Thursday, September 22 We happily read our way through the first five Harry Potter books, but we’re tired now. We want to know what happens in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but at this point, we’d just be happy with a plot synopsis. So we’re considering sneaking into tonight’s Harry Potter for Adults program at the Kansas City,…
We’re a little jealous of Patty Catto. Not only did the Kansas City Art Institute professor recently take a sabbatical (the envy-inducing paid leave that allows academics time for study or travel), but she went to India, where she got to spend some quality time with monkeys. And we love monkeys. Catto’s hotel room looked out onto a rooftop where…
I Am My Own Wife German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf not only survived the Nazis while decked out in dresses but also ran a gay cabaret in her basement. Robert Gibby Brand stars as Mahlsdorf and others in this one-man show, and his performance is one of grace and complexity. It’s a subtle triumph. Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning script is…
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….
People like what they like, and sweet old ladies like Neil Simon. The senior women in the audience for the American Heartland’s local premiere of Rose’s Dilemma, a not-bad Simon show elevated here by fine performances and Sidonie Garrett’s crisp direction, clucked approvingly throughout. They narrated along and repeated punch lines to one another. During a dry patch, they…
Pat Alexander and James Trotter have a lot in common. They’ve worked in all the same restaurants. They’re both DJs. They’re art-school dropouts. They like to collect stuff. And they both make shapes float. That’s the first thing that stands out about the art they’ve displayed at the Telephone Booth (3319 Troost, 816-582-9812). Alexander’s half of the gallery is filled…
It’s Wednesday night at Tootsie’s, and the disco ball scatters light on the darkened dance floor. Groups of men and groups of women mill about, play pool and engage in typical bar behavior. One drag queen — a tall, rail-thin diva named Paris Sensation — has already changed clothes twice, going from a bandeau top with low-riding, flared pants…
Big Brother isn’t watching us — we’re watching him. Or, rather, we’re watching what he wants us to watch. Big Brother is actually a black-haired Buddhist named Eric Moore, whom we discovered at the Empire Room one Tuesday. As the area’s only video DJ (or VJ, but without the MTV stooge connotations), he was shining sexy, spacey, weird images…
It may have been my imagination, but I swear this disc made a farting sound as I slid it into the CD player. If that were the only sound this recording made, it would be all right. Unfortunately, there are other noises on it — noises, possibly intended to be songs, that sound more like the creations of a blabbermouthed,…
Don’t bother trying to get the bar smell out of your hair and clothes before listening to Mikki James’ Guess What — this one is best ingested with a fifth of whiskey (preferably Military Special) and a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls. Dirty and party-hardened, Guess What, the band’s third release, is devoid of any new sounds or attempts at…
Not for nothing does article after article describe Coheed and Cambria as the emo Rush. With 2003’s In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, the New York quartet straddled two divergent demographics to go gold, playing the Warped Tour and attracting increasing numbers of classic-rock fans as headliners. Good Apollo won’t disappoint Coheed fans who also listen to My Chemical…
The Dandy Warhols’ last album, Welcome to the Monkey House, came on like the drunken friend who yanks you a little too hard onto the dance floor. All you had to do was loosen up a little to realize that the joyously retro ’80s-pop bounce was good for you. This time around (fresh from way too much drooling hipster hype…
Countless Lawrence music scenesters, incurably bored of the Midwest, have fled to the coasts — indie-pop lovers tend to go to California, hipsters to New York. Mates of State Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel, being of the former category, chose San Francisco. And unlike many married musical duos, they’ve been able to stick it out and continue to flesh out…
A wave of support has hit the victims of Hurricane Katrina in recent weeks that’s nearly as strong as the queen bitch herself was. Hell, even the government of Iraq has sent money. (Thanks, guys, and about that occupation thing … um … so how ’bout that soccer team of yours?) Naturally, generous area musicians have signed up in herds…
Are you the type of person who strolls through town enthralled by the way car alarms, construction machinery, chirping birds and snippets of cell-phone chatter coalesce into interesting rhythms and sound collages? Or do you slap on some headphones and drown that shit out with a hot “Hollaback Girl” remix? When you listen to Sonic Youth’s 19-minute opus “The Diamond…
Ozzfest didn’t touch down anywhere near Kansas City this year, requiring an eight-hour road trip to Noblesville, Indiana, for die-hard headbangers. But Jim Kilroy’s locally charged Rock and Metal Fest offers just as many heavy bands (20 in all), with the added appeal of club-crawl mobility and accessibly priced liquor. Perhaps the best band on this bill is No Cause/No…
Seven months after the European release of Idlewild’s soaring single “Love Steals Us From Loneliness” (and six months after the album it comes from hit shops overseas), American fans were still wondering how to steel themselves against a world without a domestic release of Warnings/Promises. The group’s U.S. label, Capitol, finally issued the disc a couple of weeks ago, and…
Kanye West and the Beach Boys rarely end up in the same sentence, let alone the same iPod. In fact, Brian Wilson has openly dissed rap music, so he won’t be happy to hear DJ Lushlife’s latest venture. Free from Kanyewest sounds.com, West Sounds reconstructs ten of West’s hottest tracks using ele-ments of Pet Sounds, including “Slow Jamz (Caroline No)”…
The Supernauts are young. In fact, the brothers Smith — Jason (guitar) and Jordan (bass and vocals) — are 22 and 18, respectively. But they rock like they’ve been playing since grade school. That’s because they have. Together with drummer John Whitaker and Tim Braun, the Smiths have been reintroducing Kansas City (and parts beyond) to the big-haired, big-guitar sounds…
Ah, to be in Glasgow, Scotland. Accurately nicknamed “The Friendly City,” it is a well-respected center of music and culture, having birthed such native sons and daughters as Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, the Pastels, Bis, the Delgados and Teenage Fanclub. None of these bands sound alike; the only things they really have in common are critical acclaim and rabid cult…
Bannister Mall — the very name rings with improvidence and misfortune. Which is sad, because who doesn’t have a few good memories associated with a mall somewhere? Way before I discovered girls, my friends and I used to beg our parents to drive us across town to the local mall and leave us there all day to blow our $5-a-week…
How many totally amazing funk and soul musicians are stuck performing in wedding bands, answering to the whims of brides and grooms who wouldn’t know the difference if Aretha Franklin herself showed up for the gig, all because the music industry has got its head up its ass? A lot, and a lot. We’re beginning to think that if…
About two-thirds of the way through A League of Ordinary Gentlemen, Chris Browne’s weirdly engaging documentary about professional bowling, the bad boy of the game, Pete Weber, looks straight into the camera and assures us: “I’m not an asshole.” Whether to believe Weber is an open question, given what we’ve seen of him in the previous hour. Skinny, strutting Pete…
Flightplan, starring Jodie Foster as a mother who’s either lost her daughter or her mind during a flight from Berlin to New York, is a wonderful movie for about an hour — a moving, gripping rumination on loss, grief and sanity. It works primarily because of its star, whose delicate, fragile face fills the wide screen like its own special…
