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….
Collectors are junkies. Their eyes are hooked on eBay like Zora Neale Hurston’s were on God. It’s an endearing disease, to be sure, but a disease nonetheless. Take George Bailey, for example. Nice, sporty-looking guy with a Midwestern twang and a firm, trustworthy handshake. Average height. Average weight. Short, well-groomed hair. Proprietor of Waid’s Family Restaurant on 31st Street and…
Together two years, Black Presidents still seems like the proverbial band next door that’s setting off all the car alarms on the block with bass-guitar-and-kick-drum synchronicity one day, then, the next day, has a blurb in some glossy. Life in a vacuum, indeed. Whether it’s destined for the vicissitudes of rock stardom, Black Presidents is poised to break out on…
As its title suggests, Anti-Crew’s Progressive Movement is an eloquently left-leaning effort. MC Flare Tha Rebel assassinates presidential policies, takes aim at gun violence and sideswipes idiots who fear public transportation. However, A Step Forward modestly underestimates the mammoth-stomp impact of this expertly produced debut disc. Flare and his beat creator and occasional lyrical cohort DJ Eternal play with grunge-style…
Rufus Wainwright’s sister (and frequent tourmate and vocal foil) shares with the more famous offspring of Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle a detached, love-drunk delivery and an electric command of a melody’s path of least resistance. Martha Wainwright’s engaging, self-titled debut recalls her brother’s eponymous first outing; it alternates the grandiose with the intimate without resorting to mere gesture at…
The Apes have always relied on a minimal arrangement of organ, bass and drums to play their loud and distorted haunted-house rock, but this methodology belies their actual sound, which is harsh, melodramatic and, well, noisy (not that that’s ever been a bad thing). Listening to Baba’s Mountain, which is loosely structured as a concept album, is definitely an adventure,…
If 2002’s The Golden Dove marked the weakened end of Mary Timony’s adventures in soft, synth-piano-organ-centric magic, Ex Hex marks a bold new beginning. Though the album retains some key Timony hallmarks — Tolkienesque babble, Fender Rhodes twinkle, hints of grrly sass — the guitar muscles are more bronzed than they’ve been in a decade. On “9 X 3,” her…
When And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead was in Lawrence promoting Source Tags and Codes, the band destroyed its equipment before the show was even over. That album was pure adrenaline, and the mayhem fit the music. The band, however, scales back the recklessness on the new Worlds Apart. Instead of noisy feedback and throaty screams,…
We feel your pain, Kansas City: Too Short — our most O of OGs, the man who boasted that Nancy Reagan licked his tool up and down “like it was corn on the cob” — rocking … Topeka? The party’s here, dog, not in that rotting prairie remarkable only for hosting the heart of a cynically pious state government. But…
For those of us who dig on electro-rock, it’s usually a good sign when a band is attached to Astralwerks. The label responsible for Basement Jaxx and Fatboy Slim is also now home to VHS or Beta. Yet another one of those trendy new-wave revivalist groups, the Beta boys of Kentucky deserve their kudos. The group’s Astralwerks debut, which came…
If you took the converse of Fox News and gave it a microphone and some beats, Mr. Lif would be the one dishing out the fair and balanced coverage. On his various Def Jux releases, Lif’s lyrical themes strike some varied and unique stances. He isn’t afraid to unleash highly informed denunciations of the status quo, and he isn’t shy…
Let’s face it: Spinoffs usually suck. Joey isn’t funny without his friends, Frasier was just a pompous ass outside the bar and, for all the hype, Joanie really didn’t love Chachi all that much. In music, however, there are two bands that get it exactly right. Sparta and the Mars Volta — the bastard children of postpunk powerhouse At the…
Ever wondered what Prince might sound like if he’d been born 20 years later and developed an inclination toward harder indie rock? No? Fuck you, then. We still say that any show by Washington, D.C.’s Q and Not U is every bit as enjoyable as a performance by the purple-obsessed funkster, though we’ve never actually seen Christopher Richards in a…
Today’s garage rockers seem to spend more time adjacent to corporate slogans than next to their mothers’ four-banger economy-class sedans, but the members of Thee Shams (the second e is silent) haven’t forgotten their roots. Who really needs free Gap jeans for life anyway? And what better way to buck the system than to include gratuitous nudity on the cover…
In terms of sound and subject matter, the Shotgun Idols might be the city’s sleaziest band. AssClown Timmay, the group’s massive, manic street-punk shouter, rants about “coke whores” and “big titties.” Von Hodad’s slinky bass lines conjure images of strip-club snake charmers, guitarist Amy Farrand’s raw riffs exude brass-knuckle menace, and Jon Cagle’s drumbeats hit like the pounding fists of…
In the late ’70s, Chris Stamey co-founded both the Sneakers and the dB’s, pre-R.E.M. progenitors of Southern power pop, then hooked up with older heroes such as Big Star’s Alex Chilton and Cream’s Jack Bruce. For the past decade, Stamey has been hard at work producing an entire genre, working behind the boards with Freedy Johnston, Whiskeytown, Alejandro Escovedo, Tift…
Every musician has a side project. It’s dictated — in the Magna Carta, I believe — that every singer, songwriter, guitarist and merch guy involved in a wildly successful band has to occasionally indulge by marinating his or her diverse music in the savory creative juices of the solo project. But what happens when the musician is Sam Beam and…
The last time I’d heard anything like live music at the News Room was the creepy goo-goo babbling of a toothless barfly over the supine body of a heinously smashed fortysomething blonde who had drunk so much that a taxi had to be called, then the police, then an ambulance to cart her off on a stretcher. The 3 a.m….
The last clear, in-person memory I have of Micah Paul Hinson is set at the end of my senior year of college: It’s an insanely hot summer day, and I’m stepping out onto my porch into the Texas sun, clad in too-short shorts, a waterproof shirt and a safari hat. (The heat makes you do funny things sometimes.) Micah is…
“No more soccer!” declares small-time thug Sing (writer-director-star Stephen Chow) as he stomps on a child’s ball. In the context of Kung Fu Hustle, it’s a pathetic attempt by Sing to make himself look tough. The larger signal, however, is to followers of Chow’s work — it’s a direct reference to his last international hit, 2001’s Shaolin Soccer, and a…
Among the many mysteries surrounding The Interpreter is the one that finds Sydney Pollack heralded as a major American director, a maker of Serious and Important Movies. His filmography, marked by mawkish mediocrities (Out of Africa, as vibrant as a coffee-table book) and self-important bores (Havana, so awful that the audience staged a revolution), certainly doesn’t merit the huzzahs….
Recently, it was brought to our attention that you’ve been getting screwed. Dear readers, we’ve been told that spammers have wreaked so much havoc with the feedback function on our company’s Web sites that, for weeks, those of you who cared enough to send us your thoughts may have run into a brick wall. How long this has been going…
Jimmy the Fetus Hey, kids, Jimmy the Fetus here, your guide to moral values in the Midwest, helping everybody see that what we learned in Sunday school really matters. Dear Jimmy: I just wanted those of you who share the view of Jimmy the Fetus’ April 7 column to read what the Good Book says about your comments. One day,…
Every newspaper gets duped from time to time, including this one. But rarely has the Strip seen a major daily get worked as cleverly as the way The Kansas City Star got burned a couple of weeks ago. This bellicose beef loin is referring to the slick way the Star was punked by one of its own advertisers. It began…
