FRIDAY OK Jones and Red Guitar at the Hurricane. OK Jones’ album Push/Pull would have easily made my top 10 local releases of 2005, the year it came out — except I didn’t get a copy until 2006. Singer and guitarist Richard Gintowt, who writes music features for Lawrence.com, has a voice like a young John Hiatt (but without that…
Credit: Chris Strong Appleseed Cast. I fucking love Cris Crisci’s beard. That thing is more than impressive. It could scare the beard right off Lincoln’s face were Cris to go anywhere near Mount Rushmore, and a rock-beard avalanche would crush the elk, backpackers and lonely watercolor artists communing with our national history in the valley below. Stay away from the…
Some of us, while resembling “normal” adults, have decidedly kiddish behaviors. We’re not naming names, but we know someone who still sleeps with a baby blanket. And someone else who cannot function without his Froot Loops. Those of you who need a little childlike wonder in your own lives can join the Tag Institute for its weekly Wednesday gatherings,…
Sol Cantina (408 East 31st Street, 816-931-8080), the newest bar to join other Union Hill drinking establishments, has rejected the see-and-be-seen “Martini Corner” concept in favor of something a little more laid-back. The place has huge garage doors for open-air seating and a large patio in back, so these first few sunny months ought to prove profitable for the tequila…
Standing on the northern end of Mill Creek Park (47th Street and Broadway) last Monday evening, you could hear the melody of a familiar Woody Guthrie song in the distance. Protesters had gathered around the J.C. Nichols Memorial Fountain, clutching signs expressing their opposition to immigration reform and co-opting “This Land Is Your Land” as a rallying cry against…
Casanova (Disney) Dr. Dolittle 3 (Fox) Elevator to the Gallows (Criterion) 50 Greatest Kid Concoctions (Time Life) Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Sony) The Heirloom (Tartan) Inspector Gadget: 4-Disc Set (Shout Factory) The Intruder (Fox Lorber) Magic (Dark Sky) Match Point (DreamWorks) The Passenger (Sony) The Patriot: Extended Cut (Sony) Shopgirl (Disney) 3 Extremes II (Lions Gate) Tristan & Isolde…
Boys are oiling their mitts, men have started playing hooky, and Dick Cheney just one-hopped it like a pussy. Yes, baseball season is in full swing, and our dip-juice cup runneth over. Normally, this is cause for heavy titillation — perhaps a strong lather or a well-intentioned fistfight. But 2006 is no normal year: The home-run champ has already…
Aeon Flux (Paramount) Many things about this surreal sci-fi flick defy explanation, but nothing more so than the mystery of how it got made in the first place. On paper, it’s an archetypal setup for a bomb: a mostly forgotten cartoon, notable for its visual style and incomprehensibility, revived as a live-action vehicle for an actress (Charlize Theron) with…
The Birds This crossdressed pantsing of Hitchcock’s classic gives us Late Night at its best … and worst. When the troupe members shake together Hollywood satire, chintzy drag glamour and bitchy wit in a cocktail of a half-dozen set pieces, the show’s a heady gas. Too often, however, this Birds substitutes showy pop references for actual jokes and relies heavily…
Empty Thoughts, Lame Excuses, and Decorative Lies Ryan Humphrey’s first solo museum exhibition consists of four pieces: “Vantasy,” the driver’s side of a tricked-out, 1971 C-10 Chevrolet van; “Honky Spaceship,” a battery-powered installation panel that pumps out the beats of Public Enemy and Run DMC; “Rear Window,” the tail section of a Ferrari mounted on plywood; and “Velocity of Transparent…
Jazz is an evocative and loaded word. It conjures black-and-white images of musicians blowing beloved horns, pounding pianos or fingering guitar frets, captured in instantly iconic moments. Typically, the performer is onstage in some cramped and dingy club, beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, which gets wetter with every solo. A trail of cigarette smoke surrounds him as…
Here, at last, is a chance to make sense of Steven Eubank. At 22, an age when most of us haven’t yet decided what field we’ll disappoint in, this kid’s been staging and starring in musicals for more than four years, mostly sexed-up shows trucking in the sleazy tran-tastic: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a memorable Rocky Horror and…
The Darwinian theory that schlocksploitation must tighten its twist of the nuts with each new release will be tested strenuously for years — or at least several weeks — by Hard Candy. A pointedly s(l)ick cross between Oleanna and I Spit on Your Grave, thrown like raw meat to Lions Gate for $4 million at Sundance, Hard Candy depicts a…
United 93 — which uses the hijacking of one plane on September 11, 2001, to tell the story of what happened to all four aircraft seized that morning — may be the most wrenching, profound and perfectly made movie that nobody wants to see. There is no reason to think that multiplex hordes eagerly await the arrival of this…
en years ago, National Public Radio correspondent Bob Garfield went on a hilarious expedition through San Francisco, looking for a restaurant that served Rice-A-Roni. The stuff, after all, has been advertised as “the San Francisco treat” since 1958. I listened in my car, spellbound, because like most baby boomers, I know the Rice-A-Roni jingle so well I can practically sing…
It’s a good sign that Patrick Quillec likes Café Provence so much that he’d eat there often, he says, “even if I didn’t own it.” That sounds like self-promotional merde, but it’s a boast I can agree with. Café Provence has always been my favorite of Quillec’s restaurants — which once included the original Hannah Bistro on 39th Street,…
Thanks to a spate of summerlike weather recently, we’ve been partaking in one of the best pastimes ever: the outdoor drinkfest. Forget the robins, the pretty flowering trees and all that crap. For us, the real sign of spring is when our local watering holes open up their outdoor drinking areas. So, on a beautiful Friday night, we headed to…
If Danny Phillips didn’t make a living behind a pair of Technics 1200s, he’d probably be at the fore of Switzerland’s watch industry. His sense of timing is impeccable. Since his beginnings with Uneasy Listening, Phillips (DJ P for short) has spawned a new genre of DJ, one whose mastery of tempo can only be upstaged by an unnatural selection…
Underhill flies local colors as proudly as anyone, but its debut CD winds up being the tale of a Midwestern band coming to terms with California dreamin’. The first few songs, though as tight as a Friday night, play like a demo meant to prove the band’s party-ready mettle for club owners. There’s an Incubus-and-adrenaline Xbox 360 tune (“Your Vision”);…
First, the obvious: When you name your band Dead Girls Ruin Everything and title your first album What a Perfect Ending, you get points solely for cleverness. If you and your bandmates are refugees from such defunct Kansas City power-pop powerhouses as Podstar (JoJo Longbottom, Cameron Hawk) and Ultimate Fakebook (Eric Melin, Nick Colby), you could belch into the microphone…
A couple of months ago, People Under the Stairs leaked music on the Internet. But instead of getting an advance copy of Stepfather, downloaders were subjected to an Andy Kaufman-style recital of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 18th-century poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Humor has always been the cornerstone to the back-and-forth delivery of Thes One and Double K, so,…
Dutch ensemble the Gathering began life as a black-metal-influenced outfit, but you’d never know it by listening to the group’s latest outing. Home is a collection of symphonic pop music that has far more in common with the ersatz goth of Evanescence than with, say, Mayhem. Amy Lee doppelgänger and diva of darkness Anneke van Giersbergen leads the way with…
Journey’s 2006 shed tour skips Kansas City this summer, leaving Indira’s Joel Friday as the only Steve Perry approximation on the local concert calendar. At a recent Bottleneck show, Friday faithfully wailed “Don’t Stop Believing,” his vocal range standing out on a bill stocked with gut-punched grunters. Friday showcases his pipes during the group’s originals as well, belting out choruses…
“I’m a musician,” Beck told an interviewer in 1999, “because in music … you don’t have to abide by divisions. The whole idea is anarchy — and the best music just doesn’t give a fuck.” The Kinetiks are not Beck (though his influence is present in their music). They do, however, seem to know exactly what he means. Badass singer…
