I am listening to Steve Kraske’s show on 89.3 KCUR. He’s summoned Sonic Spectrum host Robert Moore and KC Star music critic Tim Finn to talk about the best new musical releases of the year. Both guys have come with songs to play and incredibly generic and less-than-insightful things to say about them. I like Robert a helluvalot, but Up…
Here’s a dispatch from Nadia Pflaum, frequent HH&HW-goer and discerning hip-hop critic. With all apologies to AJ, the originator and booker of Hip-Hop and Hot Wings every Sunday at the Peanut: Last Sunday’s special guest performer, Louis Logic from New York, was SOFA KING WE TODD DID. This nancy shows up with his receding hairline-Afro, in a professor jacket and…
At the end of May, the mass emigration of students from Lawrence leads to that brief period of time when townies can run unburdened. Free of mad basketball traffic and onslaughts of chartered party buses, evenings out are typically a bit more mellow and reminders of why many people decide to stay in Lawrence after college. One place always worth…
Exercise fads come and go, and where does that leave us? Usually still out of shape and stuck with a closet full of useless equipment. (Hey, anyone need a step aerobics board?). However, we’re somewhat intrigued by Cardio Tennis. It’s a group class that incorporates ball-hitting drills and a heart-rate-boosting good time, and it’s supposedly similar to interval training (short…
Commander in Chief: 2-Disc Inaugural Edition Part 1 (Disney) The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection (MPI) Cow Belles (Disney) Danger After Dark (TLA) Evil (Magnolia) Is It Really So Strange? (Frameline) Failure to Launch (Paramount) Family Affair: Season One (MPI) Fear Factor: The First Season (Universal) Imagine Me & You (Fox) Leroy & Stitch (Disney) Madea’s Family Reunion (Lions Gate) Monk:…
For comic geeks, an X-Men game that promises to fill in the backstory between movies sounds hotter than a date with Jean Grey. Finally, we get to discover what Wolverine has been up to between films — besides winning Tony Awards as alter ego Hugh Jackman, of course. That’s the bright idea behind Activision’s X-Men: The Official Game, an…
The Devil’s Sword (Mondo Macabro) Few trash movies live up to their reputation, but here’s a balls-out wonder that surpasses it. Grab a 12-pack of Bintang and cue up this jaw-unhinging slab of Indonesian sword-and-sorcery circa 1983 — a start-to-finish feast of martial arts, mullets, flying heads, vestal virgins, dry-ice fog, and discount psychedelia, accompanied by a synth-cheese score…
Menopause, the Musical Let’s see: hot flash strife, Lot’s new wife — what else rhymes with change of life? Find out when Kansas City’s cheeriest theater, the American Heartland, makes penance for last month’s god-awful Duck Hunter Shoots Angel by reviving its well-received 2004 hit about women’s lives after 40. The Heartland has scheduled a long run for the popular…
Collect All Four How about if we collect two instead? Julie Farstad uses stark imagery to convey a nightmarish reality, placing painted toy baby dolls in compromising positions; the slightly grotesque, shiny baby fat in her paintings is indelible. In “Bad Bad Girls,” one doll lifts the dress of the other for a spanking against an austere, glowing-red background. In…
James Wyeth treats Rudolf Nureyev like a god. Wyeth is the son of painter Andrew Wyeth (whose famous “Christina’s World,” with its prairie setting, always makes us think of Kansas). He was clearly in love — if only in the platonic sense — with the iconic dancer, and ultimately, Wyeth’s skill as a painter takes backseat to his beloved…
When I call King Henry V the tightest, most exciting production I’ve seen at the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, I mean neither to cheer this show inordinately nor to dismiss its predecessors. Yes, under director Sidonie Garrett, this show is crisp in its action, plush in its pageantry, and all aclang with speeches and swordplay. Yes, we have…
For an industry in decline, print journalism has done a fashion publicist’s job of staying in vogue, particularly among the more stylish career-seeking college grads. Never mind telling these BlackBerry-toting eager beavers that even an unpaid gig in the field is as rare as a winning lottery ticket. The Devil Wears Prada promises the glamorous life — celebrity cocktail parties,…
After all that, just … this? After all the anticipation, all the hype, all the product available on toy-store shelves and kiddie sections at bookstores, after all the promise that this would be the most super of Superman movies, all we get is this … this … remake? Because let’s first call Superman Returns what it is: merely the…
OK, I’ll say it again … I could still kick myself for not taking Spanish classes instead of snoring through high school Latin. Case in point: I recently checked out a new restaurant on the city’s east side, Sabor Centro Americano (2661 Independence Avenue), where the staff spoke so little English that I would have been lost if I hadn’t…
I have tasted the forbidden fruit, and it isn’t an apple. It’s not forbidden anymore, either. The tiny, tart-tasting currant — red, black or white — became fructus non grata in the United States in 1911 when Congress banned commercial cultivation of the fruit. A plant disease called pine blister rust was jumping from imported white-pine seedlings to black-currant…
It isn’t sheer luck or a pact with the devil that has brought the 9-month-old Record Bar so much success. Part of what makes the place work is the reputation of owners Steve Tulipana and Shawn Sherrill. They’re nationally recognized musicians, and this fact lends quite well to running a club. Oh, and they’re also dreamy in appearance. In this…
House Nation Producers of electronic beats are the faceless shadows behind the DJ mixes you love and admire — they’re the real creators of tune. Two of the best beat conductors in the Midwest, Pat Nice (a Kansas City house music godfather) and Ion (St. Louis), foot the bill at the Grand Emporium this Friday for House Nation. Ion…
Three years ago, Kansas native Colin Pepper Halliburton unwrapped an acoustic guitar for his 21st birthday. Disillusioned with art school, Halliburton dropped out and started writing music. Back in Lawrence, he and three friends began calling themselves the Roseline and gradually whittled a heap of musical material into their debut, A Wall Behind It. Loosely evocative of Ryan Adams, the…
Mr. Lif’s sophomore full-length is brilliantly structured to be a metaphor for the battle people go through to be heard. Mo’ Mega moves from a chaotic first half in which the Boston rapper’s frustrated voice cranes through the rubble of El-P’s production to a smooth and lucid second half that plays up his knack for unifying subject matter. Hygiene is…
Around 1980, the skinhead youth cult was invaded by English neo-fascists, provoking a well-meaning anti-fascist response. Ever since, skinhead rock — the steel-toed, beer-serious cousin to punk known as Oi! — has hauled around more baggage than any petty hooligan should have to bear. Anti-Disco League Vol. 1 aims to water the genre’s non-ideological roots with 16 tracks by a…
Regardless of whether it’s a fair comparison, Muse, Britain’s second-favorite semi-atmospheric sensation, will always be the Jan Brady to Radiohead’s Marcia. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to read a Muse album review — including this one — that doesn’t mention the band’s sincere appreciation for, or outright thievery from, Thom Yorke and crew, depending on your perspective. One quick listen…
The Spook Lights When Lawrence band the Donkey Show (not to be confused with the KC-based variety show) played its final concert last year, everyone knew ballistic, nearly nude frontman Scary Manilow wouldn’t stray from the mic for long. After almost a year of searching with his best gal and guitar player, Curvacia Vavoom, by his side, he rounded…
The Blasters The pelvic epicenter of the Blasters’ rockabilly has always been Phil Alvin’s voice, a fluid, gulping yowl (that, and his big ol’ smart, sweaty forehead). In the early days, Phil’s brother, guitarist Dave Alvin, slammed the band through other American genres, and during one of its hardest-swinging incarnations, the band even featured horns and piano genius Gene Taylor….
The most compelling group to emerge from the ska-core craze, Choking Victim combined crust punk, rocksteady, thrash and lived-in lyrics about smoking crack and squatting in Manhattan. Choking Victim recently reunited for several shows, but for the past six years its creative core (singer/guitarist Stza, guitarist Ezra Kire) has helmed that band’s inflammatory successor Leftover Crack. Inviting controversy from all…
