.) In…
WED 8/11 Franz Kafka died before he could finish his novel The Trial, and he reportedly never intended for it to be published. That hasn’t deterred various artists from taking a stab at it, including Orson Welles, who filmed it in 1963 with a Psycho-hot Anthony Perkins in the lead. The nightmarish tale centers on Josef K., who awakens one…
SUN 8/8 Forty thousand women will die from breast cancer this year. If that doesn’t make you wanna get your philanthropic 5K on, consider this: The color pink is very hot right now. So maybe you’ll pony up the $25 for a really cute, bubble-gum-colored tee. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation doesn’t care what your motivation is….
FRI 8/6 In Hombres y Mujeres: Machismo y Feminismo at the Mattie Rhodes Art Gallery (919 West 17th Street), Kansas City artists, along with visitors from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Spain, explore such subjects as strength and weakness, heritage and tradition, and cultural and sexual identity. Juan Carlos Breceda’s “Resting” is a patchwork of pink, orange and gray paint that…
