No matter how hard Fox Searchlight tries to sell Joshua as a horror picture — Rosemary’s Baby meets The Omen on the way to The Exorcist’s for a play date — it’s actually a movie in which a firstborn kiddo decides that Mom and Dad should have stopped at one. More to the point, it’s about how all moms and…
The magic has returned to the Harry Potter franchise — albeit magic of the old, black variety. The darkest and most threatening by far of the Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is also only the second of the five entries that feels like the product of a vivid cinematic imagination and not just a slavishly…
The last time I wrote about talented young chef Jason Bowers was in 2004, when he was unceremoniously 86’d from the kitchen of the now-defunct Café Trocadero (401 East 31st Street) by the owners of that hip little bistro (Troc Walk, May 27, 2004). The Troc didn’t last long after its former executive chef departed, and Bowers — who started…
Until I worked for several years at the legendary Athena Restaurant at 3535 Broadway, dishes like moussaka and souvlaki were just Greek to me. Before it closed in 1994, the Athena was owned by charismatic, Greek-born Yannis Vantzos, who now runs the much smaller Sun Ray Café at 17th Street and Summit. It had a loyal following of stylish…
Last Wednesday at Blonde, we were eavesdropping on two women trading gossip at the bar. “I have a new boyfriend’s credit card,” one exclaimed. She proceeded to open a tab on said card, then excused herself to “go potty.” Meanwhile, up above, DJ Shaun Duval was spinning the hot shit. Every Wednesday night, Duval presides, sometimes bringing out the cheesy…
Those of you hoping that the Smashing Pumpkins’ comeback record would be an unmitigated disaster will be disappointed: It’s not. Those of you afraid that head Pumpkin Billy Corgan made another The Future Embrace (his synthcheese solo album) will be happy: He didn’t. With drummer Jimmy Chamberlin the lone member of the classic Pumpkins lineup remaining — a good move…
Interpol’s major-label debut, Our Love to Admire, isn’t as monochromatic (or monotonous) as its previous two albums. Opener “Pioneer to the Falls” is arguably the richest song the band has ever recorded, a track that channels the stormy textures of the Cure’s Pornography. Death-march piano and woodwinds add countermelodies, a quivering mass of strings swells in the middle section, and…
West Indian Girl appropriated its name from an infamous strain of LSD, and the band delivered on that premise with a druggy debut record for Astralwerks in 2004. Fortunately, the band’s hallucinogen of choice is ethereal Brit-pop like that of My Bloody Valentine and the Charlatans — not the psychedelic pap purveyed by fashion-conscious shoegazers who would be better off…
“Are You Alright?” by Lucinda Williams, from West (Lost Highway): Lucinda Williams recently told The Wall Street Journal that she relates to one of her favorite singer-songwriters, Judy Collins, for being caught in “the proverbial crack between country and rock.” Like her folk-singing hero, Williams exists in a country-soul-blues purgatory, but plenty of fans exist there with her. This year’s…
“Nice Clean Shirt” by Eastern Conference Champions, from Eastern Conference Champions EP (Suretone/Interscope): Eastern Conference Champions In the NBA, the Eastern Conference champion typically enjoys a short-lived celebration before facing the champion of the bigger, badder Western Conference. That must have been about how Josh Ostrander and Greg Lyons felt when their former band, Laguardia, issued its regrettably titled major-label…
Remix albums can be an omen of bad things to come. Just ask now-defunct Toronto band Death From Above 1979, which promptly split after trashing its first (and last) full-length with the Romance Bloody Romance remixes. The band’s fellow Canadians in Stars hope to avoid this trap. After putting out the subpar Do You Trust Your Friends? collection of reworks…
Catfighting. Full-contact lingerie mud football. Motorcycle racing, complete with accidents. We all know a good time when we see one. Sadly, these things don’t occur in Poison’s live act. (The action is on singer Brett Michaels’ new reality-TV show.) Sure, that’s a bummer, but fans (and the morbidly curious) can rejoice in having another excuse to see the original Poison…
Bob Dylan’s 1960s apex intersected with the height of analog recording technology. His relatively simple songs and minimal arrangements afforded a good approximation of the man’s live performances, but this effect was the result of the relatively unheralded and now disappearing art of sound engineering. Dylan’s upcoming Kansas City performance is a good occasion to talk about an endangered aspect…
For the past year or so, Mike’s Tavern was like a bad suburb of the midtown music scene. “LIVE. LOUD,” the bar’s logo boasted. Sure, bands were booked there most nights of the week. There’s probably something going on in Raytown most nights of the week, too. In a word: LOUSY. As a bar, Mike’s is great. The place has…
I had never been to old downtown Lenexa before a recent Saturday night, but after a spontaneous bar-hop of that strip, I’m calling it the place where all the cool moms hang out. I went out there with Research Assistants John, Lexie and Erik because I really wanted to go to Blue, a sports-bar-slash-martini-bar-slash-quasi-nightclub. It sounded entertaining, in that…
Yeah HUP! Yeah HUP! Yeah HUP! Yeah HUP! A joker in a white tuxedo and aviator shades stands on the stage, bellowing those two words into the microphone. He swings a fist into the air. The kids in the crowd below hurl the words back and pump their fists. Behind the clownish bloke, a black-clad band gets ready to play….
In this week’s Pitchcast, Music Editor Jason Harper interviews Radio Birdman and previews July shows. Get it through iTunes by clicking here, download it on the Web by clicking here or click the bar below to listen: Categories: News Tags: Apple iTunes, Columns, jason harper, Radio Birdman
Dear Gabachos: You love us, you really love us! Mere moments after the Senate allowed an amnesty bill to collapse like the peso’s value, ustedes bombarded the Mexican with typo-heavy valentines. To commemorate America’s latest amnesic spell regarding its immigrants and assimilation (previous examples include the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Immigration Reform Act of 1924 and Jessica Alba), we turn…
Idle Hands, June 28 Troost and Justice I was back in KC over the weekend for the 311 concert in Westport. I always loved reading the Pitch and stumbled across Nadia Pflaum’s article about 45th Street and Troost. While in radiology school at St. Luke’s, I lived in a cheap apartment at 45th and Troost. Generally, most of the people…
Hey, you, two blondes at the Lenexa barbecue contest. You know the ones, wearing the brown bikini tops with the gold beads around your neck, holding a can of Bud Light in one hand and a cigarette in the other, walking around while every overweight, still-living-in-my-glory-days-at-the-frat-house, cargo-shorts-wearing guy is staring at you. Did you not realize it was a family…
After having her garage tagged several times, Deborah White did a little spray-painting of her own. She decided to leave a message for the undercover artists who kept hitting her property on East 15th Terrace. Her original thought was a Bible verse, but she wasn’t sure that the graffiti-doers would understand the Lord’s message. So instead, she tagged her own…
The owners of Blonde have some rumors to clear up. First: The place isn’t closing. Even Blonde owner Casey Matile’s mother called last week when she heard talk going around town that Blonde was going the way of The Drink. Second: Yes, they are serving sushi off a nearly naked woman. The body sushi event goes down every other Wednesday….
My mom used to yell at us for staring into the refrigerator with the door open. Long before curbside recycling, she sorted cans and stacked newspapers in the garage, then hauled them off somewhere. She harped on us about turning off the water when we’d brush. This was in the days of the TV commercial with the Indian crying over…
With a third child on the way, Gary and Tracey Butcher decided that they needed a new house for their growing family. So in 2003, the couple sold their three-bedroom in Roeland Park and took out a ticking time bomb: an adjustable-rate mortgage. The Butchers borrowed $158,400 from NovaStar, a Kansas City company that specializes in making home loans to…
