Your grandparents remember Elvis Costello as that lean, sneering figure hopped up on amphetamines and fronting a band as vicious as any that punk produced. Jerks at the record shop talk of a flabby, fangless bourgeois who hasn’t made an essential record since King of America. And music-rag hacks dismiss him as that promiscuous collaborator who’s ashamed that rock is…
“Given a relatively level playing field — water deep enough so that a shark could maneuver proficiently but shallow enough so that a bear could stand and operate with its characteristic dexterity — who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark?” Chris Bachelder’s brilliant novel Bear V. Shark poses this question, with the titular battle between…
With a name like a Ward Parkway heiress and a voice like a Louisiana roadhouse discovery, Liz Mandville Greeson, a veteran of the Chicago blues scene, is this week’s entry in the Kansas City Blues Society’s “Blue Sunday” summer concert series. Greeson, who emerged a decade ago at the Chicago Blues Fest, is comfortable with any breed of the blues…
All hail Biggie Smalls, who loved it when we called him Big Poppa. Hail Tupac Shakur, whose thug ways made us forget he was in the Digital Underground. Some may say we are overstepping our bounds with this most serious critical fatwa against the Los Angeles Police Department, but it was they who stepped onto our turf first with their…
The best eight-hour (7 p.m. to 3 a.m.), multi-artist musical event that Kansas City will see this year, Friday’s Chaos Theory 3.0, boasts 30 DJs, any of whom can keep a club hopping until closing time. The roster includes remixer to the stars BT, Elvis’ posthumous “Conversation” starter Junkie XL, drum-‘n’-bass legend Dieselboy, and the Control Freeks, the only local…
Want to see your arm hairs stand on end? Find a way to hear “Feather by Feather” by Smog. It begins piercingly, a single droning chord in the background as sole band member Bill Callahan sings, You spend half of the morning just trying to wake up, half the evening just trying to calm down. Here the song picks up…
There aren’t too many bands in Kansas City that would come across a Web site for a God-sized bike rally in North Texas — one that was offering to sign up 60 bands to fill its three-day bill — and think, That sounds like fun. But Federation of Horsepower did — and lived to regret it. With several thousand…
Dear Kansas City: If ever a man needed an eight ball, it’s me. Not that I’m a coke guy, mind you, but after two solid days of covering Lollapalooza in mind-boggling Chicago heat, dousing my thirst with overpriced beer and smuggled-in liquor, it’s a wonder I’m still standing, let alone writing into the wee hours of the night. At 102…
“Hit me,” says Mark Zupan like a kid clamoring for a new toy. “I’ll hit you back.” He means it, too. The dude’s bad and doesn’t need to say shit for you to take him at his word. Problem is, you might not take him seriously after all, because for the past 12 years, the 30-year-old former Division I college…
Must Love Dogs, it should be clearly stated, is not the greatest romantic comedy ever made about a quirky couple who meet at a dog park. That honor goes to Dog Park, the oddball 1998 flick starring Luke Wilson and Natasha Henstridge and written and directed by former Kids in the Hall star Bruce McCulloch. You’re probably more likely…
If for no other reason, Happy Endings deserves a soft spot in our hearts for rescuing Tom Arnold from the scrap heap. The former Mr. Roseanne Barr plays Frank, a widower who falls for his son’s conniving would-be girlfriend, Jude, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Arnold is a revelation in the movie (which screens Thursday as the closing-night event of the…
If the Navy is looking for splashy recruiting tools, it could do worse than Stealth, a zillion-dollar action movie stuffed with futuristic jet fighters, glamorous carrier pilots and an overload of digital derring-do. It’s Top Gun revised and updated, complete with a new array of enemies — swarthy Middle Eastern terrorists, nervous post-Soviet Russians and hordes of shifty-eyed North Korean…
Union jacked: Regarding the anonymous article “Poor Protesters” (Backwash, July 14): As much as we were glad to see Nadia Pflaum at the march, this article sucks. I would not consider myself, or many of my peers present, to be a “union representative,” an “aging hippie” or an “anarchist.” The rally was important in bringing young activists and union members…
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: I bet you feel some relief now that Sandra Day O’Connor has announced her retirement. Pretty soon, Roe v. Wade will be toast, and you won’t have to worry about dodging a…
It wasn’t the biggest reality-TV gig anyone from Kansas City had landed, but it had to be the most well-intentioned. When Jermaine Jamison arrived at the Beaumont Club for the Rebel Billionaire casting call last summer, his life story was already made for television. Born to a 14-year-old, crack-addicted mother and raised by his grandparents in a small home at…
Fat Tone’s rapper friend Priceless Diamonds; his mother, Angenette Wright; his girlfriend, Jameshia Spencer — each heard different stories from Tone (born Anthony Watkins) about his last days on Earth. But that was Fat Tone: always the storyteller, always the exaggerator, always the braggart. He wasn’t going to kill you with one bullet. He was going to cut you in…
When we heard about Wednesday “white-trash karaoke” nights at the new Mick & Mack’s Tavern (formerly Slammerz), we were intrigued — and somewhat frightened. Would we be subjected to mulletheads crooning Ted Nugent and Ratt? Or would this be a total hipster scene, à la Brodioke, in which everyone would be drunkenly and ironically screeching their favorite ’80s songs?…
One of the things I like about Grace, a Bistro on the Edge (see review) is its iconoclastic quality — it doesn’t look like any other restaurant in the city. That may scare some customers away, because we’ve all grown somewhat comfortable with the homogeneous quality of corporate restaurant interiors. But is that really comfort — or oblivion? A few…
One thing I’ve learned doing this job is that dining in a restaurant is a unique form of theater that requires no ticket or applause. It’s actually a more theatrical experience working in a restaurant, because there’s often excessive drama behind the scenes, back in the kitchen: chefs throwing temper tantrums (and sometimes pots), dishwashers stumbling to work drunk,…
FRI 7/22 Lately we’ve heard a lot of talk around here about anti-evolutionists’ attempts to bring the concept of “intelligent design” into the public schools of Kansas. But we prefer Lawrence’s interpretation of intelligent design — this weekend’s lamp competition. Kojo (745 New Hampshire, 785-841-5656) displays and sells the newest innovations in kitchenware, timepieces, furniture and lighting. From 7…
FRI 7/22 Musically, Josh Jordan keeps things Kosher. The former guitarist for that notoriously rowdy Warrensburg outfit still tempers poppy melodies with gravelly rock. However, despite Jordan’s reputation, his New York City band Basement Black won’t get banned from clubs, singer Tony Filipowicz promises. Friends since second grade, Filipowicz and Jordan moved from Lee’s Summit to New York two and…
SAT 7/23 Technically, the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable, which has always confused us. Would we eat something traditionally made with fruit, like a pie, if it were made of tomatoes? No. Tomato-flavored jelly beans? Never. But biting into a summer-fresh tomato as if it were an apple or a pear is something we await all year, and…
7/21-7/22 Wade Eldean’s “Mike, Andy and Pop’s Landscaping Service” project — a conceptual combination of art and lawn work — captured the aesthetic of his suburban surroundings: A trimmed yard covered with Happy Meal toys spoke volumes about its environment. Eldean then moved on to explore a much different setting, spending a month in Ajijic, Mexico, on a grant from…
Million Dollar Baby was fiction, but its real-life inspiration is widely believed to be Columbia, Missouri, native Katie Dallam. Unlike Hilary Swank’s character, though, Dallam overcame her boxing injuries — not to return to the ring but to become a prolific artist. “Sometimes I feel angry while I’m painting, but by the time I’m done, I feel very peaceful,” says…
