Once upon a time, Kansas City held a ball. The Priests of Pallas Ball, it was called, and it was a KC tradition for many years. But then it mysteriously shut down in 1924. On October 14, though, it made a triumphant return at Union Station. When we first heard about the ball — a masquerade, Mardi Gras-type affair…
Where was a lyric in Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 song “Ode to Billie Joe” that went something like Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge/And now Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. I was up to no good a couple of Sundays ago up on Choctaw Street in downtown Leavenworth, when I dragged some…
I have often kicked myself for not studying Spanish in school when I had the opportunity. In high school, I recklessly chose Latin as my foreign language because I thought it would come in handy for my later life as a professional writer. Maybe it did, but I often looked back ruefully on that decision during the years when,…
FRI 10/28 Jaimie Warren’s photographic diptychs and triptychs examine life through creative juxtaposition, in combinations of unwashed plates and expressions of despair — or cigarettes and sheep. Expect a similar mishmash of activity from her Special XXX Emotional Event, scheduled from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Telephone Booth Gallery (3319 Troost). Warren knows what she’s doing, having put…
THU 10/27 We liked Azure Ray partly because the band was gimmick-free. Yeah, two chicks made the music — but their shtick didn’t involve alliterative names, lesbianism or faux folklore. The TunaHelpers, a Kate Bush-channeling trio from Austin, Texas, could take a lesson from those Saddle Creek girls. The band performs as part of Passages’ Youth Appreciation Concert at…
SUN 10/30 The speed enthusiasts of KC Bike host the Boulevard Cup 2005 Sunday at Welborn Park (55th Street and Parallel Parkway in Kansas City, Kansas). Registration begins at 10:30 a.m.; staggered cyclocross races start between noon and 2 p.m. See www.kcbike.com or call Mike Berning at 913-381-5024. — Annie Fischer Night Riders If you’re afraid of the dark, stay…
FRI 10/28 It’s been established that any horror movie worth its snuff wrings just as many laughs as screams from its audience — fans of Eyes Without a Face and The Evil Dead know this well. It’s a tradition that young Kansas City filmmaker Chad Arganbright is dying to pursue. Arganbright’s 35-minute Marci’s Last Party has been in the…
Lately, we’ve been noticing a little creature everywhere in midtown. It’s a seal-like white thing with a placid expression. We’ve seen him on the side of an old, olive-green mailbox that’s no longer in service. We’ve seen him hanging out on buildings, incongruous next to graffiti tags. That incongruity is exactly the point, says the creature’s creator, Kenny Kim,…
Thursday, October 27 Sheila Sofian’s history of innovative animation — five independent short films — recently earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship, which will fund her latest installment, “Truth Has Fallen.” But these aren’t your typical cartoons. “Secret Rage” is about a tormented man incapable of expressing his emotions; “Survivors” is a 16-minute experimental documentary about domestic violence. We wish we…
Sometimes when artists talk about their work, our eyes glaze over and television theme songs start playing in our head. Although we often want to know what inspired them or long for them to explain just what it all means, we’ve learned that there’s a reason why they express themselves in a medium other than words. Marcus Cain is…
Charlotte’s Web Here’s hoping that, once we’re done bawling, we get some kind of Q&A after Theatre for Young America’s production of E.B. White’s barnyard classic, because we’ve been puzzling about one aspect of this story for years. Dear Charlotte’s writing “Some Pig” in her web is a feat of astounding spinneret calligraphy, so it’s never made any sense that…
Baseball Project We don’t know a whole lot about baseball. Nonetheless, we like Mike Hill’s drawings, which document and track three seasons of Red Sox players’ performances. For each season, the artist uses a different system for logging various outcomes, and each is painstakingly etched out over the course of several months’ worth of ballgames. Walking into the gallery filled…
At some shows, you learn who you are. Late into The Retreat From Moscow, the excruciating-in-a-good-way end-of-marriage drama now at the Unicorn, my mind swirled with questions raised by William Nicholson’s richly allusive script. In times of crisis, what do we owe each other? Which demonstrates true strength: enduring an irreparable marriage or smashing out of one? And is…
Kansas City has lost one of its most renowned eccentrics. Vince Roark, a denizen of Westport and the Kansas City Art Institute over the past 30 years, died on September 28. Disheveled, seemingly homeless, with a bungee cord for a belt and drawing tools in every pocket, Roark frequently shuffled with determination along Westport Road to his habitual destination, The…
DJs are a lot like horror-movie villains. Fist, DJs — like Freddie or Jason or Martha Stewart — are the agents of forward momentum in the plot, propelling lesser beings (club kids, campers, housewives) toward some kind of cathartic climax. Some spinners are Dr. Frankensteins, pulling switches to make their charges dance — though ideally not like Peter Boyle in…
Founded in the early ’90s by a duo of Jewish kids, one from Israel by way of Nigeria, Blood of Abraham grew up in Los Angeles to the sounds of such conscious and gansta hip-hop pioneers as Native Tongues, KRS-One and NWA. After performing alongside Eazy-E and Public Enemy, MCs Benyad and Mazik released their debut album on Eazy’s Ruthless…
Wilco’s “Summer Teeth,” the title song of its underappreciated 1999 album, turns up on the new boxed set Just Say Sire. The band’s next disc, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, exploded as prima facie evidence against evildoing record labels and their no-hit-hearing A&R men, but here, its music is sandwiched between a Tommy Page number and a middling Paul Westerberg song, reminding…
It’s no surprise that intelligent design and Christian rock — à la Jars of Clay — are so popular with the same Lord-lovin’ crowd. Both are trumpeted as more relevant than their secular counterparts by every Bible-beating asshole you meet. And, more important, both lose all credibility outside of the church, despite futile attempts by Bush and his mouth-breathing supporters…
Leslie Feist, who performs under the surname-as-band-name moniker Feist, has the sort of résumé that doesn’t exactly fit with her sound. She once lived with potty-mouthed rapper Peaches and sang on her debut, then toured with her as Bitch Lap-Lap. But Feist isn’t into rhyming hardcore with pussy galore. She’s more of a modern chanteuse in the mold of Beth…
Though he hasn’t yet been able to match the success of his 1994 self-titled album, especially its “Cold Beverage,” Garrett Dutton (G. Love to the ladies) has been busy with and without his Special Sauce bandmates. He’s released an album every few years, occasionally teaming up with such notables as Dr. John and everyone’s favorite surf-jammer, Jack Johnson. After…
Nickel Creek is still pickin’, but it’s no longer grinnin’. A stark departure from its earlier upbeat efforts, the group’s recent Why Should the Fire Die? compiles bleak folk parables, brokenhearted ballads, and poignant Elliott Smith-style pop. The trio still harmonizes frequently and flawlessly, but each of the group’s singer-songwriters gets at least one solo showcase. Intertwined mandolin, fiddle and…
It was probably all that legal, dank hash that convinced Zzz, the self-professed “sleaze-steamin’ locomotive from Amsterdam,” to pull a $50 church organ out of its basement, pair it with a simple drum kit and start a dirty psychedelic band. The band’s debut full-length, plus the demos it has put out alongside buzz-inducing stateside stops at CMJ and South by…
In the early ’90s, innovative hip-hop acts striving to be more than just cut creators and rapper MCs (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul) received equal attention alongside their more traditional brethren. The undeniably liquid-smooth “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat),” the Digable Planets’ debut single, off 1993’s Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space), introduced us to…
Bruce Cockburn, the prolific folkster from Ontario, has been called the Canadian Dylan. But the singer-songwriter’s September release, the all-instrumental Speechless, strips away the political lyrics — and reminds his fans that he’s one hell of a guitar player. The eclectic album is Cockburn’s first word-free outing, but he manages to create an almost cinematic experience with his compositions. Cockburn…
