Click may be the first Adam Sandler movie in which the high concept isn’t dependent upon the star. Sandler comedies tend to take his standard character — the petulant man-child with anger-management issues — and place him in different wacky places: elementary school (Billy Madison), the golf course (Happy Gilmore), the ’80s (The Wedding Singer), hell (Little Nicky). Here, he…
Funny, I never think of kettle corn and William Shakespeare in the same sentence. But when the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival kicks off its 14th season this week, the sweet aroma of that sticky, caramel-glazed popcorn will waft through Southmoreland Park with an almost hypnotic effect on visitors to the free performances of King Henry V. But the king…
I suppose, on a broiling summer’s day, the idea of a draft-beer float — yup, beer and ice cream — might appeal to some people. I mean, if a scoop of frozen custard is delicious in a glass of root beer, why not a more intoxicating concoction — say, vanilla ice cream with Young’s Chocolate Stout? At the three-month-old…
There’s a man onstage in a hula skirt dancing with a guy in a donkey suit. Actually, waltzing is more like it, and the man has a blow-up doll under one arm. The donkey is holding a cocktail. This substitute Night Ranger did not drop acid or spend too much time in the sun on a recent Saturday. But…
It’s summertime, and the onslaught of outdoor events and after-hours parties has arrived at last. Thanks to local outfits Miakoda Entertainment and Nology and Omaha, Nebraska’s Cymbalism Recordings, the terms outdoor and after-hours complement each other at the artsy and block-rockin’ Kansas City Crossroads Arts and Music Festival. Headlining the event is the Brooklyn hip-hop-flavored Jeru Tha Damaja (widely regarded…
Emma Feel’s debut album, All Things Dirty And Delicious, does more than bring images of sex and chocolate to mind. Successfully tapping into several genres all at once, this Overland Park sextet manages to incorporate soul-driven funk, blues and punchy garage glam rock. The first track, “Train,” opens with a guitar-and-drum chooga-chooga and builds to a jam-worthy funk-mesh of instruments,…
Released on 6/6/06, Slayer’s Eternal Pyre EP is available exclusively at Hot Topic, which may seem like the surest sign of the apocalypse yet. Slayer is the greatest thrash band, but guitarist Kerry King has a clothing line, so one commercial concession is excusable every 24 years or so. However, the disc contains just one live video clip; four minutes…
In evolutionary biology, there’s a phenomenon called conver-gent evolution, in which unrelated animals evolve to have more in common with each other than with other members of their own species. As in nature, so in rock. How else to explain that Buffalo, New York’s Sleepaway, average age 19, sounds more like near-extinct jangle outfit the Gin Blossoms than like the…
When not caus-ing a dance-rock ruckus with his bass-drums duo Death From Above 1979, mustachioed four-stringer Jesse Keeler likes to team up with pal Al-P to form the equally Canadian, increasingly prolific, vowel-challenged production team MSTRKRFT. Over the past year, the pair has crafted remixes for Annie, Bloc Party, the Gossip and Wolfmother. The Looks marks its first excursion into…
To the uninitiated, the Overland Park-bred Mac Lethal might come off as a smart-ass white kid who thinks he can rap because … well, that’s kind of who he is. The thing is, Mac’s right. His acid-spiked soliloquies were enough to land him a record deal with Minneapolis indie-hop juggernaut Rhymesayers Entertainment. (His first RS disc, 11:11, drops later…
When professional athletes retired in the ’60s and ’70s, they figured they’d seen their last merchandise-related royalty checks. Then throwback jerseys appeared, and long-dormant superstars started reaping rewards when rappers displayed their names and numbers in videos. So, too, goes the cycle of influence in indie rock. Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine released late-’80s records that had a profound…
So George Jones turned, like, 124 last year. Well, 74, but, come on, the guy’s getting on. Yet he continues to play nearly 100 shows a year. The Possum, it turns out, likes to rock a stage a helluva lot more than a chair. And hey, his sausage is pretty good, too. Um, his breakfast sausage: George Jones Country Style…
Kansas City, Kansas, Street Blues Festival The Kansas City, Kansas, Street Blues Festival has always been a trip back in time. At any moment, an announcer will call up some classic blues figure who turns up in documentaries. This year, it might be Dennis Binder, veteran of Sun Record sessions and a long stint in Ike Turner’s band. Or it…
It’d be false to classify what Magik Markers guitarist and vocalist Elisa Ambrogio does in front of her microphone as singing. Rather, she surfs her trio’s bloody-nosed, no-wave crests, spewing impressionist nonsense and snarling, sweaty asides as though her life depended on it. On the Markers’ latest uncompromising deconstruction, A Panegyric To The Things I Do Not Understand, Ambrogio…
Sonic Youth has refined its ravaging noise-rock for over two decades, combining the clamorous experimentation of the Velvet Underground with an avant-garde, garage-rock tinge reminiscent of the Stooges. The band’s new album, Rather Ripped, strikes a balance between raw heaviness and quiet persuasion. Singers Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore churn out from-the-gut vocals, and Lee Ranaldo deftly drives his guitar…
If you’ve been racing down local dirt roads in your pickup, jamming to Toby Keith or Gretchen Wilson, then you should probably skip this week’s Hank III concert. Plastering a Confederate flag in your back window might buy you a redneck pass (and a good ass-whuppin’), but it doesn’t mean you know country, it doesn’t mean you know punk rock,…
Yo La Tengo gets our vote for album title of the year. I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass doesn’t come out until September, but the New Jersey trio has already leaked the first single. “Beanbag Chair” might not conjure any bare-knuckled mosh pits, but it is surprisingly upbeat for the indie veterans, bubbling with…
“I don’t think of us as a Southern rock band,” says Patter- son Hood, the main axle of the Drive-By Truckers. Huh? Isn’t this the band that made a two-CD album about Lynyrd Skynyrd called Southern Rock Opera? It boasts three guitar players, just like Skynyrd. Hood even hails from sweet home Alabama. And countless reviewers have touted the group…
Jeremiah Gonzales is tucked in the corner of a booth in a Westport dive, dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans. His dark, curled bangs obscure part of his forehead and right eyebrow. “I just about killed myself this week,” he says. “Working?” you ask. “Drinking,” he responds. His 29th birthday was two days ago, on a Tuesday. He’d…
A funny thing happened last Friday night. I heard rustling in the bushes in the parking lot outside the Record Bar. As I approached to investigate, a figure emerged to the sound of a flanged-out guitar riff. It was Chuck Berry, resplendent in a blood-red coat with black lapels, a thousand galaxies shimmering in his pristine pompadour. Before I could…
The Soul Servers were sick of their logo. It was a big cliché: a head sporting a gargantuan Afro. The three MCs needed something better. Something no one else had used before. So the members of the hip-hop group — Deuce Fontane, Smoov Confusion and PL — got together for a brainstorming session. But the process was tiresome. Icons such…
The write stuff: While a graduate student in Seattle, I was an avid reader of Gustavo Arellano’s column, “Ask a Mexican.” While in my hometown of Kansas City before heading to New York to finish my last academic semester of my master’s program, I picked up the Pitch. I was amazed to see the column printed in the first few…
You know what’s not fair? When a boy looks better in a dress than we do. Candy, we’re talking to you. Candy (Chadwick Brooks) has been seen around town doing a real special number to Madonna’s “Hung Up,” giving the Material Girl’s most recent electro-anthem a passionate, ’60s-girl-group-style makeover. Dancing around in the bathroom, lip-synching Every little thing that you…
A candidate running for the Jackson County Legislature graduated from Harvard. And it took only 13 weeks! Henry Carner, a retired Independence fire captain, is vying for the seat held by Robert Stringfield (you know, the punchy politician in District 1). Carner’s campaign brochure states that Carner “graduated” from the Trade Union Program at the Harvard Graduate School of…
