Look what the cat dragged in: the Republic Tigers. I saw the Republic Tigers last week at the Record Bar, and the following night at the Brick, and they were good. There are six or seven guys in this band, with a couple of backing tracks to boot, so it definitely has a “team” feel. That’s appropriate, considering the band…
As for this weekend, I recommend Asobi Seksu with the Roman Numerals and Mercury Mad (new solo stuff from the Vibralux frontman) tonight at the Record Bar. Tomorrow night, meet me at Bembe Night at the Hangout on Broadway for the widely appealing styles of lady DJs Madame E, Lady J, AmJanda, RobN and the inimitable cQuence. If rock’s your…
Doris Henson’s farewell show last Friday at the Record Bar sucked. It sucked because it was the band’s last show, and it was happening in 2006 with just two records and a couple of biggish tours under the belt and not in 2026 on the second of two sold-out nights at the Uptown Theater, a la the Get Up Kids,…
What a day. I haven’t been out in three nights, and I feel hungover from not being hungover. It can happen. But I’m still catching up on all the shows I saw last week. First, then, cheers to Cat Simpson, who’s making good on her promise to help the Grand Emporium — that beloved son of the music scene who…
A few years ago, in preparation for the end of our long love affair with smoking, we took the habit to new heights. If there wasn’t a “No Smoking” sign in view, we found an excuse to light up. One night, itching for something new before the final nicotine kiss-off, we tried a hookah, one of those fabulous Mideastern water…
The Andy Milonakis Show: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) The A-Team: Season Five, the Final Season (Universal) Bloodied but Unbowed: Bloodshot Records’ Life in the Trenches (Bloodshot) Carlos Mencia: No Strings Attached (Paramount) Click (Sony) Don’t Go in the Woods Alone: 25th Anniversary Edition (Code Red) Everybody Hates Chris: The First Season (Paramount) The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology (Warner Bros.)…
You’ve seen Bob Ross — the afro-sporting TV artist who painted “happy trees”? Well, if he had redesigned Legend of Zelda, it would look a lot like Okami. That may sound like an unlikely premise, but this is no ordinary game. In Okami, to save the world from an ancient evil, you control a god who has taken the form…
A Prairie Home Companion (New Line) This all-star singalong — with Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, etc. — that wears its smile bright and wide looked for all the world like a summertime sleeper hit. Not so much, even though no movie this year has been more amiable or possessing of so much magic…
Darkness, an Evening With Edgar Allen Poe Premiering on Friday the 13th and running through Halloween, this anthology show from Minds Eye Theatre — adapted from Poe’s work by director Kevin Eib — is literally old-school. Yes, it’s after creeping horror more than Saw III shock, but it’s also being staged at the Alcott Arts Center, which Minds Eye’s Sara…
Terri Bright: Inner Order Terri Bright says she’s a stranger in most of the places where she takes pictures. Her goal is to document the tension between the disorder of her actual surroundings and her internal desire for pictorial order. As a result, her series of photographs is about color, light, shape and symmetry — among her chromogenic prints, we…
Ubiquitous painter Philomene Bennett does bright and colorful work that ought to be able to cheer up even the gloomiest gallerygoer. Bennett shares the Sherry Leedy gallery space just about half and half with Mike Lyon, who presents 19 ink drawings and woodblock prints to go with Bennett’s 17 food-focused paintings. Both artists are based in Kansas City, and…
Just last week, this paper toasted the Coterie Theatre as Kansas City’s best. Proud to celebrate what many think of as a children’s theater, we lauded the Coterie’s superior craftsmanship and the balance that artistic director Jeff Church strikes between whimsy and reality — his shows handle grown-up themes more thoughtfully than most ostensibly grown-up theaters. No production should exemplify…
There is no way of sidestepping the issue, so why not jump right into it: Infamous, this year’s retelling of how Truman Capote wound up in Kansas writing his nonfiction novel In Cold Blood, never comes close to approaching the quiet, devastating brilliance of Capote, last year’s retelling of how Truman Capote wound up in Kansas writing his nonfiction novel…
Barry Levinson hasn’t made a movie of note since 1997’s Wag the Dog, and even that was less a work of substantial relevance than a bit of lucky timing based on someone else’s better novel. Granted, it had its moments, but Levinson’s gentle satire felt overstretched. Everything since then — well, it’s better to pretend that Levinson has been off…
I remember the overwhelming wave of nostalgia I felt back in 1990, when I heard news that a department store restaurant in my hometown had closed after 85 years of serving chicken-velvet soup and ice-cream-pecan balls. “I wish I could have eaten there just one more time,” I wrote in my journal — even though I’d had plenty of opportunities…
My friend Debbie has this recurring fantasy about climbing into a time machine — part of the fantasy is that someone would have actually invented such a device — and traveling backward through history so that she could see Kansas City during the 1920s and ’30s. She wants to ride the streetcar downtown and have a cocktail at the Zombie…
When it comes to catfights, there’s one phrase that’s a good catalyst for an aggro-estrofest throwdown: “You better watch your mouth.” We heard that spoken recently at J.J.’s, when a friend of a friend of a research assistant nearly got into it with the owner of a local boutique. It might seem odd that a mellow wine bar and restaurant…
During one of Brooklyn’s “storm raves” many years ago, a fight broke out in the crowd. Frankie Bones jumped on top of a speaker and shouted at the audience, “If you don’t start showing some peace, love and unity, I’ll break your fucking faces!” Rumor has it that later, the word respect was added to this quote, creating what we…
Strip away the three monsters that begin, end and shore up the middle of Yo La Tengo’s dumbly (excuse me, hilariously) titled new release, and you might be tempted to call this the band’s ’60s album. Without those tracks, I Am Not Afraid would be the band’s most concise album in ages: a dozen songs (and I mean songs, not…
Members of Nation of Islam offshoot the Nation of Gods and Earths (aka the Five Percent Nation) often point out that their movement is social, not religious. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a recent album that’s preachier than the solo debut from Brand Nubian’s Lord Jamar, The Five Percent Album. It is virtual propaganda, a recruitment portfolio that unfortunately…
That Justin Timberlake sure has some nerve. Before trying to record a song as brazen as “Sexyback,” he should’ve checked out what Juliette Beavan and her band, 8mm, were bringing to the party with their debut full-length, Songs to Love and Die By (one of the first bands, incidentally, to be released on Blackpool Lights’ local label, Curb Appeal Records)….
With Paul Westerberg busy writing songs for animated movies about bears, Kansas City’s depressed local breakup victims (after rummaging through their basements screaming “Where’d I put my copy of Tim?”) would be better served by reaching for Chad Rex’s latest, Gravity Works Fire Burns. The blurry, frantic Is it you or me? refrain of the aptly titled “Song for Paul…
Until recently, indie-rock buzz band Cold War Kids had managed to find and steadily build its audience without label support. In fact, Internet hype had made the group’s releases, all EPs, nearly impossible to get. The band recently chose Downtown Records (home of Gnarls Barkley and Art Brut) to release its upcoming full-length debut, Robbers and Cowards, which is hotly…
These Arms Are Snakes A band name like These Arms Are Snakes has a way of sticking in your head, whether you like it or not. “It’s just something so obnoxious that people are sort of forced to remember it,” bassist and keyboard player Brian Cook says. In a way, that’s the philosophy behind much of the Snakes’ music, too….
