Anthony Spino III doesn’t need demographic studies or development surveys to know that things are finally changing in downtown Kansas City. He only needs to step out the front door of his family’s restaurant, Anthony’s Restaurant & Lounge. “It used to be that I’d only see street people walking around in our neighborhood,” Spino says. “Now I see young…
That little Record Bar is just full of surprises. Either that or its owners are even more enterprising than we thought. When Steve Tulipana and Shawn Sherrill opened the bar at the beginning of October, their rock and roll followers rushed the gates like junkies at Worlds of Crack. Since then, Steve and Shawn have worked to attract diverse crowds,…
Make no mistake, Kansas City’s own Prophett Maine ain’t no party rapper. And Maine, on his new release, The Rapper, Volume 1, is letting his hometown know it. Aside from the violent bravado that’s sprinkled throughout the 12-song disc, The Rapper, to quote Maine again, “ain’t gangster rapping, either.” On doable tracks such as “For Real” (featuring Daleo and Heated),…
It’s a rare band or artist whose songs gain so much extra breadth in live situations that official, label-approved documentation is warranted. This is why faulting Pearl Jam’s cornucopia of low-priced bootlegs is difficult, why Sonic Youth is foolish for not having pursued a similar course, and why Virgin never cashed in when it could’ve with a Smashing Pumpkins concert…
There’s no arguing that David Christian’s melancholia is feigned — after all, he was once victim to the ultimate musical betrayal when his entire band left him to form a new one. And let’s not forget his national birthright — there’s even a song here called “This English Melancholy.” But City Fallen Leaves, his seventh album since 1995, is a…
To understand the novelistic genius of the Silver Jews, choose any of the band’s albums and listen to the first line. On the sparkling ’90s-pop masterpiece American Water, it’s In 1984, I was hospitalized for approaching perfection. The lo-fi Bright Flight starts by explaining that everything has been downhill since God created Earth. And on the band’s long-awaited fifth album,…
With their 1998 debut, the boys and girls of Nashville Pussy declared Let Them Eat Pussy. Seven years later, they’re still all about the muff. Their latest album, Get Some!, opens with the holler, Well, all right, who wants some pussy? The quartet’s two superhot, supercrass female members, guitarist Ruyter Suys and bassist Karen Cuda, answer with a spirited We…
Admit it, folks: Tech N9ne is the closest thing that Kansas City has to a mainstream rap star. (St. Louis has Nelly, Chingy, J-Kwon and Murphy Lee.) But whereas most KC MCs favor street-inspired gangster-rap tales, Tech N9ne unleashes outrageous antics, rainbow-hued hair dye and rapid-fire rhymes in an effort not to limit his audience. Judging by the recent spate…
Lisa Marie Presley’s life has proven lucrative since the 2003 release of her first studio album, To Whom It May Concern, a collection of pop-rock for adults that dealt with such themes as the difficulty of having a famous daddy and dating abusive assholes. Produced by Glen Ballard, the album sold 140,000 copies in its first week of release (in…
It’s hard to pass off bein’ all hard when you’re rapping from the Northwoods mean streets of Minneapolis. Indie hip-hop MC Slug and his crew in Atmosphere go the other direction, melding deep underground beats and growlin’ free-style prowess with an occasionally wince-inspiring, self-effacing perspective on life, relationships and being broke as hell. With Atmosphere, the boasting’s all about scathing…
Orchestral performances conjure images of plush concert halls, stuffy aristocrats and sagging eyelids. That may be why the string ensemble known as Rachel’s tours rock clubs, performing an avant-chamber-indie hybrid that is entirely capable of rocking out as well as reveling in the more sophisticated intricacies of classical composition. The touring lineup incorporates cello, viola, keys and percussion, as well…
OK Go gives fans a free iTunes download if they get their friends to play the silky disco-pop single “A Million Ways” in its entirety. (The online Web site for this promotion is a1000000ways.com; the more convenient spelled-out version belongs to a cryptic place-holder site.) It’s a pleasant task to complete; the tune is three minutes long and hooky as…
Fall Out Boy bassist and songwriter Pete Wentz can’t stand being limited by 4/4 time. He has aspirations of becoming the next Russell Simmons. “People didn’t just buy a Def Jam record,” he says. “People bought a culture.” The multitalented entrepreneur talks about the need to create a similar counterculture to house his mad ideas. Can you talk about…
If life were a roadhouse in a David Lynch movie, American Catastrophe would be the house band. Bedding down with the sinister and sensual, this Kansas City quartet composes cruel and eerie ballads of romances going awry, people going insane and the grim reaper going to town. But they didn’t rise to the top of the cemetery gates overnight….
It’s Sunday afternoon, and the upstairs neighbors are smoking cigarettes and watching commercials starring Howie “Prince of Shills” Long and David “Mustache of Desperation” Spade, interspersed with clips from the Chiefs-Raiders game. With the game muted on my own television, I drift from couch to computer to kitchen, sweeping the floor and thinking about whether I love or hate the…
Talking on the phone from her hotel room in Paris, Bettye Lavette is having fun, and she’s having it her way. And why shouldn’t she? The veteran soul singer is riding high on the buzz generated by her new CD, I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, earning favorable reviews in high-profile publications such as Entertainment Weekly, The New York…
Building code: Regarding C.J. Janovy’s “Get Some Balls” (October 27): She neglected to inform readers that Jon Copaken would naturally want a downtown stadium as well as anything else we can stuff downtown. He is the Copaken in Copaken, White & Blitt. Why does that matter? Well, CWB has quite an interest in revitalizing downtown. It owns two of the…
Steve Parkus is now officially retarded, according to Judge Robert Stillwell of the circuit court of Washington County in Missouri. The Missouri Supreme Court had asked Stillwell to decide whether Parkus, a death-row inmate at the Potosi Correctional Center, was indeed retarded, as his attorneys had argued, or competent, as claimed by experts hired by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon…
Hip-hop MC Priceless Diamonds describes herself as a “boss bitch” who grew up boosting clothes and turning the occasional trick. She swears that she’s leading a straighter life now, but we figure she’s still learned lots of good life lessons. So listen up, y’all. What do you think of Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison challenging Phill Kline for the…
Just for the hell of it, the Strip will now summarize the recent public comments of Jim Corwin, who has just completed his first year as Kansas City, Missouri’s chief of police: It’s not my fault! Last week, a Jackson County judge spared Corwin the indignity of having to appear in court and explain why the police edited a video…
Sensitive guys and cool moms across the metro were crestfallen back in August, when they awoke to discover that they could no longer find John Mayer at KZPL 97.3. It’s taken awhile for fans of the station once known as “the Planet” to recover from the heartbreak after Union Broadcasting changed the station’s format and rechristened it “the Max,” replacing…
In his national television debut, Jackson County Prosecutor Mike Sanders doesn’t look half-bad. Sanders doesn’t exactly have a movie-star face, but on this March episode of Dr. Phil, his normally limp hair has a nice lift — especially compared with his bald host. Dr. Phil — psychologist Phil McGraw — is trying to help track down the missing children…
American Chopper: Third Season (Columbia/Tristar) Attack Pack (Commando, Predator, and Kiss of the Dragon) (Fox) Bill Maher: I’m Swiss (Image Ent.) The Brady Bunch: Four-Season Pack (Paramount) Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Warner Bros.) Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment (Disney) Duran Duran: Live From London (Universal Music) Fame: The Complete First Season (Columbia/Tristar) Heights (Columbia/Tristar) Millions (Fox) The…
Pity the video-game zombie. He spends his short afterlife dodging self-righteous heroes hell-bent on peppering him with buckshot, setting him on fire, or blowing him to smithereens with a bazooka. Well, Stubbs is here to even the score. Set in the 1950s, Stubbs the Zombie casts players as the eponymous zombie, a door-to-door salesman who rises from the dead after…
