The Cashew finally opened on May 6, but we have to admit that we were worried about initial reports indicating that it was rich in fratmosphere. “Two words: Granfalloon North,” sniffed a friend. (We assumed that First Friday overspill played a big part in this assessment.) However, we checked it out on its second night of business, and we loved…
I don’t remember eating a lot of barbecue when I was growing up, probably because Indianapolis didn’t exactly have a stellar tradition as a barbecue town. But every so often, my father got a yen for the ribs sold at a legendary low-down joint called Zeb’s BBQ. The smoked meats there were glazed with a terrific “mambo sauce” that was…
Don’t ask me, for God’s sake, to give you precise directions to the new location for Swagat Fine Indian Cuisine. Five months ago, it moved from its original strip-mall location just across the intersection into a more glamorous new space in the Zona Rosa Shopping Center. I found the new Swagat only after driving around the serpentine streets of…
5/27-5/29 At 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, the Kansas City Singers present the final concerts in their Americana series, From Sea to Shining Sea, at the Just Off Broadway Theater (3051 Central). Expect sentimental, patriotic favorites. Call 816-361-0431. — Fischer We Love the ’90s Two concerts this week send us back — way back. 5/27 &…
5/27-5/29 The Mad Toto Scooter Club believes that people haven’t really experienced Kansas City until they’ve seen it while straddling a sweet scooter. So the three-year-old group has incorporated plenty of local landmarks and neighborhoods into its inaugural weekendlong Tornado R’alley. On Friday night, this benign biker gang rolls from Overland Park to the Plaza for Italian eats. Then…
SAT 5/28 Our childhood tree house involved a few two-by-fours and some plywood nailed to an old sycamore. We painted it with a camouflage design and used Dad’s old T-shirts for curtains. Powell Gardens (1609 Northwest U.S. Highway 50 in Kingsville) has something else in mind with Treemendous Treehouses, an exhibit opening Saturday and running through the summer. Ten…
SUN 5/29 Some people celebrate Memorial Day by grilling hot dogs and drinking copious amounts of beer. And there are others who lobby for a return to the Memorial Days of the past, when three-day weekend was not the, um, reason for the season. Both patriots and partyers will find something to like at Celebration at the Station, an…
People on opposite sides of all sorts of ideological divides might dream of a world without conflict — but dismiss such thoughts as utopian fantasies. So pragmatists might scoff at Sharif Abdullah, who at first glance seems like the sort of fruity philosopher whose optimistic outlook ignores the realities of human nature. “My work and my life are committed to…
Thursday, May 26 Several scientific studies of graphology — the use of handwriting analysis to divine the writer’s personality — have ruined its credibility. But we hear that in France, an estimated 70 percent of companies use it when making hiring decisions. And we love the French. So graphology is our new best friend — particularly now that we’ve stumbled…
People usually identify with Connor. According to the person closest to him, Connor is intelligent, he’s beautiful — and he has blue hair. But Mark Bittner isn’t describing a particularly good-looking punk rocker. Connor is a parrot — a blue-crowned conure, to be precise — and a member of the flock that Bittner wrote about in his 2004 book The…
Rebecca Dolan When we reflect on the last 23 years in an attempt to locate just which version of ourselves we would consider the most awkward and insecure, the answer is glaringly obvious. Seventh grade, when we considered oversized BUM sweatshirts haute couture? Sadly, no. Sophomore year, when we chopped our long blond locks into a seriously misinformed pageboy? Close,…
A scratchy copy of Carole King’s Tapestry album would be a fitting artifact for a Smithsonian exhibit about the 1970s. Besides its lyrical light-rock hits, including “It’s Too Late” and “I Feel the Earth Move,” and its feminist sensibility, the record spawned an entire movement of singer-songwriters who had tired of hearing other people make hits out of their…
Traditionally, clubgoers rest on Sundays — not in strict observance of the Sabbath but because they can’t find any hot spots to hit. Recently, though, hip-hop fans have put their ears to the ground and followed the trail of rumbling, bass-driven beats to the Jazzhaus. At this Lawrence joint, DJ Shad spins everything from old-school gold (KRS-One, Pharcyde, Notorious B.I.G.)…
With their staggered riffs and earnest vocals, today’s hardcore and screamo bands do more chugging and crooning than any acts since the Rat Pack. Often, these attempts to marry modified metal and heartfelt warbling just sound silly, like overcompensatory flexing from impotent musclemen. Kansas City’s Raise the Remains expertly balances these elements on its debut disc, Fragments of a Tragedy….
After an April UK gig, Maximo Park singer Paul Smith lost a white linen satchel that contained his wallet, his keys, some Polaroids, books by Kafka and Camus, and a red notebook with song lyrics and poetry. Listening to A Certain Trigger is like getting smacked in the face with that bag. You hear the flat tinkle of loose change…
It goes without saying that this Swedish band of thrash futurists has succeeded in twisting our collective perception of metal into a pretzel — or, more appropriately, a Möbius strip — and metal is forever different for it. So maybe it’s a little ungrateful to demand that Meshuggah thoroughly mess up our heads with every new album. The good news…
I feel like an old railroad man, Mark Everett sings during one of the many forlorn weepers on the Eels’ indie-label debut. He sounds like one, too, because his vocal filters work like reverse purifiers, enhancing grit and sediment. After two ill-fated ventures into rocky territory, Everett returns to quiet desolation on these 33 tracks, and the low-key backdrops cast…
Unless you unceasingly don sunglasses, jeans and a black leather jacket and have ditched your surname in favor of “Wolf,” chances are you aren’t a fanatic of Japanese garage-punk trio Guitar Wolf. Obsessives insist on owning all eight of the band’s high-octane, bash-‘n-scream recordings; for everyone else, one of them — any one of them, really — is more than…
What’s best about Ms. Green is that — lustrous pipes aside — she’s not much of anything: no neosoul visionary on a mission to save the music, no pop chanteuse gyrating in a thong, no humorless prig hoping to get her shout-outs to Guantanamo onto KPRS. No, Green is more like that bright but quiet student in an honors English…
When Entertainment Weekly profiled the “new prog” scene in its May 13 issue, it failed to mention Porcupine Tree. But this British band, which just released its latest epic, Deadwing, ranks among modern music’s most ambitious major-label acts. We talked with singer and guitarist Steven Wilson about delivering the emotional goods in the ornate packaging of prog. AM: What do…
Pit er Pat is like a Long Island iced tea — what sounds like a nasty concoction actually turns out to be pretty good. And ends up messing with your head. One part Alkaline Trio, one part Neutral Milk Hotel (speaking of) and, figuratively, one part Blonde Redhead, the members blend their varied talents to become a percussion-driven, post-rock cocktail….
As straightforward a rock band as has ever screamed “How’s everybody feel?” to a packed stadium, Stereophonics glommed onto all the boozed-up rock laddishness of Britpop but tossed the genre’s more reflective, wistful pop aspects — think Oasis minus the John Lennon fixation and effortless melodies. The formula has sold them millions of records in the UK, but, strangely for…
When San Francisco’s John Dwyer wants to get his trashy, smashy garage rock on, he convenes his Coachwhips trio. But for quieter times, Orinoka Crash Suite is Dwyer’s vehicle for acoustic, blues-and-folk American gothic. Whereas the sad-sack song sketches and wordless sound collages were largely kept separate on the first two OCS records, last month’s double album, 3 & 4,…
Despite the fact that the Impossible Shapes are distantly related (something like second-cousins once removed) to the Elephant 6 collective (Olivia Tremor Control, Apples in Stereo), they successfully avoid sounding too much like the students of the famed Athens, Georgia, indie school of rock. Off to a prolific start with four releases in three years, the band has earned favorable…
