The hardcore scene must be taking the Mad Libs approach to naming its bands lately. It’s a simple formula: Take a dark colloquialism, throw in some smutty nouns and adjectives and you’ve got your very own Unearthed As I Lay Dying in a Cradle of Filth. But rather than fake the machismo with a tough-guy vocab lesson, the members of…
The phrase legend in Chicago is usually shorthand for new blues musician, but the thriving alt-everything scenes in the Windy City (including all those innovators from our town who gave up fountains for Lake Michigan) give that tag some oomph when slapped on a singer. Nora O’Connor is a legend in Chicago, where she seems to sing everything with everybody,…
The last bastion of optimism in an angry scene, 7 Seconds remains largely upbeat after two decades. The Reno, Nevada-based band’s early albums combined hardcore’s blizzard velocity with earnest vocals to create simple rants (“Racism Sucks”) about bullies, substance abuse and sexism. Like the similarly strident Minor Threat, which eventually became Fugazi, 7 Seconds progressed into a postpunk project, though…
The all-inclusive nature of the term jazz is both a blessing and a curse, a fact upon which former young-lion-turned-lion-king Wynton Marsalis seemingly has built his career. A staid preservationist compared with the derring-do of his more progressive contemporaries and a daring progressive to the blue-haired set that easily slips into cardiac arrhythmia if a high-hat abandons two and four,…
Thanks to the Hilton sisters and the ascension of reality television stars to People magazine cover fodder, the latest celebrity trend is to be famous for, well, being famous. Ryan Cabrera hasn’t quite reached sex-tape-worthy levels yet, but his profile was certainly raised after he dated Ashlee Simpson on her reality show. In fact, it’s doubtful that his generic spiky…
Mark Reynolds’ recent album Merry XXXmas — which depicts him on the cover in a Santa suit — has nothing to do with Christmas. On the Reynolds strangeness spectrum, that alone would make nary a blip. With its jump-jazz horns and vintage-phonograph feel, Merry XXXmas sounds like the Amelie soundtrack, albeit with overdubbed narration from some lunatic screaming into the…
If you’ve gotta be melancholy, you may as well be sunny about it. This 10-member (give or take) chamber pop mob, founded by Lovesick’s Fred Thomas as a sort of one-band Elephant Six collective, began life intermingling Brian Wilson and upbeat lo-fi. But as the years passed and lives fell apart and nobody worth a good goddamn became famous, Saturday…
At the tender age of 19, Zakk Wylde became on overnight celebrity by taking over lead-guitar duties in Ozzy Osbourne’s band and capably filling the Sasquatch-sized shoes of his predecessors, Randy Rhodes and Jake E. Lee. After a number of years ax-slinging for the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, Wylde departed after determining that Ozzy had grown soft around the edges….
Punctuation is a funny thing. Parentheses are jolly. Apostrophes are hysterical. Semicolons make me wet myself. And don’t even get me started on ampersands. But the wacky little exclamation point that Against Me bills itself with (Against Me!) is as revealing as it is amusing. You see, these Florida punks like their anarchism with a little absurdity. And the exclamation…
The Paul E. Tsongas Arena is in Lowell, Massachusetts, a city about 25 miles northwest of Boston once known for its busy textile mills, its miles of winding canals and as the birthplace of Jack Kerouac. It’s also a stone’s throw from Lowell High School, the entire student body of which is apparently congregating down the street at a…
The South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, which starts Wednesday, March 16, and runs through Sunday, earned its reputation as an essential destination for music enthusiasts thanks to its showcase spots for buzz bands and rare American sets from acclaimed international acts. Less exotically, it lets regionally successful bands strut for label scouts in the hope of securing…
Listen up, laddy. There are only two kinds of people in this here world. First, there is the Irish. And then there are the people who wish they were Irish. Of course, everyone gets to be Patty O’Furniture for at least one day during the blurry bacchanal when millions celebrate St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland and into…
Everyone has known for some time that 50 Cent is a brilliant self-promoter, an up-from-nothing gangsta icon with coattails longer than the stretch limos that now carry him about. And, of course, even your grandma can recite the number of times he was shot (nine). What hasn’t been clear until now is whether 50 is also an artist to be…
The chilling oddity of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall is not limited to the fact that, six decades after the end of World War II, it’s the first mainstream German film to grapple with Adolf Hitler. Set, for the most part, in the underground Berlin bunker where the Nazi dictator spent his last days, this is a grim and sometimes guilt-ridden examination…
The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror was in wondering why a mysterious videotape killed viewers seven days after they watched it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face hidden under long black hair, who appeared to be…
Graham crackers: I just read an old article of yours about Fred Phelps’ gang picketing the Billy Graham crusade and also about a tyrannical cop who wrote tickets to bicyclers in a small town (Backwash, October 14). My comment is, Phelps is correct. Billy Graham is going to hell because he is a false prophet. As to the tyrant cop,…
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, helping everyone see that what we learned in Sunday school really matters. Dear Jimmy: Last week someone paid more than $10,000 for a pretzel shaped like the Virgin Mary. And I’ve seen news reports of people making pilgrimages to see reflections of her…
The good news: Heather Cave is cancer-free. Readers might remember her story from election week last November. Cave, an artist and musician, is one of 45 million Americans who have no health insurance — she’s always had jobs, but she worked for mom-and-pop operations that couldn’t afford to cover their employees. So when a trip to Planned Parenthood for free…
The anti-evolution movement in Kansas is so irritatingly foolish that the Strip didn’t plan to write more than one column pointing out comical differences between young-Earth biblical literalists and their slicker “intelligent design” counterparts. Young-Earthers can’t get it through their thick heads that they lost this fight back in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. But this meat patty thinks it’s pathetic…
Last July, Edwardsville residents Donna Ozuna-Trout and her husband, Ralph Trout, held a press conference on the steps of the Wyandotte County Courthouse. The couple had just been released from county jail, each on $50,000 bond. Prosecutors had accused them of trying to poison Edwardsville Mayor Stephanie Eickhoff and her family, who happened to be the Trouts’ neighbors. News of…
In doing our part to bridge the chasm between social tribes in Kansas City, we’ve been big proponents of the Drunken Antic — the phenomenon of going up to strangers in a bar and just starting shit with them (not maliciously, of course). Of course, both parties must be wasted, and finding Research Assistants who are up to the task…
I got an e-mail the other day from a very angry reader, Jeff Silver. He wasn’t mad at me, for a pleasant change. Instead, he was sore at Ray “Pete” Peterman, the owner of The Sour Octopus Restaurant (11129 North Oak). Silver is a vegetarian, and he had called Peterman to see if the owner-chef — who only prepares and…
My friend Beatriz, a native of Guadalajara, Mexico, can remember the first time she ate in a corporate-owned Mexican restaurant. “It was Annie’s Santa Fe on the Country Club Plaza, and it was really fun, an interesting atmosphere and energy,” she says. “The menu had dishes that I, as a Mexican-American, had never seen before. Lots of fried foods. You…
3/11-4/3 What would Martha Stewart do to deal with the fears and emotions stirred up by the trauma of September 11, 2001? We imagine she might throw a dinner party and invite Camille Paglia, Saddam Hussein, Martin Luther King Jr. and Tom Clancy to sort through things over haute cuisine. Playwrights Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros serve the same simmering…
