Reach’s Hollapalooza, feat. Reach, Trek Life, Oddisee, Kev Brown. Sunday, March 11 at the Peanut. Review by Nadia Pflaum So you know when I wrote that thing about Reach’s Hollapalooza? And I barely mentioned the guys he’d be performing with last night at the Peanut? Because I didn’t know who the hell they were? Well … let’s just say that…
Here’s some shows we couldn’t squeeze into the music section this week: FRIGG’S DAY Actors & Actresses, the Stella Link and Hundred Years’ War at the Grand Emporium. I’ve been hearing buzz about Hundred Years War, a new metal band started by guys who don’t really do metal. It seems they won a round of Kilroy Wars or something. Could…
Underoath, with Taking Back Sunday. Wednesday, March 7, at the Uptown Theater. Review by Crystal Wiebe Traditionally, I’ve considered myself a rock and roll proletariat, one of the people who prefers to (barely) see the band from the vantage point of the sweaty masses. Looking down at those moist, panting faces from the side balcony of the Uptown Theater last…
For she who finds value in the fact that fads are temporary and is thereby imparted with a great sense of superiority for possessing timely knowledge of the novelest novelty’s emergence, the knitting trend is an unappreciated anomaly. Debbie Stoller’s Stitch ’N Bitch handbook came out in 2003, for crying out loud. That was, like, a pop-culture lifetime ago. But…
Mayor Kay Barnes appeared to be a little freaked out the day after Mark Funkhouser, a critic of her administration, took a step closer to replacing her. Funkhouser, the former city auditor, and Mayor Pro Tem Alvin Brooks advanced past the mayoral primary on February 27. The next day, Barnes sent a “Dear friend” missive to more than 20 CEOs,…
A Brush With Death (New Light) Buster Crabbe Collection (St. Clair Vision) Captain Horatio Hornblower (Warner Bros.) Care Bears: Friends Forever (Lions Gate) Commissar (Kino) Confetti (Fox) Death Row (Anchor Bay) The Electric Company’s Greatest Hits & Bits (Shout) Fast Food Nation (Fox) The Full Monty: Fully Exposed Edition (Fox) Hawaii Five-O: The First Season (Paramount) Kettle of Fish (Universal)…
From the newest iPod to the Olsen twins’ collective waistline, the world loves all things mini. The Nintendo Wii embraces this digestible format once again for Wii Play, a collection of nine easy-to-play minigames that comes bundled with a free Wii controller. However, the result is like a Happy Meal: The trappings are colorful, but the food’s not very damn…
Revenge of the Nerds: Panty Raid Edition (Fox) Revenge of the Nerds is a great movie. No, really. It has a bitchin’ new-wave soundtrack, for one thing. Also, some truly inspired performances — memorable enough to wreck the careers of Robert Carradine (Lewis) and Curtis Armstrong (Booger). But mostly, it’s that mix of innocence and sexual frenzy that perfectly defines…
The American Songbook: Music of the 1950s The latest Quality Hill Playhouse cabaret revue might sound like the same old same old, but that’s probably true only for those with a grudge against consistent excellence. This time, J. Kent Barnhart’s crooning quartet revels in the last decade in which their beloved American songbook was steadily adding new chapters. Expect highlights…
Jenn Deirdorf: Push The last resort for an artist before a caustic critic or a bored gallerygoer is “You just don’t get it.” For Jenn Dierdorf, this phrase actually comes first. According to her statement, her show is about exploring “what happens when we cannot apply our typical meaning system to structures that we recognize.” We do recognize the dozens…
Here’s the ending: Holmes is dead. At least that’s what the Kansas City Repertory Theatre wants you to think. Watson tells us right from the start of Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure that the great detective won’t make it to final curtain. Then, in the long flashbacks that constitute the evening’s mysteries, we’re buffeted with so many portents of…
Stepping inside the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is like stepping into the nucleus of a jewel. It’s multifaceted, shining, intimate and humanly scaled — a museum where the architecture complements rather than competes with the art. I was curator there for eight years, until 2003; whenever I see permanent-collection works there now, it’s like reuniting with old friends…
Long ago, there reigned a clan of Speedo-wearing militaristic psychopaths called the Spartans. They lived beneath a copper-colored sky, on copper-colored land, amid copper-colored fields, in copper-colored homes, where they would outline their copper-colored pecs with ash and grunt about manly honor. In that strange time, among those strange people, a constant voice rang out from the heavens to declaim…
We Americans complain of Big Brother’s unblinking eye in the post-Patriot Act, corporate-owned- e-mail era — as well we should. But, as The Lives of Others makes plain, things could be worse. Set in East Berlin circa 1984, when one in 100 citizens of the German Democratic Republic was a government informant, this aptly chilly look at communist surveillance…
Once you understand the difference between a good ol’ American coffee shop (a place with a grill that usually serves breakfast all day) and a coffee house (where the focus is on what’s brewing rather than what’s for breakfast) — unless you think a hard, crumbly scone is food — you can appreciate restaurants that usually get no respect, such…
I used to love eating in hotel coffee shops. I was working lots of late hours then, and it was comforting to settle into a booth in a dining room where no one on the staff cared if you were eating alone. My favorite place was the original Pam Pam Room in the old Alameda Plaza Hotel (now the…
Promoter Will Crabtree has been at the forefront of KC’s dance scene for several years now. The man responsible for the fabled Chaos Theory parties at the Uptown and a slew of other memorable clubbing events has appointed Mike Balance and the Control Freeks to headline his 25th-birthday bash at Skybox Saturday. Mike Balance plays and produces a brand of…
To sum up our lives, SAT-style, no Saturday night drinkfest is complete without: (a) a Poison tribute band, (b) a fire-breathing exhibit, (c) getting showered with Silly String, or (d) all of the above. We unknowingly picked “d” when we went to check out the Hurricane, which reopened last fall under new management. We paid a $6 cover to…
Over time, Calla’s laconic drone, atmospheric noises and parched sonics have given way to a warmer, less scratchy, more traditionally structured sound. Favoring melody and songcraft means the band doesn’t channel the druggy haze of the Velvets’ “European Son” at half speed anymore. Though not as cinematic as its career-making 2001 album, Scavengers, Calla’s latest, Strength in Numbers, compensates with…
“Phonebook Full of Phonies” by The Safes, from Well, Well, Well: From the Kinks to Kings of Leon, kinfolk have forged immaculate rock-and-roll partnerships. So it goes with Chicago’s the Safes, a sibling trio that pens tightly wound power-pop in the spirit of Interstate 90 rivals Cheap Trick. The group’s second LP, Well, Well, Well, a self-released gem of natty…
Flaunting a debut album called Anti-Anti and adopting the name of a character in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 whose feeble dying words are “I’m cold,” Atlanta’s Snowden oozes nihilism and vanity. Onstage, the black-clad group’s presence gets a boost from wilting melodies and a wall of reverb. The group’s melancholy pop is driven by a rhythm section that channels Joy Division…
“Friends Don’t Let Friends Win” by Hella, from There’s No 666 in Outer Spacel: California noisemaker Hella has prog-rocked it as a duo since 2001, but recently it has become a party of five. Guitarist Spencer Seim and drummer Zach Hill recruited Zach’s cousin Josh on second guitar, then added bassist Carson McWhirter and singer Aaron Ross. Released in January,…
They may record under the bestial moniker of Bears, but with their hushed, melodically fused vocals, Craig Ramsey and Charlie McArthur recall the intimacy of bedroom recordings. The lightly nuanced pop is propelled by an acoustic guitar and accented with brushed drums, allowing the duo’s lovelorn (and too often sad-sack) lyrics to come to the fore. The duo’s self-titled disc…
“My Old Ways” by Dr. Dog, from We All Belong: Formed in Philadelphia in 1999, Dr. Dog has never been afraid to wear its ’60s pop influences on its sleeve. The band members have culled their love for all things Beatles, the soulfulness of Otis Redding and the energy of the Move and have amassed a small but rabid fanbase,…
