On a recent Saturday evening, we were puttering around Night Ranger Headquarters when we got a drunk-dial voice mail from a friend. “Jayyyy Ceeeee!” he bellowed. “It’s, like, 6:47, and I’ve been drunk for approximately three hours and riding around in cabs in Chicago. Why the fuck are you in Kansas City?” Click. Well. He might have been in the…
A proverb in the restaurant business goes roughly like this: If you make one customer happy, he or she will tell two or three friends about your place; if you make one patron angry, that person will tell as many people as he or she can. But in the case of Lisa Lara, the owner of Tienda Casa Paloma (8220…
Two young chefs, Ted Habiger and Andrew Sloan, were using their beans when they realized that most local coffeehouses don’t have very good food — that is, if they even offer anything more complicated than a crumbly old scone — and the kind of breakfast joints that used to be called coffee shops typically don’t serve the best java….
4/29-5/22 The Exonerated gives new meaning to prison blues. By Steve Walker Playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen interviewed 40 former death-row inmates before finishing The Exonerated. Whether they’d been there for 3 years or for 22, the prisoners all had one thing in common: They were innocent. But Cynthia Levin, who’s directing the Unicorn’s production, says that Blank…
THU 4/28 On television, traditional animation still thrives on shows such as The Simpsons and Family Guy. However, until those franchises spawn feature films, the venerable form’s cinematic future looks bleak. While Disney-style drawings struggle to find an audience, computer-animated films such as Shrek and Finding Nemo garner acclaim and gross hundreds of millions. This new breed of colorful character…
4/29-5/1 Don’t have a BKS sticker on your car? That’s OK. This weekend’s Brookside Art Annual gives you a chance to blend in with the locals. The fun starts Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. and runs through Sunday afternoon. Call 816-523-5553. — Rebecca Braverman Strike Up the LAN Pass the Mountain Dew — we’re killing baddies. SAT 4/30 In…
SAT 4/30 The heart of the Kansas City Art Institute campus, Vanderslice Hall, is hurtin’ for restoration. Built in 1896, the red-brick colossus looming over 44th Street and Warwick was originally the estate of parks and boulevards pioneer August Meyer. It was purchased for the college in 1927 by Howard Vanderslice. Neither man is around anymore to bankroll ongoing…
The designers involved in Urban Accoutre have shown work in local style showcases, but none of them has ever supervised an event in Kansas City — and there’s no denying that it’s a mammoth leap from participation to program planning. For these five fashionistas, sitting in the pilot’s seat provokes a mix of anxiety and euphoria. “It’s great to have…
Thursday, April 28 We’re not quite sure what to make of this movie critic contest we heard about recently. The rules are pretty straightforward: Videotape yourself reviewing any movie in a minute or less. Mail or deliver to WDAF Fox 4, 3030 Summit, Kansas City, MO 64108, before 5 p.m. April 30. Attach your name, address, phone number and date…
KJHK 90.7, the University of Kansas’ 3,100-watt student-run radio station, cultivates a special breed of music snob. After spending a month requesting three-song demos from local bands, it took ten station volunteers about two hours to sift through 75 demos and eliminate 60 bands. “We were going pretty fast,” says Casey Boyer, KJHK’s live-events director, recalling the tempo of the…
Kettlewell, who spent the opening reception walking around, smiling, shaking hands, introducing herself, thanking people for coming … her face completely smudged in dirt. Not taking herself too seriously appears to have freed up some of the energy curators usually devote to being supersmooth, allowing it to flow instead to the dual responsibilities of displaying good art and enjoying it….
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. We gravitate toward the work by Joe Ramiro Garcia and Rich Bowman. Ramiro Garcia’s painting “Helpless” might have spoken more loudly to us than usual because of the fast-approaching tax season….
It’s almost certain that 1987’s The Lost Boys will top any list of favorite vampire films of the ’80s, but I recall another from the same year that made a stronger impression. Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark wasn’t as successful, but it had indie hotties such as Bill Paxton and James LeGros, vampires dressed like bikers, and a ravishingly beautiful…
The Luther Campbell of the techno scene, Detroit’s DJ Assault pairs explicit phrases with booty-shakin’, bass-anchored hip-hop and techno backdrops. Though his lyrics attract much of the attention (song titles include “Nipples-N-Clits” and “Ass-N-Titties”), Assault is an underrated technician who turns concerts into clinics. He scratches, remixes, cuts live and tricks out his turntables (taking a screwdriver to the pitch…
On Stacked Decks, TommyLift exhibits his own laser-precise production steez while spreading the love to KC’s deserving MCs. This full-length from one of the original Flavor-Pak collaborators includes beats that would please fans of DJ Premier and Portishead, supplemented by a variety of rhyme styles: lyrical narratives (“Mary’s on Fire” with Nesto), a feel-good summertime chorus (“Good Ass Day” with…
It’s never a fun or particularly rewarding task to trash music born of the courage and anguish of inspired area artists, but when said music arrives with a press kit that includes the usual promotional self-flattery and the overall message that the band in question is ready to go forth and begin stinking up the landscape like mercury-poisoned fish, well,…
The Notwist’s Neon Golden was one of 2003’s unknown gems. The album’s cool, minimalist electro-pop, colored with sparse woodwinds and Markus Acher’s humanly flawed vocals, was the perfect soundtrack to a spectral, all-night train ride across Northern Europe. The German band’s next journey is a partnership with California hip-hop experimentalists Themselves, who bonded with the Krautrockers on a North American…
They get nostalgic about the last ten years before the last ten years have passed, Ben Folds sings on “Bastard,” the jaunty kiss-off to young Republicans that opens Songs for Silverman, his second solo album. It’s been a decade since Folds, with his trio, Ben Folds Five, announced himself as the most ingratiating pop songwriter of his generation — fun…
For a bunch of guys who spend their days creating off-the-charts musical concoctions, the boys in Supersystem sure came up with a shitty name. Sure, it’s supposed to be all about the music. The craft. The art. But — this just in — I’m a petty bastard. Besides, the generic moniker hardly does justice to the kind of screwball synth-punk-world…
On record, Muse crafts profoundly moving ballads. Singer Matthew Bellamy’s falsetto trembles as if windblown, and the band’s symphonic slow-dance melodies could jerk tears from a stone. In concert, though, the group converts this intense emotional energy into pure volume. Like Queen, its equally melodramatic countrymen, Muse’s members are live killers, performing with rare grandeur. On Absolution, last year’s best…
Long-haired veteran blues rocker Joey Skidmore wouldn’t be the first guy around town we’d expect to bring an outlandishly exotic band to Kansas City, but his amis Les Fossoyeurs, simply by virtue of the fact that its members are French and play rollicking ska, is about the most bizarre act to come through these parts short of Jacques Chirac hooking…
Chiefs of their own sub-sub-culture, Los Angeles psychobilly trio Tiger Army can carve its initials in your forehead with even the most generic template of its sound: frontman Nick 13’s greasy croon; Fred Hell’s swinging, Sun Records-simple drums; and the huge, rubbery slap of Geoff Kresge’s stand-up bass, which erects iron trestles along the twisted track of Monsieur 13’s punky…
How’s this for a political statement? Go see Elton John. You’ll hear “Philadelphia Freedom” and you’ll cross Fred Phelps’ anemic picket line, which usually shows up to protest the gay singer’s … well, his existence. During “The Bitch Is Back,” contemplate how your ticket money contributes to keeping the legendarily acquisitive pop icon financially bulletproof now that President Bush has…
Few bands will readily invite a dude sporting a mohawk and a wife beater to kick their ass. Then again, not many bands are as universally loved and loathed as the Faint. Which is why the geniuses at drop kickthefaint.com have provided an outlet for those who find the group’s grinding synth-pop to be so many carefully manicured black fingernails…
