In anticipation of the best season of the year — i.e., football season — we headed to the 810 Zone to scope out its TV-rificness. We met Research Assistants Tracey and Laura for some cheap happy-hour beers ($1.50 domestic bottles on Wednesdays). Located in the old Fenton’s building, across from the Gap in Town Center Plaza on 119th Street, the…
I love e-mails from our readers, who often ask such interesting and provocative questions that I’m actually forced to get off my lazy ass and find answers for them. If the lovely Kaite hadn’t written last week to ask me about the new paint job on the building at 1230 Woodswether Road, I wouldn’t have known that the legendary Woodswether’s…
If my memory still serves me from my college world-history classes, long before there was an India or a Pakistan, there was the legendary Indus Valley civilization. It was highly cultured, rich, artistically advanced and sophisticated, with citadels, public baths and sewer systems. But any culture that looks so successful and alluring is prey to what we call —…
FRI 8/26 Bruce Campbell may not be a household name — it’s a sick, cruel world — but the self-described B-movie actor always has something in the works. Since achieving cult-icon status for his performances in horror flicks The Evil Dead and Army of Darkness, Campbell has brought his do-it-yourself approach to everything from a recurring role on Xena:…
SAT 8/27 The Crossroads Music Festival uses the lure of a cheap $10 ticket so that two things can be examined: the local KC music scene and the burgeoning neighborhood just beyond the main drag of First Fridays. From 3 to 11 p.m. Saturday, Grinders Sculpture Park (behind Grinders, 417 East 18th Street, 816-472-5454) hosts eight bands meant to prove…
SAT 8/27 Join the labor party (no, not the Labor Party) at Saturday’s Labor Day Parade, starting at 11 a.m. at Third Street and Wyandotte and ending with a rally in Richard Berkley Riverfront Park (the south bank between Interstate 35 and Missouri Highway 9). For more information, call 816-836-8485. — Rebecca Braverman SAFE and Sound Attending a soccer game…
SAT 8/27 Newcomers to the Del Rio (2934 Southwest Boulevard, 816-960-7072) see shot glasses full of clear, green and red liquids going by on trays (carried by a bartender with a sizable crucifix wedged into her sizable cleavage) and say, “Pinche! These guys can drink!” And they can, of course, but keep in mind that you’re looking at the Mexican-flag…
Whitney Terrell has made a career exploring taboos our city folks don’t talk about. His 2001 novel, The Huntsman, was about an African-American ex-con’s love affair with a debutante who gets murdered, fracturing a pretend City of Fountains along that all-too-real east-of-Troost divide. It was a New York Times Notable Book, and the Chicago Tribune called his thickly descriptive social…
Thursday, August 25 OK, when are the people behind Gothamist.com going to hear our pleas and give us KCist.com? We love the flagship site, and we find ourselves strangely drawn to its outposts, such as DCist. And if the nation’s capital can get a blog, then we demand one, too! Washington, D.C., and New York also have restaurant week,…
When fashion darling Marc Jacobs released his sullen (yet romantic) fall 2005 collection last February to an angry crowd that had long grown tired of waiting, all hell broke loose. Lantern-shaped skirts, voluminous sleeves, oversized sweaters and black — lots of black — weren’t what a crowd edging into a pretty, twee spring and summer expected to see, and…
From My Hometown is a good-hearted but lunkheaded show that seeks to pass off Crown Center as the Apollo Theatre. Young soul singers Philly, Memphis and Detroit — each from his namesake city and singing in its style — loiter in Harlem, round-robining through whatever oldies the producers can afford the rights to use. The three leads dazzle, especially Leonard…
Beware All Stylebiters At first we were skeptical of the premise of this show: Thirty artists submit unfinished work to co-curators Jeremy McConnell and Beth Sarver, who then redistribute the already begun artwork so that each participant finishes someone else’s piece. But it turned out great. It’s energizing to see recognizable work by people such as McConnell, Lori Raye Erickson,…
Amazing how a town can feel both small and huge at the same time. There I was last week, hustling to KCK to catch Minds Eye Theatre’s aching but hopeful Sad Hotel, a show I was a little loath to review because its director, Sara Crow, was something of a childhood friend of mine: our fathers were both air-traffic…
Driving along 19th Street, right as you pass Baltimore, you’ll see a giant woodblock print of a gorilla staring from the Dolphin Gallery window. Until last week, the gorilla print was the only object in the display. Now, flowers sit on the ledge and the sign on the glass reads “John Puscheck, 1948-2005.” John Puscheck was diagnosed with cancer back…
At the end of the five-week Beach Club DJ Battle, which kicks off Sunday at 10 p.m., the top three finishers earn weekend opening slots at Jilly’s, the Grand Emporium and Kabal. The gigs are unpaid, so this contest isn’t for established headliners with cushy Saturday-evening club residencies. It’s for hungry spinners who want to showcase their skills in front…
Kansas City-area rap, in most instances, can be lumped into two categories: Bay Area-influenced gangsta music or East Coast-inspired lyricism. KC crew Verbal Contact adds a third element to the fold with the release of Marked Territory, an eight-song EP featuring a Midwest (Chicago, St. Louis) vibe centering on melodic hooks, banging beats and stripped-down, simple lyrics aimed at getting…
Kansas brothers are way, way real. Ain’t no bubblegum, candy-coated rapping going on in the 913. True to that testament is Nelson El’s latest release, a ten-song EP that previews a 30-song double disc due out later this year. Full Nelson is Nelson El’s re-entry to the area’s independent, underground scene after a stint in New York shopping the disc…
Singer and guitarist Richard Thompson’s songs of darkness and despair aren’t an easy listen, given his doleful vocals, tangled and turbulent melodies and observational narratives that strike a not-so-delicate balance between irony and invective. Nevertheless, as a founder of Fairport Convention, the ’60s band at the center of Britain’s folk-rock fusion, Thompson is still revered for his ability to tap…
What Death Cab for Cutie does best on its major-label debut, Plans, is capture flashbulb moments of melancholy — the dissolution of a summer romance, growing apart from a lover, being dumped by an egotistical jerk — and analyze them with astounding honesty. Take the tear-inducing “What Sarah Said.” Solitary piano chords drive a vivid depiction of a sterile hospital…
Hardcore is about release; metal is about control. Put them together and you get a contradiction with guitars — one that bands typically deal with by throwing most of their weight into one style and retaining only the veneer of the other. Not A Wilhelm Scream. On Ruiner, the New Bedford, Massachusetts, quintet barrels through 14 tracks that evenly meld…
If riding the waves is religion for most surfers, Jack Johnson has risen above God. As the son of legendary longboarder Jeff Johnson, the native Hawaiian was practically born in the surfing spotlight, scoring a sponsorship from Quiksilver and winning championships against men twice his age. When a nasty wipeout at 17 nearly ended his career — and his life…
Sorry, F. Scott, there are plenty of second acts in American lives. Take Brian Wilson’s saga. As a child, Wilson lived through years of physical and emotional abuse from his father. Then, as the creative genius of the Beach Boys, he suffered severe anxiety about his artistic tour de force, Smile (exacerbated both by his bandmates and his record label)….
Despite what Kanye says, the Midwest is not “young and restless” — young and bored and willing to do anything to get out is more like it. Just ask Overland Park native Ashley Raines, who, according to his bio, began hitchhiking as soon as he could walk. Throughout his teens, the budding folk musician followed a Western, holy-bum ramble, writing…
A name like the Retribution Gospel Choir leads to expectations of a black-robed, maybe even face-painted, choral group — something like the Polyphonic Spree gone over to the dark side, where every member is a soprano. In reality, though, this band’s key players, Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon and Alan Sparhawk of Low (pictured),…
