Space might be considered the final frontier, but we beg to differ; we found it at a Challenger-themed party in Lawrence. We’d heard that the Eighth Street Tap Room threw these amazing theme parties on the second Saturday of each month. Sadly, we’d missed the one a couple of months ago: a girls-only pillow fight. When we decided to make…
Kansas City has some terrific barbecue joints, but you hardly ever hear about any of them serving breakfast. That’s why I stumbled into RJ’s Bob-Be-Que Shack (5835 Lamar in Mission) on a recent Sunday morning in a state of disbelief. First, I thought, what the hell am I doing in deathly quiet Mission at 9 a.m.? And what am I…
Shortly after the death of Pope John Paul II on April 2, the executives at the Minneapolis-based Buca di Beppo restaurants had to make a quick corporate decision. Should the plaster busts of the Polish pontiff, a dominant decorative feature of the “Pope Room” in most of the chain’s locations, be removed? It was evidently decided that it would…
FRI 9/30 Hey, Lawrence: Have you thirsted for underground gangsta ditties, only to find that the well has gone dry? Hustle Records owner Pete Yellow Bird’s got you covered. Tucked away in a side room at University Audio, his one-man operation is set to become the Lawrence hub for Bay Area rappers. “Since Seventh Heaven closed down here, there’s…
FRI 9/30 The Crossroads District isn’t known for its indoor performances, but at 8 p.m. Friday, the Blind Boys of Alabama become the first players to take the makeshift stage — formerly a combination dock and truck-wash rack — at the Belger Arts Center for Creative Studies (2100 Walnut). The third-floor space has hosted several shows by the Musical…
THU 9/29 Wildcats psyched for Saturday’s game against Oklahoma should head to Rusty’s Last Chance (10901 West 75th Street in Shawnee) Thursday for a K-State Happy Hour. The evening starts at 5:30 p.m. For more information, call the K-State Alumni Association at 800-600-2586. — Rebecca Braverman Royal Welcome Bring us your horses, your rodeo, your barbecue — and your toga….
SAT 10/1 Watching marginally famous people humiliate themselves on reality TV has become a national pastime. There’s something satisfying about seeing washed-up sitcom actors forfeit all remaining dignity in exchange for a tiny boost of fame and small amounts of cash. As the host of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club — a show that forces overweight “celebrities” into diet regimens…
We have this friend. She hasn’t gotten laid in a year. We keep telling her: You’re not overweight. You’re not too old. And though she might think it has something to do with her mother, we sincerely doubt that Mrs. Walker is to blame. It’s just her chi. And Liz Brown can help. A local practitioner of feng shui, Brown…
Thursday, September 29 Poor librarians. Either they’re enduring the whole sex-gods-in-disguise thing or they’re treated as buzz killers responsible for shhhhhhhs the world over. Let’s put both those tired ideas behind us and call librarians what they really are: radicals. The Kansas City, Kansas, Public Library’s celebration of National Banned Book Week ends Saturday, so stop by the Main…
Long relegated to the bottom shelf of the cocktail world, tequila is in the midst of an image rehab. In some sophisticated circles, drinkers are now tasting and savoring tequila with the grace time they’ve previously reserved for cognacs, wine and, more recently, microbrews. This particular brand of behavior modification has been slow coming to the Midwest, but we’ve witnessed…
First Lady Suite One lonely birthday, Mamie Eisenhower’s lolling in her White House bedroom, Ike-free, brooding about her man’s dalliance with his driver. Then Marian Anderson flies through and Peter Pans Mamie’s ass to Little Rock, Arkansas, for a firsthand look at the fight for integration. The rest of this musical look at first ladies’ lives is weirder: Soaring in…
America the Beautiful Brandon Friend gets American culture. His mixed-media works include cow-riding Olsen twins, their ever-smiling faces affixed to naked, surgically enhanced bodies. Other pieces prominently feature creepy baby-doll heads, school photos of awkward teenagers, and boy-on-boy action, and all are rendered in a recognizable style of collage, with photography and paint successfully working in tension throughout the canvases….
One recent Friday evening, a handful of Kansas Citians gathered around small mounds of wood chips, drinking wine from a box in the West Bottoms. No, they weren’t at the American Royal. Close, but no cigar. They were at the Green Door Gallery, looking at aht. Of the maybe 25 mellow people who’d gathered in the rustic, open space for…
Late Night Theatre show isn’t just staged. No. With all the cross-dressing, daggered stilettos, pom-pom wigs and is-that-a-bulge? buffalo shots, these bitches are turned out. The rules of theater hardly apply. Fetishistic pageantry trumps story and (sometimes) coherence. Actors feel free to improvise new lines; sometimes they struggle with the written ones. The scripts are pop-culture mash-ups, the work…
Hip-hop has constantly struggled to find the perfect balance between DJ and MC, and such is the challenge for ID and Sleeper. Part of the new breed of underground acts made popular by labels such as Anticon and Def Jux, this Lawrence duo tosses bitches and Bentleys to the wayside for political introspection without tipping the soapbox. The concept might…
Kelpie’s second album, Hey Friends, It’s … Kelpie, is the first release from fledgling Birthday Party Records, a Lawrence label founded by Matt Morgus, whom you may remember from the lauded area metal band Salt the Earth. Labels — especially ones started by earnest but poor musicians — come and go like gophers in an old-school mallet-bopper arcade game. But…
Icelandic orchestral-rock group Sigur Rós should be one of the most reviled acts on the pop landscape. Its songs typically last eight minutes, it titles albums with symbols, singer Jon Thor Birgisson makes up his own language, and, last but certainly not least, it’s an Icelandic orchestral-rock group. Yet nobody else making records today sounds like Sigur Rós. And nobody’s…
The phrases heartbreakingly handsome and pop singer, when attributed to the same person, usually point to complete garbage. Nick Lachey. Enrique Iglesias. Ryan (George Bush Rocks!) Cabrera. So it’s a good thing that locally born singer and potential ladykiller Barclay Martin doesn’t do pop. Late of the excellent bluegrass combo Potato Moon and a former employee at the friendliest little…
Seattle trio Zeke wears its fucked-up lifestyle on its collective sleeve. Its members are not the kind of boys you bring home to Mom — unless the old lady happens to be into drugs, fucking, drag racing and aggressive punked-out rock from a band whose 1999 Epitaph release is titled Dirty Sanchez. If so, your momma will be completely in…
The six members of Barbez have a collaborative résumé that includes Brian Eno, David Byrne, the Boredoms, Two Foot Yard, Bang on a Can, the Sea and Cake, Guv’ner and Air. During its own highly theatrical performances, however, the Brooklyn-based chamber-punk outfit creates a panbohemian sound that draws from Argentine tango, French musette, Hungarian and Polish folk songs, klezmer and…
Remember the classic Meat Loaf albums Dead Ringer and Blind Before I Stop? What about Midnight at the Lost and Found and Bad Attitude? Wait … you’ve never heard of any of these? Oh, yeah, that’s right — Meat Loaf has been completely incapable of selling albums when not tag-teaming fans with the help of songwriter Jim Steinman (Bat Out…
After making his name belting out white-boy R&B hits for the Spencer Davis Group in the ’60s, Steve Winwood left to form Traffic, an improvisational combo whose stubborn refusal to settle on a genre (jazz? folk? psychedelia? blues?) helped spawn countless experimental followers. Like many ’70s frontmen, Winwood went solo near the end of the decade; unlike many ’70s frontmen,…
Last time we heard from the Billions, the future seemed to be pretty unsure for a group on the cusp of going somewhere. In 2001, shortly after issuing its first nationwide release, Never Felt This Way Before, the band went on hiatus, leaving fans of the Lawrence power-pop revivalists without a catchy hook to hang their hats on. But now,…
A word to the wise, Ivan and Kelly Rosebud: The music industry is no place for happily married couples. From Sonny and Cher to Jack and Meg, it has become obvious — divorce is where it’s at. Luckily, the Rosebuds’ perfectly crafted pop songs are just too damn good to risk a trip to splitsville. Debuting in 2003 with The…
