Tom Deatherage spits out a fleck of tobacco from a freshly lit, unfiltered Basic. It’s just after 4 p.m., and he’s well into his second pack of the day. Dark rings sag under his eyes, and the pale daylight washing over his face makes him look older than his 62 years. Though he has made significant contributions to Kansas City’s…
You know those nights when your Freak Magnet powers are just reeling ’em in? Well, we were having that problem at Denim and Diamonds, the unlikely setting for a night of bad come-ons and earnest confessions. OK, we weren’t sure what to expect from a country-western bar in North Kansas City, but we actually had a fantastic time, thanks in…
Forget the clever neon sign at the front door, the warm aroma of chili and tamales, the blues music over the sound system. The real selling point of John David DiCapo’s two-month-old Chili Shack (1128 Oak Street) is an iconic black-and-white photograph of Harry Truman eating a plate of chili and tamales, taken during Truman’s presidency. Legendary local chili connoisseur…
When the 78-year-old Italian Gardens closed last year, I had mixed feelings. It had never been on my list of favorite local restaurants, but I liked its bustling energy, the unfussy Italian-American food and the comfort of knowing it was there in case I ever needed a fix of spaghetti à la Caruso. The same people who rolled their eyes…
4/19-4/20 The Washington Post called Julie Lee’s record “the best Americana debut of 2004.” She opens two shows this week — at 8 p.m. Tuesday for Wayne Hancock ($12) and at 10 p.m. Wednesday for the Rumblejetts ($5), both at Knuckleheads Saloon (2719 Rochester, 816-483-1456). — Annie Fischer The Lost Boys Late Night Theatre offers more fang for your buck….
TUE 4/19 Jane Fonda’s metamorphic movie career might as well be a time capsule showing how the film industry — and the country — has changed over the past 45 years. Fonda’s onscreen history starts with cheeky, early-’60s comedies (Period of Adjustment) before moving on to sexually ambitious alternative universes (1968’s Barbarella), utter despondency (Klute and They Shoot Horses, Don’t…
SAT 4/16 After going through a rigorous application process, the Storm, Kansas City’s women’s football league, finally has its license to play. Saturday marks the inaugural season’s home opener, against the Tuscon Wildfire, at 7 p.m. at Blue Springs High School (2000 Northwest Ashton Drive); tickets are $8. Call 913-402-8294. — Annie Fischer Snyde-r Remarks Coach Q better have some…
ONGOING Like a literature student advancing from introductory survey classes to graduate studies, Bloomsday Books (1518 Walnut) recently shed its paperback and fiction holdings and moved downtown to specialize in loftier pursuits. Now it deals primarily in hardcover books, mostly nonfiction rare and collectable editions. “We always wanted to go to higher-end hardbacks,” Tom Shawver says of his store’s shift…
The Royals were unfathomably awful last year, losing more than 100 games and looking pitiful in the process. The team had no home-run power to make up for its concrete feet, its pitchers spilled runs, and its infielders committed more errors than an LSD-addled tax accountant. Despite the current squad’s dismal opening-day loss to the Detroit Tigers, though, it’s…
Thursday, April 14 Does it really take reading all of French Women Don’t Get Fat to figure out how the pretty Parisians keep their girlish figures? As much fun as it is to believe that it’s a magical ratio of wine to cheese to bread, we’re afraid it has a little more to do with the way people get around…
If all the genies and fairies who watch over the Kansas City Art Institute are feeling benevolent this Friday, an event at the H&R Block Artspace will be blessed indeed. Poetry readings by prolific author and former New Young American Poets editor Kevin Prufer and award-winning poet Wayne Miller will be complemented — maybe even usurped — by an announcement…
Measure for Measure Brimming with corruption, extremism and religious fervor, the last production of the UMKC Department of Theatre’s season could have been written the day after last November’s elections. But Measure for Measure is instead from the canon of the ever-topical William Shakespeare. Among its other contemporary themes are the assessment of the distance between extremes and the…
Go to Italy! Cobi Newton doesn’t really want you to go to Italy. Her stated goal is to create — using colors and design — the feeling we get from daydreams of running away to the old boot-shaped country. Which is funny, because at first glance, the streamlined sensibilities of her work did not create that feeling for us at…
Last week’s opening at Union Station’s City Stage fell on a telling anniversary. Eleven years ago, on April 6, 1994, a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down as it neared the airport in Kigali, Rwanda. Within hours, ethnic Hutus in Rwanda’s military began slaughtering ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Eight thousand were killed that day….
Pirate radio isn’t all crass euphemisms, cheesy rebellion rallies, suicide callers and shirtless Samantha Mathis. Right around the time Hard Harry pumped up the volume, Kenny Hawkes took control of the UK underground station Girls FM. Under his leadership, Girls FM grew to attract a million listeners a month and expanded its DJ roster from two (Hawkes included) to 22….
This Lawrence institution’s tenth release is a molten slab of metal, packed with breakdowns that hint at why there’s so much mad flailing and kicking in the neighborhood mosh pits these days, plus enough creative, spaced-out guitar lines to school any other local metal act in transcending the limits of the genre. Granted, this genre isn’t exactly hard to bust…
Kasey Rausch has the perfect narrator’s voice. She enunciates clearly, landing squarely on every end rhyme so listeners can be certain that her girls do in fact have heads full of curls. She avoids frills, other than an appealing quiver during her country-tinged numbers and an unconvincing growl during her mystifying “House of the Rising Sun” makeover. Rausch’s sparse approach…
Joe Good doesn’t care for bling-bling raps, so he doesn’t write them. Refreshingly, he leaves it at that, saying only, If you’re happy living lavish/I ain’t mad at you. Other underground MCs obsess over their self-righteous stances like angry vegetarians protesting in front of the grill at a backyard barbecue; Good’s just chillin’ with his corn on the cob. Miles…
Crimes against humanity are typically the province of guys like Hitler, Saddam and men who wear tassled loafers. But music critics? When an album of dazzling pop sophistication — one that actually alters brain chemistry to produce instant joy — goes unacclaimed, who’s to blame for all the suicides, murders, crack overdoses and train robberies that could have been prevented…
Mope-rock bands sprouted like mushrooms in the wake of Coldplay’s global success, though very few captured the genuine spirit of Chris Martin’s earnest emoting and lyrical romanticism. The Perishers are certainly among the rare exceptions, a band that details the darker recesses of the brain without letting melancholy overwhelm. Credit this to experience — Morning is the Swedish group’s third…
On opening track “LCC,” rapid-fire, video-game-bang-shot beats set the tone for the latest effort from Yorkshire, England’s Autechre. The lethargic Draft 7.30, from 2003, was the duo’s slightest and clunkiest recording to date, hinting that after 13 years, Sean Booth and Rob Brown’s goth-glitch dance party was running out of steam. By contrast, Untilted’s more menacing muck is almost revelatory….
For those looking for the perfect summer soundtrack that isn’t some kind of let’s-have-a-raging-kegger megamix but is more akin to the soothing psychedelic vibe of early Pink Floyd, then the Radar Brothers are your jam. Slow and syrupy as a humid summer night, this often overlooked Los Angeles band’s music is a great accompaniment to things campfires, stargazing, rocking chairs…
Millions of years ago, early man hunted mammals with sharp sticks. Today, Early Man, a metal guitar-and-drums two-piece, roams the country hunting for new fans with twin blasts of heroic riffage and drum pounding. Blasting out of the New York City dive-bar scene, Early Man is not only the first group to take the duo approach to the guitar-rock genre…
Everyone seems to have an uncle who loves Styx and has, at one time or another, forced his niece or nephew to endure an embarrassing air-guitar performance of “Come Sail Away.” Styx started out as a progressive rock band comparable to the classical-gas-huffing Emerson, Lake and Palmer or the Moody Blues, and the release of the power ballad “Lady” in…
