Excitable yapping from Camille Paglia notwithstanding, Valley of the Dolls has never been taken seriously. This despite the fact that Jacqueline Susann’s schlock-and-awe classic is among the last century’s best-selling works of fiction and almost certainly was the last novel to actually matter to our post-literate culture at large. Open to any page, and you see why. Take this seduction:…
We hear that Toby Keith loves his bar. We, though, need a couple more mason jars of cheap beer to decide. We recently paid a visit to Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill, the country singer’s new food-and-drinkery at Harrah’s Casino. Important clarification for our twee-listening readers: Toby Keith is the purveyor of the angry-American, tell-it-like-it-is, Dixie Chicks-wranglin’…
OK, so not every Italian restaurant, including Crown Center’s Milano (see review), is interested in serving the less fancy fare that I like to call classic Italian-American cuisine — pizza, spumoni, spaghetti and meatballs. But those are exactly the kinds of dishes that Charlie and Sally Sutera serve at the two-month-old Sutera’s Italian Restaurant (4730 Rainbow) in Westwood. The new…
The late comedian Rodney Dangerfield built an entire career as the man who got no respect. His biggest laughs came when he put himself down: “I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life,” he once said. “In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.” The 16-year-old Milano is the…
No, that’s not really his DJ name — at least, not every week. In fact, this guy has a different name each time he spins. He’s called himself DJ Cow Udder, DJ Poofy Noodle, DJ Lard Wheel and DJ Christ Fist, among other random, weird, sick names. “I have to push the limits of DJdom,” explains John Bersuch, the man…
At first listen, Burning Fifteen’s Chasing the Sleeper Cell sounds as though it could be a long-lost demo found in a basement rec room at Jack Black’s mom’s house. This Kansas City band plays superfast rock-metal with a hint of grindcore, courtesy of singer M.L. Collis’ raptorlike wails and drummer Scott Bland’s impossibly fast sticks. But just when you think…
There’s a time- honored complaint about multidisc releases in which the reviewer indulges the perennial rock critic’s fantasy of being a tyrannical producer and declaims that any given boxed set could have been shrunk to one great 12-song album. But at 100 tracks, this four-disc odds-and-ends collection from the defunct Guided By Voices is just too damned sprawling to accurately…
Blessed with exotic good looks and a razor-sharp tongue, former water-polo star Sean Henriques reinvented himself as Sean Paul and became dancehall’s urban-crossover poster child — his second album, 2003’s Dutty Rock, knocked 50 Cent from the No. 1 slot in Billboard. Such success may have gone to his head. The Trinity isn’t a religious reference but rather a self-referential…
Concocting upbeat music to frame their generally gloomy subject matter, the Grabs are a nifty side project of two fairly obscure Los Angeles musicians: lounge chanteuse Eleni Mandell and experimental guitarist and keyboardist Steve Gregoropolous of Lavender Diamond. They collaborate on the band’s spirited songwriting, which is backed by a rhythm section made up of bassist Nigel Harrison (formerly of…
There’s something about winter that invites a steep dive into Americana music. Maybe it’s the smell of firewood smoke in the air. Maybe it’s the cold austerity in the artwork of those final Johnny Cash albums. Or maybe it’s that your sturdiest winter boots just happen to be Justin ropers. (On the other hand, maybe it’s all the country singers…
It has to sort of suck to be Cave In. Alongside its Boston brethren Converge, the band helped pioneer metalcore in the late-’90s and inadvertently influenced today’s Warped Tour heartthrobs with groundbreaking discs such as Beyond Hypothermia and Until Your Heart Stops. However, after taking a prog-rock detour with 2000’s Jupiter and exploring a bigger sound with its subsequent major-label…
Everyone has a cousin like Rob Thomas. He’s the bigger, mostly good-looking guy on the corner of the back deck, beer in hand, laughing and looking cool. The difference between Rob Thomas and your cousin is that somehow, Thomas has managed to successfully navigate his way into a solo career after fronting Matchbox 20, whereas your cousin still sells tires…
Hailing from Fort Collins, Colorado, and caboodling members from Armchair Martian, All, the Nobodys and Hot Rod Circuit, Drag the River delivers solid and heavily punk-influenced alt-country. Known for playing a mix of barnburners and gentle heartbreakers, Drag the River comes across as anything but poseur, despite its more prevalent harder influences. Having started recording in the late ’90s as…
Like Fast Times at Ridgemont High set to music, the Supersuckers emanate the rebellious, devil-may-care innocence and raucous, party-time attitude of an underage keg party. I’d rather choose my soul to lose than leave around just one confusing loose desire, bassist Eddie Spaghetti sings on his hedonistic ode “Born With a Tail,” expressing the opinion that if you’re already on…
All hail Chuck D! Oh, how the uptight and old white pundits parsed his every word. From the days of “jungle rhythms” to the French riots today, the frightened, white and withered have shat themselves over black music. But some musicians deserve protection from the beshitted more than others do. So, for attempting in a recent column to tie in…
It’s the damnedest thing, This Is My Condition. Just one guy, Craig Comstock, an unassuming, 5-foot-something who looks more like he might lay out your Web site than rock your ass superhuge-solo-style, a shiny-domed smiler banging out his are-you-shitting-me? racket on drums and a guitar he lays over the kit. He beats out a riff with the sticks, smashes a…
A Burial at Sea wants you to know that it is not Salt the Earth. Despite sharing the same principal songwriter in guitarist and singer Marty Bush, Burial’s sound is the polar opposite of Salt’s abrasive, hooky rock, which drew comparisons to the Casket Lottery and At the Drive-In. Instead, the band’s music drowns in lilting, jangly guitars, organs, horns…
It was 5:30 the morning after the Bands Across Kansas City band battle at the Beaumont Club. I awoke early because I had me some eatin’ to do. I cooked up a two-egg breakfast burrito and a side order of my own words, dredged in flour, deep-fried and served with raspberry jam — and boy, did it taste good. The…
After his trusty DJ, Ataxxic, introduces him, Stacy Smith busts through a gang of break dancers to find his way to the microphone center stage at the Peanut on a Hip-Hop and Hot Wings Sunday night. Smith, who MCs as Reach, raps through braces, not bling. He serenades a beefy bulldog roaming the bar, not the ladies. His main…
Murder, one: Hey, guys. Have a little respect for the community. That death pool was in poor taste in Leawood, and it’s in poor taste in the Pitch (Backwash, November 17). I get your paper every week and do like it and support you taking on topics most people won’t touch, but this doesn’t help anything. Please cancel the contest….
Hip-hop MC Priceless Diamonds describes herself as a “boss bitch” who grew up boosting clothes and turning the occasional trick. She’s no angel, but she’s got advice. So listen up, y’all. If someone gave you a knockoff purse, would you think they were cheap or thrifty? The Boss Bitch always knows a knockoff from the real thing. I wouldn’t be…
Recently the Strip went to see Capote. And it was a bit perturbed to find that Kansas City barely gets a mention in the movie, which stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in what critics are calling an Oscar-worthy portrayal of tiny author Truman Capote. The Strip has a bone to pick with the film, because while Capote was researching In Cold…
In the eight years since Seinfeld immortalized the anti-holiday known as Festivus, the annual “holiday for the rest of us” has grown into a pop-culture phenomenon. Two books about Festivus came out this fall, and the author of one declares the party hosted by Kansas City’s own Julianne Donovan to be “the greatest Festivus party in America.” To recap:…
It’s an unseasonably warm November Tuesday in Topeka. Reporters from across the globe have crammed into the normally empty boardroom to witness the Kansas Board of Education officially insert criticism of evolution into the state’s public-school science standards. Cameras surround the horseshoe-shaped table where the state school board’s ten members are seated. This is a board so politicized that its…
