With its jangly twang, evocative lyrics and earnest vocals, Clem Snide resembles a high-lonesome version of R.E.M. And everybody hurts on its fifth release, which gracefully deals with such capital-letter crises as its titular trauma (The End of Love) and the disappearance of silence. Eef Barzelay submerges his songs in sorrow, but the melodies and characters are too buoyant to…
To see Maura Davis perform with Denali was to know that she was destined for bigger things. The group struggled to create worthy vehicles for Davis’ operatic range and graceful phrasing. Too often, its hooks felt frustratingly inaccessible, as if they were encased in ice. Denali dissolved when Davis’ brother, Keeley, left to pursue another project, but she surfaced last…
When the Omaha, Nebraska, indie scene erupted in the late ’90s, Tim Kasher must have felt a few symptoms of Younger Sibling Syndrome. While touring partner and drinking buddy Conor Oberst was simultaneously dissing the emo tag and posing for Spin covers, Kasher was quietly reuniting his own lesser-known outfit, Cursive, for 2000’s spectacular Domestica. But whereas Cursive gained some…
Solo rocker John Doe, who founded legendary Los Angeles punk band X, talks about the blues, his enduring sanity and his old-ass car. JH: Last time you played in Kansas City, it was a really great show at the Farm, an art gallery. Did you explicitly want to play there again? JD: “Yes.” What did you like about it? “That…
For more than a decade now, Medeski Martin & Wood hasn’t given two craps about genre boundaries. Hard-pressed, the trio’s sound could be called progressive jazz, but each of its albums has been a drastic departure from the previous release. Nonetheless, questions still remain for this organ-drums-and-bass combo about the definitions of jazz, so-called jam-band music, and how (and whether)…
“Everybody thinks we’re assholes,” says Sum 41 guitarist Dave Baksh. “We’re Canadian. It’s impossible.” Phoning from one of the asshole centers of Los Angeles, the Bel Age Hotel near the Sunset Strip, Baksh and his band are taking a breather from an extended road trip with Unwritten Law. The plan is to knock out a round of headlining dates before…
In a dark, crowded club, there’s at least one 24-year-old Lawrence scenester who could easily be mistaken for a girl — despite his flat chest and wispy traces of facial hair. But everyone in the scene knows that the electro-freak-out band Superargo’s rail-thin leader, who’s often clad all in black and wears his dark-brown hair unashamedly long and flowy, is…
Siblings Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, who together are the songwriting and performing nucleus of New York City’s insanely productive the Fiery Furnaces, can claim to have been compared to plenty of acts with cult followings of varying sizes and mental stability. Frank Zappa (ambitious and prolific, but dead). They Might Be Giants (prolific, barely alive). The White Stripes (a fake…
Chicago’s tacky tourist tar pit the House of Blues brims with teen spirit as the lights dim and New Found Glory takes the stage. There are 1,000 kids in the capacity crowd tonight, but a stadium-sized roar envelops the room as NFG launches into “Understatement,” a high-octane ditty from its third CD, Sticks and Stones. The main floor erupts into…
A cynic might describe movies as the most depraved and fantastic system of exploitation ever devised. After all, they trade on the greed and hubris of the financiers, the beauty and allure of the stars, and the trust (or, if you prefer, gullibility) of the audience. With a bit of tweaking, this thesis fits documentaries and pornography even better. The…
Damian Cunningham has the face of an angel — which is only appropriate for a 7-year-old boy who speaks with saints, among them Peter, Joseph, Claire and, of course, Francis of Assisi. Damian sees dead people, all right, but they come not to haunt the lad, who’s already been through enough with the recent death of his beloved mum….
It wasn’t easy being green: Tony Ortega’s Kansas City Strip (April 7) about this year’s St. Paddy’s Day being turned into a “family-friendly” event seemed to gloss over the fact that this year’s parade barely existed. An earlier start time, half the route (not to mention that it didn’t even really come downtown) and the city’s threat that if you…
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: The born-again kids at school have been acting like they’re on crack ever since that gay-marriage thing passed in the election. Now they’re practically foaming at the mouth about…
The scene was always the same on those crisp Saturday mornings in the spring of 2001. The soccer field behind Lee’s Summit’s Bernard C. Campbell Middle School pulsed with commotion: Rows of parents in sweats and jeans jawed at each other from lawn chairs on the sidelines while their children sprawled across blankets behind them. Some held leashes for dogs…
The Strip wishes someone in the state of Kansas would give its lawmakers the credit they deserve. Any minute now, the state’s supreme court justices are going to weigh in on the Legislature’s newest school-financing plan, but regardless of what those activist dildos have to say, this meat patty wants to give its thanks to the creativity of our state…
Eight years ago, working out of a pawnshop on Troost Avenue, George Tyler learned how to mount a diamond on a tooth so that it wouldn’t come loose the first time a customer tore into a sandwich. Prong settings, common on rings, are no good. To keep a jewel in its place in a human mouth, Tyler learned, a bezel…
The warmer weather in Kansas City usually means only one thing: It’s time for spring training. Not baseball — a different sort of pickup game. There’s a perfectly good scientific explanation for this, we swear — we once learned in a medical physiology class that the increased amount of sunlight makes some gland produce more hormones, which is why everyone…
It’s been more than 22 years since the California-based International House of Pancakes stopped building restaurants in its once-signature A-frame style. That just demonstrates the antiquity of the badly aging building at 3260 Broadway. The former pancake palace hasn’t been an IHOP for decades, but the interior décor has remained essentially the same, even as the menu has veered from…
The year 1972 stands out for a lot of things: Nixon went to China, George Wallace got shot, Harry S. Truman died, scientists invented Prozac, and techies wrote the first e-mail program. It was also the year that Playboy magazine revealed its full-frontal nude centerfold (featuring future journalist Marilyn Cole) and changed culinary history in Kansas City by naming a…
4/7 & 4/13 K ansas City’s freshly unveiled tourism campaign, with its “New Discoveries Daily” slogan and skyline logo, seeks to shed cowtown connotations. But even a metropolis needs to keep in touch with its rustic roots. For example, the hipster haven Portland, Oregon, spawned Hillstomp, a down-home duo whose minimalist blues tunes make 12-bar shuffles seem like epics. Using…
WED 4/13 Dorothy Parker took her social lubrication at the Algonquin Round Table. Truman Capote threw weird, lavish parties packed with literati. Andre Dubus III, author of House of Sand and Fog, will roll with a slightly more sedate literary set when he comes to Shawnee Mission East High School (7500 Mission Road in Prairie Village) at 7 p.m. Wednesday,…
SAT 4/9 We know that “Green Elvis” is meant to conjure visions of an environmentally friendly hunka burnin’ love — who, for the record, would not own blue suede shoes. But all we can picture is an off-color version of the bloated, post-mortem Presley. Which is kinda gross. Maybe the Earth Fair can change our mind. Besides said musician, the…
4/12-4/16 Mark Manning helped found the anti-censorship performance-art extravaganza known as Big Bang Buffet in 1990 to provide a venue for original work that might not be safe enough for commercial theater companies. Manning’s own foray into performance art took place after he was attacked one night at a bus stop. In a state of shock, Manning asked his attackers…
Considering that we’re all eating the same broccoli and buying the same brands of jeans and talking about the same three current events, it’s hard to keep in mind what our first-grade teacher told us: “Every person is unique. Like snowflakes. ” And then sometimes there is a person who is so entirely original that meeting him is like seeing…
