Since getting the boot from Jilly’s (which seems to be a theme in KC’s hip-hop community), JDFlow has redirected his attention to Mondays at the Peanut (418 West Ninth Street, 816-221-7470). The venue already draws a solid crowd every Sunday for sorta the same thing, so it could go one of two ways: either the scene gets behind it and…
The Adventures of Brer Rabbit (Universal) Batman Beyond: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros.) The Billy Wilder DVD Collection (Paramount) Bukowski: Born Into This (Magnolia) The Busby Berkeley Collection (Warner Bros.) Capote (Sony) Chicken Little (Buena Vista) Crackheads Gone Wild (Xtreme Films) Dear Wendy (Fox Lorber) Derailed (Weinstein Co.) Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (DreamWorks) The Dying Gaul (Sony)…
As celebrity career paths go, Sonic the Hedgehog has been tiptoeing dangerously close to Baldwin Brothers territory lately. Last year brought the embarrassing Shadow the Hedgehog, a dark title in which Sonic’s brooding alter ego wielded a gun, earning it the unflattering nickname “Grand Theft Hedgehog.” Still, at first blush, Sonic Riders, a new racing game starring the fleet-footed…
Breasts: A Documentary (First Run) Honest, compassionate, and funny, this documentary is remarkable for the bravery of its participants, who bare their breasts as they speak about them. The film delivers 22 women of all shapes, sizes, ages, races, and orientations — all of whom have interesting, surprising things to say about their life with breasts. (Don’t miss “the…
Crowns At this celebration of down-home church life, the acting’s strong, the singing thrills and the energy crackles through the audience. Too bad, then, that playwright Regina Taylor is more interested in hats (the titular crowns are those elaborate hats favored by some churchgoing African-American women) than in people. The slip of a plot concerns Yolanda (an excellent Angela Polk),…
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…
“It’s a wonderful thing, marriage,” once opined Jesco White, West Virginia’s almost-famous dancing outlaw, from the steps of his trailer. “There’s love in it, and there’s happiness in it. But there’s also sorrow, hatred and madness.” You’d never be able to drag a gas-huffing sumbitch like White to Crown Center, much less into a sit-down theater such as the…
It should be too early in the year to expect a good movie, let alone a great one. Yet here it is, the first masterpiece of 2006. And from the director of 9 Songs, last year’s art-porn flick. Teaming up with Steve Coogan seems to bring out the best in Michael Winterbottom. In 24 Hour Party People, they brought us…
Given Inside Man’s bullpen (director Spike Lee, stars Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster), its moment in political history and advertising, you could be forgiven for expecting some kind of socially relevant, perhaps even politically volatile dramatic smash-up — something with teeth, ambition, a functioning cerebrum and a lusty relationship with reality. But Lee is long beyond his days as…
Will someone please call the World Weekly News and tell the editors that I saw Elvis eating at the Fire Mountain Hot Off the Grill steakhouse in Shawnee? Not just any Elvis but the King of Rock and Roll in a silver-and-black caftan! And why the hell was I eating at Fire Mountain in the first place? My friend Bob…
There was an old movie on TV the other night starring a very young Warren Beatty. He played a Depression-era college student who, at some point in the film, walked into a little Italian restaurant and asked, “What is pizza?” It would have been a fair question in 1929, long before the Neapolitan dish became as commonplace as french…
We’ve found Brigadoon — it’s Paddy O’Quigley’s in Lee’s Summit. We’d heard a vague rumor that this particular O’Quigley’s was drawing quite a crowd, thanks to its clublike atmosphere. Our only exposure to Paddy O’Quigley’s had been its JoCo branch, which is more frattish than a dancetorium. The thought of an eastern Jackson County branch conjured up images of a…
Stephin Merritt has come out of the closet: Of course! You’re a theatrical composer! It must have been so hard passing as a pop singer all those years. The leader of the Magnetic Fields and sundry other indie broods slides into musical theater so easily, one has to wonder how he was ever mistaken for a Brill Building or new-wave…
Rebirth of a Nation is a return to form for Public Enemy in unexpected ways. It’s something of a chop session led by the Bay Area rapper Paris — whose deep, rippling bass grooves rumble throughout the music, making it as much his album as PE’s — and many of the songs feature merely short appearances from Chuck D., Flavor…
Listeners unacquainted with such late-’60s classics as Something Else and The Village Green Preservation Society might hear in Ray Davies’ music imitations of the many British pop acts that have imitated him. At several points throughout Other People’s Lives, the first solo studio album of the former Kinks frontman’s four-decade career, Davies seems to do a note-for-note impression of Blur…
Exalt. The return of classic hip-hop is back, courtesy of one of the game’s more respected collectives. MCs Rakaa and Evidence and beat maker DJ Babu deliver pre-“Laffy Taffy” nostalgia on 20/20, a throwback album dead set on the art of spewing thought-provoking, head-bobbing lyrics amid searing, frantic beats over looping drum patterns, complemented by explosive mixing and scratching. Whereas…
Even if his name doesn’t ring a bell, you’ve probably heard the punk-bluegrass crossover sound Kirk Rundstrom and his band, Split Lip Rayfield (pictured, with Rundstrom at center), have consistently generated. Split Lip Rayfield, however, won’t be playing at the Bottleneck, Friday, March 24. Instead, the Lawrence venue will host an all-night gig to help finance Rundstrom’s looming battle with…
There’s a hilarious part in the DVD documentary that accompanies Madball’s latest album, Legacy, that shows the band sitting at a roadside restaurant. Understandably out of place in milquetoast middle America, bass player Hoya Roc sneers under his breath at “all these white people.” Madball is a New York hardcore band, and don’t you forget it. This time around, however,…
Writing about We Are Scientists is dangerous. Consider the journalist who spoke ill of the band, only to get fired, faint and suffer his own dog pooing on his face, leading the band to warn critics on its Web site: “If they must vent negative feelings, they should cloak them in a thick blanket of bone-dry sarcasm so that most…
Poison the Well loves corpses — in a non-necrophiliac kind of way. The group emblazons decomposing faces on its T-shirts and touts resurrected stiffs as life savers with the song title “Zombies Are Good for Your Health.” Like the Dawn of the Dead mall stalkers, Poison the Well’s songs plod with slow-chugging verses, then bite with choruses that sink into…
Toni Braxton is one of the more consistent R&B divas to remain visible in a fad-driven genre. Girl groups, boy groups, manufactured franchises — all have come and gone since the then-thick-hipped, short-cropped Braxton debuted on the scene in 1993 with the Babyface-produced smash singles “Give U My Heart” and “Love Shoulda Brought You Home” (both from the Boomerang movie…
When most musicians get headlining tours, they fill the opening-band slots with the best up-and-comers they can find. Reggie and the Full Effect’s James Dewees, on the other hand, just creates another alter ego. Since forming the Full Effect as a side project in 1998, the former Get Up Kid has managed to turn what started as an inside joke…
I love you, but you smell like an airport. I love you, but I won’t eat snails. I love you, but Blossom is on. I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness might be the most cumbersome of full-sentence band names, but it’s also the most evocative. The Austin, Texas, quintet’s sound, which owes debts to spacey, gloomy Brits such as…
Aberfeldy’s 2004 album, Young Forever, was one of the great overlooked pop gems of, hell, any year. This Edinburgh, Scotland, quintet’s songwriting owes just as much to Hank Williams as it does to Brian Wilson, and the harmony vocals of fiddle player Sarah McFayden and keyboardist Ruth Barrie, supporting warbly throated frontman Riley Briggs, make for one of the finest…
