You can tell you’re in a North Kansas City bar by the hairstyles. On a recent Friday night, we made the trek to the new Tomfooleries in Zona Rosa. We had heard that it was quite the hot spot, and actually, we were excited to explore some virgin bar territory. We were hoping to meet, like, boys there? Especially, like,…
Now that Don and Joyce Omer have given the long-decrepit Rieger Hotel building on Main Street a dazzling new life with luxury apartments upstairs and the attractive restaurant 1924 Main downstairs (see review, page 39), will other downtown developers lure culinary businesses into uncharted territory? Yes, in the case of Adam Jones, the distinctively bearded co-owner (with Jeff Krum) of…
This story may be apocryphal, but my friend Bob insists that in the early 1960s, his father — now a very moral, teetotaling Christian — won a downtown saloon in a poker game … and then lost it in another card game a few days later. For many years, that particular tavern, the Silver Spur, was located on the…
THU 11/25 The Grateful Dead tribute band the Schwag boasts of its “high-intensity jams … that send listeners into a dancing frenzy of eargasmic ecstasy.” We suspect it might actually be the drugs. Find out at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665); tickets are $10. — Annie Fischer Elf Loathing It’s the most wonderful time of…
TUE 11/30 When the Learning Channel launched its Trading Spaces, the home-design-show genre was still in the dull clutches of bangs-and-ponytail-sporting power-tool schoolmarms and their troglodyte-carpenter henchmen. With episodes containing 48-hour extreme makeovers on shoestring budgets, in which TV-savvy designers came into the lives of bland American couples and led them on design rampages in their neighbors’ homes, Trading Spaces…
11/25-11/26 The Plaza’s Season of Lights, which boasts more than 250,000 bulbs and 75 miles of wiring, kicks off at 7 p.m. Thursday (4745 Central, 816-753-0100). No Kate Spade flipping the switch, however — this year’s honors go instead to, um, Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The to-do, which is touted as one of the city’s most popular holiday ceremonies…
FRI 11/26 When our travels lead us to cities with Chinatowns, sensory overload hits in the very best way. We breathe in smells of fish markets and dried herbs with ancient healing properties. We watch as seniors practice the slow and flowing movements of tai chi in small parks against a backdrop of stores with bright neon signs. The…
People often get into trouble for saying the first thing that comes to mind. Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood make a living out of it. Fans of the television program Whose Line Is It Anyway? will recognize the pair and many of the improvisation games they perform. “There’s a nice feeling,” Mochrie says of improv performances. “The audience is such…
Thursday, November 25 Matadors, the new tapas restaurant at 1815 West 39th Street, offers reasonably priced food — but its wine list boasts bottles for $15, which earns our eternal fandom. And even though we had to suffer through the same Hootie and the Blowfish album three times in a row, our server swore that the post-dinner music — as…
Most people who hit the malls to negotiate the rabid Christmas-shopping masses this weekend will be looking for the usual no-fail presents: gift cards, neckties, smoked cheese logs. But the organizers of one holiday bazaar recommend that we shop for more exotic fare. Like a toilet. Or a llama. Rather than going to the naughty boys and girls on our…
Christmas in Song Whether your holiday play list veers toward traditional carols or the pop of Bing Crosby and Eartha Kitt, you should be sated by Quality Hill Playhouse’s annual Christmas show. Joining pianist and master of ceremonies J. Kent Barnhart are Sylvia Stoner, Matt Leisy and, following a last-minute casting change, Toni Gates-Grantham. Last year’s audiences reportedly leapt to…
Cross Stitch, Craft Medium Redefined Embroidery and other crafty practices are still considered pretty girly, in spite of efforts to the contrary (and a few male names on the price list). That’s OK. Just because some ladies now bond in locker rooms and others over superficially feminist TV shows such as Sex in the City does not mean that…
For the sake of argument, we’ll say Sean “Vote or Die” Combs really did invent the remix. But it was Dave Aude who perfected it. At least when it comes to morphing pop pap into smoking club creations. Aude has destroyed and rebuilt tracks from a range of artists that includes pop legends Sting and Yoko Ono, pop strumpets Ashlee…
Kansas City lyricist Reach has found a niche in the thriving local hip-hop community with a free-and-easy approach, adding another ingredient to the melting pot of diverse styles and influences that has made this scene flourish. Having spent the past few years honing his craft in front of audiences (as well as contributing guest vocals to a handful of local…
A Perfect Circle’s Emotive (or, as the sleeve insists, eMOTIVe) is the angriest chill-out album since Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. Inspired by current events, this onetime side project from Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan covers classic songs of uprising, greed and protest in a relatively detached manner. Black Flag’s “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie” is a lively music-box waltz powered…
Christmas is a time of celebration, family … and theatrical rock! The Lost Christmas Eve, Trans-Siberian’s fifth production, has all the riff-based carols of the band’s previous fare, but this year it seems a little forced. Maybe finding new ways to sing about snow has become trying, or maybe topping the classic “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” is simply too arduous a…
Whether it inspires you or just leaves you pummeled, Funeral is a staggering debut. Over the course of just one album, the Arcade Fire bursts out of the rigid beats and chopping chords of its post-punk influences and straight into arena-rock territory. Lead singer Win Butler’s raw-throated bombast has even drawn comparisons to Bruce Springsteen. A curmudgeon could point out…
Hey, at least she didn’t put out a live album, right? With only four full-lengths under her rhinestone-encrusted belt, Mrs. Federline is already shucking a retrospective. The 17-track My Prerogative documents her transition (though not in chronological order) from schoolgirl moppet to sexpot strumpet, with a couple of remixes and rare cuts thrown in to pad things out. The title…
Funny phenomenon, tribute bands. Maybe it’s something about capable musicians making a career off another artist’s music, indulging such a base desire of fans that it makes you wonder where the line between creativity and pandering gets drawn. And then there’s the sense of arrogance about a band that casts itself in the title role of its own hero-worship cult….
There’s evidence that Jeff Buckley’s distinctive quaver — now posthumously claimed by 4,317 abrasively cloying singers — may have belonged to Texas songwriter David Garza first. Check the chronology: Garza’s first band, Twang Twang Shaka Boom (a name that still serves as an onomatopoeic representation of his sound) debuted in 1989; Buckley’s Live in Sin-e wasn’t a landmark until four…
If you think Trans-Siberian Orchestra is a weird name for a band, wait till you get a load of these dudes in concert. Over-the-top doesn’t begin to describe TSO’s live show, a spectacle of light, sound, smoke, fire and flash pots that makes your average Broadway musical look like open-mike night at the coffee shop. Paired with this visual extravaganza…
Although the band may have fallen out of favor with über-chic hipsters, the Reverend Horton Heat is still a hard-partying, guitar-shredding, upright-bass-thumping good time. Over the years, the trio has departed some from its psychobilly roots to explore one-two-three thrash rackets and country ditties, but the good Reverend is always game for providing the congregation with rockabilly freak-outs led by…
Elizabeth Elmore says her honest, acerbic relationship songs are not autobiographical, which is good news for fans who crave her tortured testimonials while fearing for her emotional health. On the Reputation’s latest disc, To Force a Fate, Elmore parades a new cast of characters down the road to romantic ruin. Like Elvis Costello, whose “Almost Blue” the Reputation covered with…
Respect your elders. One crotchety old biddy or another has been welding that phrase to your psyche since you were in Huggies. It is ingrained in you, implanted with the message that you will not, under any circumstances, call into question the wisdom of your great-aunt Agnes, even when she’s spending her twilight years gumming cantaloupe, arguing with the coat…
