As power-pop combinations go, American Hi-Fi ain’t bad. Despite one-hit-wonder status, the bouncy Boston band has eked out a career without relying too much on 2001’s aptly titled single “Flavor of the Weak.” The band — led by Stacy Jones of Letters to Cleo and Veruca Salt — has turned up at recent Warped Tours and is about to release…
Undoubtedly the dandiest band on Victory Records’ tough-guy roster, Action Action is like a hot-pink handkerchief in the pocket of an unsmiling gangster’s basic black suit. Its debut disc, Don’t Cut Your Fabric to this Year’s Fashion (named, in typically geeky fashion, after a Gene Hackman quote from the DVD commentary track of The Royal Tenenbaums), whizzes and whirs with…
While all the palloozas and fests ponder the potential for apathetic ticket sales again for the 2005 summer festival season, Bonnaroo is ready to continue its hedonistic run for a fourth year. With first-timers such as the Dave Matthews Band, Modest Mouse and Alison Krauss joining a bill packed with returnees Widespread Panic, Jack Johnson and Yonder Mountain String Band,…
If underground hip-hop is the new emo, then Heiruspecs is making sure the Twin Cities are the new Omaha. Indeed, the St. Paul, Minnesota, outfit does suffer from symptoms of Saddle Creek Syndrome. Relying more on live instrumentation and original hooks than just vocals and lyrics, the five-piece has become Minnesota’s second-biggest hip-hop export, overshadowed only by Atmosphere. The two…
For two years running, the Blind Boys of Alabama have scooped up well-deserved Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album Grammys. In the convoluted world of statuettes, that’s the only appropriate description out there. Sixty years after their young beginnings at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind, founding members Clarence Fountain, George Scott and Jimmy Carter are now schooling folks such…
Let us now discuss the introspective, esoteric, head-bobbing, fist-pumping, booty-shaking, genre-defying mélange of the Rock Critic Cliché milieu. (Riffage. Let us also discuss riffage.) As with any other, this profession suffers from its own unique lexicon of ridiculous, impenetrable jargon. I am certainly not immune to this disease, nor can I suggest a foolproof cure. But perhaps I can diagnose…
Plenty of notable musicians died in 2004, but for aesthetes of the grand rock demise, the year lacked the ludicrous death of a wounded young romantic — à la Jeff Buckley’s fatal embrace of the Father of Waters, say, or the inconsolable Elliott Smith’s forlorn evisceration. Dimebag Darrell’s demise belongs in another category of rock fatality. Still, his murder is…
Moire sounds heavier than a wrecking-ball hailstorm on its albums. In concert, though, the band’s constant motion accentuates its concrete-cracking breakdowns. Moire’s members, two of whom sport dreads that could serve as rescue ropes for babies stuck in wells, bang their heads like overstimulated bobble dolls. The group has generously agreed to share secrets that could make soft-riffing sissies look…
I’m fairly indifferent to empires. Roman, Aztec, Ottoman — makes no difference to me. They rise. They fall. Yet even if empires are but grains of sand wedged between the toes of time, mankind doesn’t forget the contributions of its greatest emperors. Caesar gave us his slimy salads. Montezuma gave us his revenge. The Ottomans gave us a handy place…
It was such a weird, surreal thing when emo became a commodity,” Rjyan Kidwell says. For anyone familiar with the IDM-cum-menacing-glitch-hop of Kidwell’s more notable alias, Cex, this reflection might be surprising. But not on second thought. The 22-year-old Baltimore native’s inner conflict embodies emo. He is amusing, affable and never hesitant to go off on tangents, especially on the…
Clint Eastwood began digging into the third act of his career — the one that reveals the mature, deep-thinking artist . . . with a little jazz piano on the side — a dozen years ago, with the discomfiting anti-Western Unforgiven. Since then, he’s hardly come up for air or given himself a break. Last year’s Mystic River was…
Johnny on the spot: I really enjoyed your comments about Johnny Dare (KC Strip, “Blow Hard,” January 20). I consider him to be the biggest fraud of a local celebrity KC has seen in my 26 years. He’s NEVER made me laugh, and I stopped even trying years ago. Unfortunately, there is such a large contingent of Blue Collar TV…
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, showing us all that what we learned in Sunday school really matters. Dear Jimmy: My Jesus-freak friend Patrick was going off on your column at school, saying that you were an “abomination” or something — but he always talks like that, so I…
Jerry Agar was the last guy we figured would have so much respect for The Kansas City Star. Agar arrived in town several months ago to fill the 9-11 a.m. slot at KMBZ 980 as the lead-in to Rush Limbaugh. It follows, then, that Agar would play liberal-hatin’, God-fearin’ and U.S.A.-lovin’ wingnut to the hilt, even if he is a…
Last November, City Manager Wayne Cauthen, Downtown Council CEO Bill Dietrich, members of the City Council and other big shots gathered at the Quality Hill headquarters of HNTB Companies, the engineering and architecture giant that has left its deep and wide footprints all over Kansas City. Kansas City paid HNTB $100,000 to analyze downtown as a convention destination and recommend…
One question we’re frequently asked is “Aren’t you worried that you’ll run out of bars?” To which the answer is a resounding no. Kansas City is a big drinking town, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of the suburban bars, the neighborhood dives and, well, KCK. Plus, new places seem to open all the time. So when we heard about…
Sometimes a good face-lift makes all the difference in the world, for movie stars and coffeehouses. That’s how I feel about the 60-day-old Room 39, where the owners have turned the dingy space formerly occupied by Muddy’s at 1719 West 39th Street into a sunny and inviting dining room with a sophisticated menu and custom-blended java. The contrast between the…
It’s been nearly three years since I reviewed the robustly rotund restaurateur Tommy Macaluso’s Macaluso’s on 39th (“The Tom Tom Club,” April 11, 2002). Although I enjoyed my experience there, I realized recently that I hadn’t set foot in the place since my review was in print. Why not, I wondered? I liked the food, loved the service and could…
THU 1/20 On their latest album Collide, Christian rockers Skillet cook up sterilized rage with a heaping side of melodrama. But for all we know, maybe teenagers can be mad and love Jesus with equal sincerity. We’ll find out at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, 816-753-8665. — Jason Harper Dirty Dancing Kacico Dance is for…
ONGOING Now that the Grand Emporium, as music fans knew it, is gone, blues enthusiasts need a new place to hear the circuit’s finest touring acts — preferably one with a gritty feel and fascinatingly cluttered walls. Knuckleheads Saloon (2700 Rochester in Independence) answers all calls. Located in the back of Fog Cycles, a chopper shop that sells Harleys and…
THU 1/20 Part-time plot tenders might think January means hiatus, but KC’s Total Yard Gardeners know better. At their 11:45 a.m. open meeting Thursday at the Central Exchange (1020 Central), Rainy Day Books’ Vivien Jennings recommends gardening books for the upcoming season. Call 816-471-7560. — Annie Fischer Dirt Track Date Drink some Bud, look at some fat tires. 1/21-1/23 The…
FRI 1/21 At the Urban Culture Project’s latest openings, a single city block separates two compelling yet extremely different works: a harrowing depiction of atrocities and an abstract installation with a goofy title. The traveling display Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933-1945 opens at 5 p.m. Friday at the Bank Gallery (11th and Baltimore). Organized by the National Holocaust Memorial…
Creative types often struggle through obscurity and poverty in the hope that, eventually, they’ll claw their way to the top, where they’ll be paid big money and be surrounded by big names. Kori Bundi, however, went the other way, abandoning a cushy editorial position at Town & Country magazine and heading off to film school. “It’s tough, because you go…
Thursday, January 20 While Bush and his bought friends are living it up to the tune of $40 million in Washington today, area malcontents are staging protests. The Lawrence Peace and Justice Coalition makes its feelings known at 5:30 p.m. in front of the Douglas County Courthouse (111 East 11th Street) with satirical street theater, sign-waving and general spleen-venting….
