When cabaret star Bobby Short died last week, Manhattan lost not only a legendary performer — “He elevated the humble role of the piano-bar entertainer to an art,” said The New York Times — but also a high-priced nightclub act: The Café Carlyle had been charging $95 admission to see the 80-year-old singer-pianist. Kansas City has had its own history…
When we heard that the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity was expelled from the University of Kansas, we were outraged. Not because of the chapter’s reported “multiple violations of alcohol policy” but because we read in The Kansas City Star that the fraternity’s downfall stemmed from a “$5-a-beer kegger” it threw last month. Five bucks for a fucking beer? Now, that’s…
If things had gone somewhat differently in Gigi Cowell’s life, she’d be standing in front of a classroom reading Emily Dickinson: He ate and drank the precious words/His spirit grew robust/He knew no more that he was poor/Nor that his frame was dust. But Dickinson wasn’t Cowell’s fate; eating and drinking were. After 17 years of waiting tables, Cowell…
SAT 4/2 Sideshows seldom stop within city limits anymore, which bodes poorly for fans of outlandish novelty acts, colorful characters, burlesque skits … and unusual odors. On Saturday, though, the Yard Dogs Road Show stuffs its tent-ready performers inside the Jackpot Saloon (934 Massachusetts in Lawrence), saving carnival lovers a trip to some rustic outpost. Attractions include Mystic Man…
SUN 4/3 MK12’s finest for-hire work appears on millions of television screens, eliminating the need for gallery showcases. Viewers might not know that the Kansas City-based graphics house created ESPN’s X-games snow globes or Adidas’ stop-motion basketball ads, but they’ve seen the spots. By contrast, MK12’s in-house shorts have played to relatively minuscule (albeit highly influential) festival crowds. It Was…
MON 4/4 A double-elimination backgammon tournament (you’re guaranteed two matches, regardless of how much you suck) is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday at Harpo’s in Westport (4109 Pennsylvania). Never played? No problem — just show up early with your $10 admission in hand. Call 816-916-6599. — Annie Fischer Deadheads Lone Jack wants to keep its battlefield on the map. SAT…
SUN 4/3 Girls are a growing presence in the U.S. juvenile-detention population. But, as an award-winning new documentary reveals, they don’t receive support and services in proportion to their male counterparts. Girl Trouble, showing at 1 p.m. Sunday at Screenland Theatre (1656 Washington), follows three young women who spend five years moving in and out of Bay area correctional…
In The Incredibles — an animated film about a family of superheroes struggling to fit in among the ordinary — the sulking, slouching supergirl Violet can become invisible at will. And she hates it. All she wants is a nice, boring life. At the dinner table, Violet’s mother asks the kids to act normal. This sends Violet — voiced by…
Thursday, March 31 Apparently the film industry is hoping that Oscar hog Million Dollar Baby prompted a boxing boom rather than beginning and ending one in 132 minutes. After all, there’s this summer’s highly anticipated Cinderella Man, the story of Depression-era fighter Jim Braddock starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger, which is sure to be this year’s Seabiscuit (minus…
Downtown Kansas City can be a stress-inducing place, between work woes in the high-rises and parking problems on the traffic-jammed streets. But downtown’s Jinsei Center, the new ground-floor anchor of the Opera House Lofts Building on the corner of Broadway and 10th Street, might be the area’s most relaxing lunch-hour stop. Visitors can overcome their arachnophobia, inhale therapeutic scents or…
Everybody’s Hero: The Jackie Robinson Story Mad River Theater Works of West Liberty, Ohio, created and cast this premiere play with music that chronicles Jackie Robinson’s ascent from the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues to the Brooklyn Dodgers of the Major Leagues. Theatre for Young America stepped up to the plate a couple of seasons ago with its…
My Life Remixed. The phrase has a reality-TV feel, only instead of having their rides pimped or homes remodeled, contestants would hand their histories to a remix technician, who would replace traumatic bits with exciting experiences and celebrity cameos. Until advances in memory-altering technology make this program possible, My Life Remixed will refer only to a My Life With the…
This EP is a tasty appetizer to Veda’s upcoming full-length, slated for release this summer, after the young four-piece spends part of the spring on tour with Copeland, Acceptance and Lovedrug — a bill that presents an ascending hierarchy of minor-chord-slinging sex appeal. Indeed, the boys in Veda are going to have to watch out that their tousle-headed tourmates don’t…
When a band loses its most menacing member, it’s just going to rock a little less. If said brute gets the boot because of a hard-partying lifestyle, that cranks the volume down another notch. So Queens of the Stone Age, now without Nick Oliveri’s bruising bass lines and barroom-brawler persona, started its Lullabies to Paralyze studio sessions in the hole….
Beck Hansen’s finest year was unquestionably 1994, when Los Angeles’ most talented high school dropout served up three great records — an indie-folk trawl (One Foot in the Grave); the multigenre, major-label mash-up that made his name (Mellow Gold); and a whacked, lo-fi sampler of just about every style of music known to man at the time (Stereopathetic Soulmanure). Hansen’s…
Poor Moby. No matter how many commercials feature his music, how many awards adorn his mantel or how many hip vegetarian restaurants he owns, it can’t be fun being second only to Ja Rule on Eminem’s shit list. The feud between the rap prince and the twerpcore king may or may not be over, but there’s no doubt that Marshall…
This homespun, ten-track disc, packaged in what appears to be a wedding-invitation envelope, plays like the soundtrack to an autumn sunset written by Bob Dylan and the Band after emerging from the basement at Big Pink, with help from Townes Van Zandt and a bag of weed. Put these newcomers up against any unsigned (or signed, for that matter) band…
When he started writing songs in his bedroom in Australia in his early teens, Ben Lee idolized American indie icons such as Sonic Youth and the Lemonheads. Then serendipity struck. Lee met Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who passed Lee’s demo tape around to anyone who would listen. It ended up in the hands of the Beastie Boys, who were starting…
Regarded as the seminal influence on the rock steady, ska and reggae scenes, Toots Hibbert is also living proof that sharing a spliff is a more sensible means of breaking down barriers than senseless bloodshed. The Clash showed its agreement by using its recording of Toot’s 1969 Jamaican dance-hall hit “Pressure Drop” as the B-side of its sardonic 1979 single…
Honus Honus may be on the brink of genius — if not on the brink of a first-grade temper tantrum. Either way, he’s bringing back the handlebar mustache — and the Beefheart that goes with it. As the Barnum (and maybe the Bailey, too) of the four-ring circus that is Man Man, Honus’ gravel-pit voice box is as strenuous a…
There are a few social norms we’ve all learned to follow. Don’t eat yellow snow. Beer before liquor, never sicker. With music, it’s even easier: Never listen to a band you cried to in the early ’00s. The exception to the no-emo rule, however, is the Juliana Theory. This Pennsylvania quintet even foreshadowed the demise of its own genre with…
Traveling under a banner of staunch underground independence, the collection of obscure artists on the Video Trapped the Rapper Tour coming to the Pool Room is about as far from the Clear Channel empire as an act can get. As the name implies, these underground MCs and DJs intend to impress by dropping beats and rhymes rather than references to…
In sibling self-help books, the model of the nurturing younger sister propping up the rebellious older brother — and vice versa — always fills up a few chapters. On the surface, the rootsy Earles fit that model. The more bubbly, less grumbly Stacey Earle and her quietly supportive husband and songwriting partner, Mark Stuart, are playing a couple of back-porch…
It was a lucky thing not just for Kelly Clarkson but for society as a whole that she didn’t trip over a speaker during the first season of American Idol. (She saved that move for her first visit to Kansas City, at 2003’s Red, White & Boom.) Otherwise, you might now be reading about Justin Guarini instead. The fact that…
