Blue Gallery Without a theme to hold together the works on display here, the thing that unifies this show is the taste of gallery owners Kelly and David Kuhn. Viewers tend to come away with a vague feeling of connectedness but not a defining subject matter or style. We gravitate this time toward Joe Ramiro Garcia and Rich Bowman. Ramiro…
I learned about Christo and Jeanne-Claude in college from a nearly incomprehensible German professor who showed slides of cloth-wrapped buildings to a darkened auditorium full of dozing art-history majors. More memorable than his lecture is my attempt to relay it to my classmate Samantha, who wore very mod clothes — tall boots, short skirts — as well as 1960s-issue thick-rimmed…
Between Land and Sea, the new Laurie Brooks play at the Coterie Theatre, is subtitled A Selkie Myth, a reference to a Scottish legend that one night a year, seals swim onto shore and morph into women. Fortunately for us, several actors have stumbled onto a Kansas City stage and morphed into compelling characters. This world-premiere production, directed by Scott…
For more than four months, DJnotaDJ has straddled the bandnotaband boundary. The Lawrence-based livetronica quartet hasn’t surfaced for shows or studio time since a smokin’ Snoop Dogg tribute last Halloween. Fortunately for fans of futuristic funk, DJnotaDJ has emerged from its hibernation well-rested and ready to resume simulating techno with guitar, bass, keyboard, sampler, drum set and flute. Unlike industrial…
The fact that Roomful of Blues is playing somewhere other than the Grand Emporium is the final click of the door at the end of a Kansas City era. Then again, let’s not forget that Roomful has been around since 1967, surviving the departure of members Duke Robillard and Ronnie Earl (and roughly 17 lead-vocalist changes). The group has boomed…
January’s Minor Mix-Up show at El Torreon offered undeniable evidence of a thriving local hip-hop scene: scores of enthusiastic young fans rhyming along with their favorite native heroes. After three months — an eternity for underage fans dying for a live hip-hop fix — most of those local MCs and a few friends from out of town are ready to…
Reckless Kelly is, by default, practically the poster child for high-desert alt-country these days, at least in the self-described “hick rock” subgenre. The other bands are winkin’ out, but the Kellys are doing just fine. Led by the Braun brothers, Willy and Cody, the band has swallowed whole the soul of classic country. (The Brauns, after all, earned their chops…
When the Bird flew this earthly coop in tragedy and self-destruction at the age of 35, there was little doubt on the scene that he had left a legacy that would be felt in the jazz world for generations to come. Although 2005 marks the 50th anniversary of his death, Parker still remains one of the most influential jazz artists…
Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, export Breaking Benjamin is swell at what it does — endorphin-rush, third-wave grunge by, for and about twentysomething, short-haired (or bald) white guys. Not really headbanging fodder, but its radio-friendly yet sorta-heavy tuneful dunder sounds pretty darn good when you’re concentrating on something else, like hoisting a beer or lining up a shot on a pool table. Taken…
Death metal requires insane technical precision and serious physical stamina. Yet many of its accomplished musicians never receive the respect they deserve, mostly because they sabotage their own efforts with nauseating band names and grotesque album artwork guaranteed to repulse the casually curious. Topeka’s Origin might scare the squeamish with its brutal three-pronged vocal attack and geometric guitar lines, but…
Let’s face it: Rock and roll is on the respirator right now. Concert attendance is down, and ratings for rock radio have declined 20 percent in the past six years as listeners have gotten in touch with their inner 50 Cent. Which makes it even more important that the Soundtrack of Our Lives exists, keeping the spirit of guitar-driven noisemaking…
It’s not often that a band’s name actually describes its sound. Fortunately for Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle, his reverberating bleat of a singing voice actually complements the wonderfully literate indie folk he’s been churning out since he first started recording on a boombox while working as a nurse in a California psychiatric hospital. Paired with his unpolished, cheese-grater-on-the-strings guitar…
The main problem with indie rock today is its lack of surprises. Too many bands settle on one style and run it into the ground, creating cohesive, if homogenous, records. A willingness to diversify elevates Give Me All Your Money, the second album from Kansas City’s own Doris Henson. In fact, the disc transcends labels or classification: The trumpet-laden “Pollen…
Imagine Japanese-Italian cream-tone trio Blonde Redhead stripped of its guitars with keyboards substituted, the players replaced by Americans, and the gauzy art-rock compressed into crisp, efficient indie. That should give you a pretty good idea of what Chicago threesome Pit Er Pat is about. There’s an anxious, OCD fluidity at work in Shakey’s nine songs. No note, drumbeat or maraca…
Silent Alarm ought to end up in the annals of white-boy dance rock. Though it may disappoint some fans of the Bloc Party’s first EP — mainly because the two share a number of tracks — Alarm’s catchiness alone makes it worth at least one full listen. And you will end up shaking it. Silent Alarm won’t bust genres or…
What do you do when your last album opened with the sound of a surgical saw cutting into someone’s chest cavity? Why, you make cartoon music, of course! No matter how hard Mike Patton and his hyperabrasive supergroup (Dave Lombardo, Trevor Dunn and Buzz Osborne) try, though, Fantomas just isn’t wired for levity. Instead, the group takes the whimsy and…
If you’d been through the most high-profile breakup in recent memory and made a movie that’s very title (Gigli) has become synonymous with overhyped bomb, you’d probably call your next project Rebirth, too. Yet there’s more to the title of J. Lo’s fourth outing than just wishful thinking. This Is Me … Then, Lopez’s 2002 album, was nearly devoid of…
On its third studio album, Daft Punk lays on the irony as thick as the distortion. Ditching the glittery nouveau-disco textures of 2001’s Discovery, the French duo renovates the gnarly crusts of tweaked noise that animated the best cuts on its debut disc, Homework. They loop absurdly rudimentary synth riffs and rhythms with an obsessive-compulsiveness that will drive many nuts…
One fateful playtime when I was 3, I stuck a fork in my eye. In my defense, this was in Ohio, whose registered voters collectively did the same thing last November. Also, it was an accident, and — proving the existence of a frontal lobe — one I was never to repeat. Not literally, anyway. When it comes to prodlike…
In the year of hip urban sleaze, a clashing note sounds in the press bio of newlyweds Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion. Girl grows up an indifferent scion to folk royalty (her dad is Arlo Guthrie), meets North Carolina boy on a journey of self-discovery in golden California, then marries boy and makes beautiful music. And it all…
Leaving things behind has been easy for me ever since Dr. Brown gave my foreskin the big snip. But I’m no good at goodbyes. Which is why I keep my penis-poncho in the freezer next to my umbilical cord and the frozen lasagna. Kidding. But arrivederci still ain’t easy. I’ve found that music’s most misguided myth is that it’s better…
You know that scene in The Shining? What am I saying? Of course you do. Even if you haven’t seen Stanley Kubrick’s cabin-fever cautionary tale, you still know the scene. It’s the only thing anyone remembers: Jack Nicholson’s character has just gone three shades of batshit insane. He’s chasing his wife with an ax. He chops a hunk out of…
On paper, it reads like a perfect disaster: the director of How Stella Got Her Groove Back (Kevin Rodney Sullivan) and writers of I Spy and National Security (David Ronn and Jay Scherick) remaking director Stanley Kramer and writer William Rose’s solemnly hollow and glibly provocative 1967 Oscar winner, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, starring Bernie Mac in Spencer Tracy’s…
Everyone with a TV remembers President Bush’s aircraft-carrier landing, after which, wearing a flight suit, he stood in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner and triumphantly declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Nearly two years on, many feel like asking what exactly he meant by that. Gunner Palace makes no bones about it. Opening with footage taken…
