Thursday, April 7 Perhaps all those non-Irish drunks looking for an annual excuse to get shitfaced on a weekday and not feel guilty about skipping work should forget about St. Patrick’s Day and instead start celebrating the end of Prohibition. That would actually make sense. (We regret to inform you that wearing and distributing those obnoxious beads makes no sense…
Inspired by a hit of Ecstasy, a 32-year-old white supremacist shows up at a Manhattan human-rights organization and declares himself an ex-piece de Aryan resistance. Vincent Nolan, the title character of Francine Prose’s second novel, A Changed Man, which she discusses Monday at Rockhurst University, could go about his transformation in any number of ways. But he decides to do…
Hairspray With the national tour of the musical adaptation of John Waters’ 1988 film, Kansas City will see that rare breed: nonstop entertainment laced with a meaningful message. As chubby hipster Tracy Turnblad topples the barriers against fat kids and black kids on a ’60s-era TV dance show, she also enjoys the added benefits of a newly glamorous mom and…
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…
Pete Rock is old-school through and through. A veritable Yoda on the ones and twos, with a résumé that includes some of hip-hop’s most elite MCs, this self-proclaimed Chocolate Boy Wonder has set the bar for future Kanyes everywhere. First raising eyebrows 15 years ago as the Robin to C.L. Smooth’s Batman, the New York City native has since earned…
E Double is a rock band unafraid to perform in cargo shorts, to advertise a KMXV 93.3 endorsement, and to layer bright acoustic strumming and echo-drenched electric arpeggios with such innocent abandon that it might as well be saying, “U2 who?” A first listen to this album will send anyone unfamiliar with the widely toured Lawrence-based group to the liner…
For some reason, grunge groups never use keyboards to reinforce their angst. That leaves a sizable guitar-rock gap between synthesizer-abusing hair bands and black metal’s classical-composer nods. The 2004 Club Wars champion, Sidewise, fills that void, decorating its I-love-the-’90s riffs with pristine piano tones. When Jason Foster starts plinking halfway through the opening track, “Lego,” the song transforms from a…
British Sea Power’s debut disc announced a fresh experimental voice, that of a band not afraid to sabotage catchy hooks with aggressive noise. But the group squanders its potential on Open Season, an uninspired yawner that makes the title of its previous record (The Decline of British Sea Power) seem eerily prescient. Open Season resembles a compilation of the least…
Perhaps a near-breakup is exactly what Garbage needed. Bleed Like Me plays like a distillation of the group’s strengths: The riffs arrive skillet-fried and huge, and the ballads burn with a soulfulness that sounds like the best Motown covers the Runaways never did. “Bad Boyfriend” has a mudslide density that Shirley Manson barely manages to snake her trademark snarl through….
To the tune of “God Save the Queen,” Ren and Stimpy once sang of Canada, Our country reeks of trees/Our yaks are really large/And they smell like rotting beef carcasses. But who will sing of the carcass of Despistado? Before breaking up, Regina, Saskatchewan’s greatest (only?) offering to the annals of indie rock released an EP and a full-length called…
When Corrosion of Conformity’s Pepper Keenan sings I once was blind/But now I see, it’s an allusion-packed phrase. The line echoes Black Sabbath’s “Snowblind” and name-checks Blind, the 1991 breakthrough release on which the North Carolina natives outgrew thrash’s two-minute time frame while maintaining its intensity throughout sprawling Southern-rock tunes. More important, though, it’s a religious reference, one of many…
Despite its moniker — which sounds like a junior high hardcore kid’s idea of a hilarious band name — Dogs Die in Hot Cars is yet another UK group keeping the new-wave revival torch burning brightly. The Scotland quintet’s debut disc, Please Describe Yourself, often feels like the peony-trampling offspring of XTC. Vocalist Craig Macintosh wails in the reedy upper…
Reality television is rigged. How else did our college rugby teammate fail to bag the latest star of The Bachelorette? It’s also mind-numbing. Why else is our dear mother incapable of speaking during Survivor? And it’s humiliating to the human race. How else to explain William Hung’s turn on American Idol? The only good thing the godforsaken craze has done…
Dwight Yoakam should get the credit for almost single-handedly bringing country back to Nashville, but it was right-hand man Pete Anderson, his guitarist and producer, who injected the Bakersfield into Yoakam’s best records. Anderson is also known for anchoring (among others) Michelle Shocked’s Short Sharp Shocked and manning the mixer on our own Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys’ Your…
Live, Drums and Tuba leaves jaws hanging 4 feet closer to the ground and renders useless the categorization that flows blandly from the teat of rock magazines. Unfortunately, to date, the band’s records haven’t come close to capturing its onstage glory. Among the wealth of ingredients dumped on its Chicago-style jagged rock are a groove that makes jam-band fans spin…
As his stage surname suggests, Darren “Kid Dakota” Jackson hails from Big Sky country. But even if his moniker didn’t give it away, his songs’ spacious constructions and rustic devices (cicada croaks and screen-door swings serve as auxiliary instrumentation) betray his South Dakota heritage. Now living in Minnesota, home to his frequent collaborator, Low, Jackson still crafts country-tinged campfire melodies….
High-energy space jams are the name of the game Saturday when brothers in freak-out Hairy Apes BMX and the Dead Kenny G’s come to the Bottleneck. Though the two groups differ in sound, they share the same mission: Take a stone groove and torture it to within an inch of its funky life, then resuscitate it at the last moment….
There’s a mini-revival of instrumental groups going on today that pays soulful homage to Booker T. and the MG’s, and the inspiration has been the recent return to the spotlight of Motown house band the Funk Brothers. But how the hell does one of the groove-lovingest rhythm sections on the planet wind up being four white guys from Iowa City?…
Our local DJs have some mad skills, but rarely does KC play host to internationally renowned vinyl spinners in an intimate club space. Every club kid’s dream (and every recovering raver’s worst nightmare) comes true when big-beat bigwig the Crystal Method brings its bandwagon to Kabal, the region’s hottest new place to grope and be groped. The River Market nightspot’s…
ND: Was it cathartic making Songs Not To Get Married To? JD: “Oh, yeah. The reason I called the record that was … when I was making the album, I listened to the demos in the car when I was driving to see my lawyer in Blue Springs. This is my theme music for divorce court.” Is this album a…
Back in ye olde benighted 1980s, The Joan Rivers Show had some avid viewers among the ranks of us music lovers. Someone on the staff of the forgotten late-night talk show kept booking great bands. In fact, it was through Rivers that some of us discovered two of the best bands of any decade: Crowded House and Husker Du….
The Forty-Fives love those little bitty records with the great big hole. It’s almost a manifesto for singer-guitarist Bryan G. Malone: “It’s all about the records, yeah.” With a sound that screams April ’66, this group of Atlanta-based ruffians must have a thousand boxes filled to the brim with ’60s goodness, including a few of the kind that used to…
Tribute albums often overflow with rightfully discarded B-sides and inferior cover versions. It’s Beckinator Time, an area-all-star compilation, transcends the usually tepid format, however, because the groups wrote the featured songs specifically with this project’s muse in mind: Becki Sherwood, who sees more than a hundred local-band gigs each year and chronicles her amazing attendance record on her Web site…
Lawyers who rock are a rare commodity. But Jeremiah Kidwell seems to have found a balance in this dichotomy. Outside the hustle and bustle of post-trial legalities, this University of Missouri-Kansas City law school alumnus serves as lead counsel for the Litigators, a five-piece serving of rock and roll’s most primitive elements, including stripped down six-strings and hip gyrations….
