After all the hype, we had to check out the Drink, the newly opened club in what we like to think of as that doomed building that used to house Segafredo and Trattoria Luigi. We went with a slew of Research Assistants over opening weekend, and everyone agreed on one first impression: Segafredo, Part 2. Take the same plastic-fantastic type…
It would be nice to be able to afford the tastefully appointed brunch at Benton’s (see Cafe Review) every Sunday. But some luxuries are best enjoyed at infrequent intervals, like exotic vacations. I enjoy eating out on Sundays, but the brunch concept gets on my nerves. Still, my friends love it — particularly one former party boy who has given…
Twenty years ago, the executives running the Westin Crown Center Hotel decided to turn the fancy French-style restaurant on the hotel’s 20th floor into something that reflected the culinary spirit of Kansas City. After watching their customers leave the Westin to dine at the Hereford House or the Golden Ox, they had figured out that their guests were more interested…
6/3-6/5 If there’s been an interesting play about deaf people since 1980’s Children of a Lesser God, it bypassed Kansas City. But Beate Pettigrew, artistic director of the Barn Players, found one that moved her. The company performs Garret Zuercher’s Quid Pro Quo at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in the Polsky Theater of Johnson County…
WED 6/8 As director of the Marr Sound Archives at the University of Missouri-Kansas City — where he’s surrounded by a few hundred thousand recordings — Chuck Haddix can’t help but think about music in a larger, historical context. As the host of the KCUR 89.3’s Fish Fry, he distills this knowledge into a seamless mix of zydeco, blues and…
6/3-6/4 We love ritzy boutiques, but garage sales are where we really get our shop on, scoring others’ discards for cheap. Weston, the charming burg to our north, hosts a citywide garage sale that has us drooling at the thought. Call 816-640-2909 or see www.westonmo.com for more information. — Rebecca Braverman Dirty Minds Players’ names are mud after this volleyball…
FRI 6/3 Given the idea of starving artists, it’s not hard to imagine painters hungrily gobbling anything baked on their behalf. That’s not exactly what’s going on when Dingle Dry Goods (329 Southwest Boulevard) hosts a bake sale, though. Friday evening’s dessert purchases do, however, double as donations to the Kansas City Art Institute — as do the on-site art…
You almost wouldn’t know that Chris Dorsey never organized a film festival before. Dorsey, 33, studied graphic design at the University of Kansas and works as a freelance animator and filmmaker for corporate ad campaigns. He lives in Overland Park now, but his artistic loyalty remains half an hour to the west. “I love Lawrence,” he says. “It’s a magnet…
Thursday, June 2 We love our cowboy boots. Slipping them on immediately makes us feel tougher, more intimidating … and, we admit it, sexy. Don’t tell us those wranglers of yesteryear wore their shitkickers only for utilitarian purposes and just didn’t have time to change shoes before they headed down to the local saloon. They knew exactly what was up….
The loudest buzz of the New York theater scene right now centers on Irish playwright Martin McDonagh and his exhilarating The Pillowman. Many audience members have walked out, and people who have sat through it until the end — staying with the scenes of violence and torture inflicted upon children — are wearing the experience like a badge. Substantially less…
Brigadoon Before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe wrote a handsome little cash cow called My Fair Lady, they had fairly decent luck with this show. It’s a fairy tale of a musical about two American tourists who stumble upon a small Scottish town that comes to life only once every 100 years. Though it chalked up 581 performances…
Fat Monks and Baby Rabbits Although we didn’t see fat monks or baby rabbits at the Opie Gallery’s exhibit of selected Leedy-Voulkos residents, we did see one of our favorite works of KC art ever. Sean Ward’s “Military Processional Relief or Maybe Perhaps the Celtic Pantheon for Christ’s Sake!” stopped us in our tracks and kept us there for a…
“I Didn’t Like It the First Time,” by Kansas City jazz singer Julia Lee, is a song about spinach. Here’s how it goes: I didn’t like it the first time, I had it on a date/Although the first was the worst time, right now I think it’s great/Somehow, it’s always hittin’ the spot, especially when they bring it in hot/I…
It takes talented DJs to make mix CDs that don’t resemble underground electronic versions of Now! compilations. DJ Heather, who just released the seamless collection Fabric 21, ranks among the best when it comes to blending beats. She converts funk, disco and soul bass lines into a single elastic groove, and she sequences songs to ensure the maximum dance-floor response…
A purveyor of “freaky-ass music,” Electroshockbox mastermind Tron-D is a one-man band for the postmodern age. Tracks such as the aptly titled “Hip Goth Rock Muthafuckin Hop Pop” offer an ironic mélange of laptop breakbeats, industrial noise snippets, foreign-language dialogue tapes and the otherworldly sounds emanating from what must be the world’s first dobro theramin. Shockbox concerts, which Tron-D describes…
The Black Ale Sinners’ mixture of honky-tonk, bluegrass, feed caps and tennis shoes should be familiar to local drinkers — it’s that scary, dangerous, perhaps mulberry-enhanced homebrew misjudgment uncapped only after 3 a.m., when all other libations have been sucked down and the store is closed. The group’s tales of whiskey (every song), graves (every other song) and the alleyway…
Regina Carter has a well-established reputation for making people nervous. In 2001, she single-handedly set Genoa, Italy, on its ear by becoming the first nonclassical musician to lay hands on Nicol Paganini’s fabled violin “the Cannon,” entrusted to the city’s care following the virtuoso’s death in 1840. In her hands, the instrument helped Carter win over her Italian doubters with…
Somewhere on the map between industrial rock’s frozen tundra and rave music’s sunny tropics is VNV Nation, where pulsing beats merge with philosophical constructs. The duo once exorcised its angst on every track, but, unlike some of its hole-headed contemporaries, it outgrew this approach. On Matter + Form, its latest release, VNV Nation’s thoughts are as deep as its bass…
The logo for acoustic hip-hop act Scratch Track is a beat-up old van — an apt signifier for an unsigned bunch of former college roommates who have spent the past few months literally living out of the back of one, taking a lengthy, low-rent tour of the country in support of a new album with nothing but a couple of…
Record labels today often use movie soundtracks to pimp out newly signed acts they hope are poised for success. Marjorie Fair, for instance, first made a national splash on the soundtrack to the 2003 Mandy Moore romance How to Deal, thanks to a cozy wool-blanket nugget called “Waves.” Then the Los Angeles quartet seemed to disappear from sight, even as…
With all of the critical acclaim that Brian Wilson has experienced surrounding the 2004 release of his masterpiece, Smile, it’s hard to remember that not so long ago, Wilson’s world looked bleak. At the turn of the millennium, Wilson had little public recognition outside a tightly loyal band of fanatics known as “Brianistas.” These faithful fans, despite having their dreams…
(Shout Factory) “We thought of ourselves as being some sort of no-talent derivative of some hillbillies-gone-punk version of the Who,” confesses Wayne Coyne, bearded P.T. Barnum of the psychedelic circus known as the Flaming Lips. Coyne’s statement comes early on in The Fearless Freaks, a documentary ten years in the making that details his band’s long, strange trip from extreme…
Topping Go Slowly All the Way Round the Outside, Blusom’s excellent 2003 debut, would have been damn near impossible. Wisely, partners Mike Behrenhausen and Jaime White, known as Jme, don’t even try. Instead, they use their sophomore disc as an opportunity to further develop their beguiling blend of acoustic instrumentation and electronic experimentation. The tracks may seem scattershot, but they…
Shortly after releasing Bebel Gilberto’s phenomenally successful Tanto Tempo in 2000, Six Degrees commissioned numerous producers to try their hands at remixing songs by this Brazilian royalty. Considering how much Gilberto’s bossa-tinged sound had evolved by the time her self-titled 2004 effort was released, there’s little surprise that this second collection of dance-based mutations follows suit. Gilberto’s strength is in…
