We all have our guilty pleasures. In fact, more often than not, it’s the crappy albums that link people most directly to their youth. Rush, Neil Diamond, even Green Day — when it comes to nostalgia, nothing’s shocking. But sometimes you meet someone whose early favorite is so random and just … weird that it blows you away. Prime example:…
Kansas City’s Scott Hobart is making his return to rock. For one night, at least, the city will feel like 1995, when heavy, guitar-driven songs, à la Hum, took center stage in the underground scene. From 1993 to 1997, Hobart’s three-piece monster rock machine Giant’s Chair spread the gospel of the Kansas City scene across the nation, along with cohorts…
Ladies and gentlemen, the Pitch Ultra Music DJ Contest is nigh. Tie your mother down, put on your red shoes and get your ass to our second-annual over-rockin’ dance party. Friday at Jilly’s, five local DJs square off, one by one, for a trip to perform at the Winter Music Conference in Miami in March. A judges’ panel of Pitch…
People fill the stone basement, wearing heavy coats, scarves, hats, layers of clothing and drinking the liquor they brought to prepare themselves for the coming onslaught. The place smells of cigarettes and dust. In another era, these people could be hiding from the gestapo. But this is a party. It’s an apartment-building basement off 39th Street and Broadway in Kansas…
Grave Matter Coffin it up: Apparently you think Fred Phelps and his behavior are strictly a gay issue (Kansas City Strip, February 9). You write: “The Strip rang up Rep. Rucker to congratulate him on his sudden interest in gay issues. He was quick to set us straight. ‘This has nothing to do with gay rights,’ he said. ‘This bill…
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. What did you think of that fight between Jackson County legislators Dan Tarwater and Robert Stringfield? I laughed hard when I heard about that violence. I feel that Tarwater…
Danny Boi, the slacker-inspiring morning DJ from KRBZ 96.5 (“The Buzz”), recently broke what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas tradition by returning from the station’s weeklong road trip with a souvenir: his new wife, Amy. Boi had selected his future spouse through an on-air contest to accompany him on a road trip to Vegas. After a (supposedly) sober night on the Strip, they bought a…
When the Strip checked out the address on East Gregory Boulevard, an old woman was walking by with her dog. The neighborhood seemed normal enough. However, the Strip knew that one of the inconspicuous houses was actually the Earth headquarters for an organization of alien races. Called the Nibiruan Council, the organization is led by a lion man named Devin….
When he saw Oprah Winfrey complaining about how she was “duped” on her January 26 show, Greg Sanders felt exactly the same way. Winfrey was castrating author James Frey over his fabricated memoir of drug addiction, A Million Little Pieces. Meanwhile, Olathe entrepreneur Sanders was himself feeling duped — by Winfrey’s exercise guru, Bob Greene. Now Sanders and his company…
It’s a Thursday night in November. Sgt. Danny Graves is cruising the narrow, hilly streets of an older, blue-collar neighborhood called Maple Park, near Worlds of Fun. Graves grew up not far from here. He returned in late 2004, after spending 10 years on patrol in the urban core and working undercover narcotics with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department….
Disney Princess Sing Along Songs, Vol. Three: Perfectly Princess (Buena Vista) Emmanuel’s Gift (First Look) The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: The Complete First Three Seasons (Warner Bros.) The Frisco Kid (Warner Bros.) Gimme a Break!: Season One (MCA) Grey’s Anatomy: Season One (Buena Vista) He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Season One, Volume 2 (Brentwood Home Video) Henri Cartier-Bresson:…
Ah, the Winter Olympics. The nip of drama in the Alpine air. The purity of amateur competition. Swedish women in full-body spandex. These are all things we enjoy about the winter games. Now for some things we don’t: losing to Canada in hockey, male figure skaters in blouses, and of course, really bad videogames. Torino 2006, from 2K Sports, the…
Comedy Central Roast of Pamela Anderson: Uncensored! (Paramount) This sucker’s vulgar — duh — but not shocking in the least bit; Sarah Silverman swears, and Courtney Love drinks and smokes . . . who knew? That said, this roast ranks among the meanest ever televised; why Bea Arthur shows up every year to have Jeff Ross take a dump…
The Glass Menagerie Art and memory and Tennessee Williams’ spirited drinking collide in this autobiographical drama, the first of Williams’ great successes. In Depression-era St. Louis, the cleverly initialed Tom Wingfield, a shoe-factory drudge who dreams of being a writer, is tempted to strike out on his own, leaving his family behind. Always worth revisiting, the play offers real choices…
Before and After Kevin McGraw refers to himself as a “junkyard guy.” Based on this show, the description is accurate. The title refers to the objects — metal traffic signs, skateboard pieces, tire treads, mudflaps — that McGraw frequently finds along the sides of roads. He incorporates these materials into photographs of assemblages he’s already made. There’s a bit of…
We didn’t really need to see Andrew Hansen’s cream-dried jeans. Hansen’s site-specific installation, “Goodbye Gelato,” is one of the less successful pieces in Bernini to Fellini: KCAI in Italy, the student exhibit now up at the Kansas City Art Institute Crossroads Gallery. The show, representing all eight of the Art Institute’s departments, is inspired by a monthlong trip that…
Not since Oprah said cattle shouldn’t chow on feed made of their brethren have cowboys suffered such a rough time. There’s Brad Paisley bragging that college “was a ball” all over country radio. There’s Mr. Wyoming himself, Dick Cheney, shotgunning a septuagenarian lawyer instead of the quail that had been born, bred and released expressly for his killing pleasure….
The best thing about Michael Haneke’s Caché is the way it draws on contemporary fears without ever mentioning them. The war on terror has made people feel insecure in their own homes. Will you get anthrax in the mail? Is there a wiretap on your phone? If it seems like a stretch to project American phobias onto a French film,…
Freedomland manages a seemingly impossible feat: It’s both turgid and overwrought. It’s a dreary piece of work, yet another dismal entry on the résumé of director Joe Roth, an only-in-Hollywood hack who is allowed to make movies — among them America’s Sweethearts and Christmas With the Kranks — because he runs the production company (Revolution Studios) that makes them…
Culinary Concepts LLC, the once-powerful dining division of Hallmark, has shrunk to one restaurant. In 2004, it turned over the management of three Crown Center food operations — Milano, the Crayola Café and Golden Harvest Bakery — to the Hyatt Corporation. That left Culinary Concepts with the nationally acclaimed American Restaurant and, for some inexplicable reason, The Patio, the increasingly…
Restaurateurs change their menus all the time. They add new dishes, remove ones that aren’t selling, perhaps tinker with recipes to alter an ingredient or two. But when a restaurant undergoes a complete personality transformation, you know there’s trouble in paradise. Two months ago, Anna Molina threw up her hands and threw out her menu. For eight years, Molina…
After checking out Harrah’s knockoff American Idol competition at the VooDoo Lounge, we’re pleased to announce that the phrase camel toe will finally make its debut in this column. The faux AI contest, called Lucky Break, takes place every Wednesday from 7 to 10 p.m. at the casino bar. From now until April, the weekly winners will get the chance…
After several intense days of getting drunk on cheap wine and electronic music, we at the Pitch have chosen which five DJs will compete in our Ultra Music Festival DJ Competition. We received 24 submissions, and narrowing the field was a difficult process. But even God is bound by rules. The finalists are, in random order: DJ SVS (Michael Thomas,…
Sterling Brown, singer for this Kansas City jam-funk-blues group, is a big man, with a big, classy, Albert King-sized voice. He’s a showman, too — one moment scrunching shut his eyes, baring his teeth and sending his soul out through the PA; the next, getting all wiggly in front of the drums while the other Brothers Green rattle across a…
