Let’s say you’re a quasi-legendary ’60s pop-music avant-gardist, and you get it in your head to write a song about sex with sailors. If you’re Lou Reed, you might come up with “Sister Ray,” the Velvet Underground’s 17-minute epic of white noise and transvestite nuns. But if you’re Steve Weber or Peter Stampfel, the founding folk-psych lunatics of the Holy…
Set your alarm for 3 a.m. to catch this morning’s early total eclipse of the moon. While the Western states will have the best view of the event, in which the Earth occludes the sun’s light on the surface of the moon, totality will occur above the Midwest before moonset. Safety tip: Don’t burn your retinas by looking directly at…
Broken English (Magnolia) The Ex (Weinstein) Exorcism: Special Edition (BCI) The Far Side of Jericho (First Look) The Films of Michael Haneke (Kino) House of Games: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) House: Season Three (Universal) JAG: The Fourth Season (Paramount) Man About the House: The Complete First and Second Series (BCI) A New Wave (THINKfilm) Perfect Stranger (Sony) Rob Zombie: 3…
The first worthwhile online-compatible game for the Wii has finally arrived. And in at least one way, Mario Strikers Charged is just like real soccer: Sometimes it scores, and sometimes it’s just a kick in the balls. The sequel to Super Mario Strikers, Mario Strikers Charged continues the Nintendo tradition of releasing nearly identical follow-ups for new systems (see…
The Lives of Others (Sony) Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film, easily the best of last year, exists on many levels: as tragedy, dark comedy, and love story — not between a man and a woman, but between two seemingly opposite men bound by the same damnation. On the one hand is Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a playwright and pianist…
Dinner With Friends This superior production from Kansas City Actors Theatre connects with its audience, quickly and deeply, digging into the particulars of two marriages — one failed and the other coasting. In the process, Dinner unearths universals about romantic relationships. Melinda McCrary, at her tremulous finest, plays Beth, who breaks down at a dinner party, announcing that husband Tom…
American Pastoral Where does grief go? Several places, apparently. It evaporates or corrodes or erupts in a welter of agony. And sometimes it coalesces into artistic works such as Robin Bernat’s American Pastoral. Bernat created this five-part video installation after the death of her lover, who fell from a cliff in Argentina. If the tragedy sounds like the stuff of…
From the start, when a young boy playing with a knife slices his own mother, you know Broken Strings won’t end well. What isn’t immediately apparent, though, is that the premiere production of this engaging and upsetting new play from local historian Bill Rogers is the rarest kind of nonprofessional mounting: one that is a tragedy by genre only….
It seems fitting that a movie about debaters should produce ambivalent feelings. As a master debater says early on in Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science, a strong opinion only gets in the way. What matters is being able to argue either side with equal conviction, based on the evidence. On the one hand, then, Rocket Science is yet another Eagle vs….
Back in 2004, I wrote about a terrific little restaurant in the Crossroads called Chez B (118 Southwest Boulevard). It didn’t last terribly long, but it did make a name for young chef-owner J.B. Bremser, who has a real passion for provincial French cuisine. I still have dreams about his honest-to-Gallic pommes frites — the original french fry — that…
I confess that I’ve never seen the 1996 movie The Spitfire Grill, although friends extol the virtues of the film about a young girl finding a new life working in a little Maine diner. In the case of the new Spitfire Grill on 39th Street, Marc Cantrell’s tiny bistro isn’t a diner by any means (although it does serve…
“All In the Thinking” by Rocket Fuel Is the Key, from Stroke of Genius (Crustacean Records): The recent returns of Giants Chair and Coalesce have given new audiences a glimpse of Kansas City’s forward-thinking mid-’90s punk-rock scene. The recent reunion of Rocket Fuel Is the Key adds to the retrofitted excitement with a long-delayed second album to be unveiled this…
“Lonesome Valley” by Magnolia Electric Co., from Fading Trails (Secretly Canadian): Bands as road-tested as Magnolia Electric Co. have little use for studio chicanery, preferring live takes and the occasional flub to endless overdubs. Such an approach has allowed Jason Molina and Co. to become one of the most prolific acts in modern indie-rock circles, culminating in a new four-disc…
“Disappear” by the Meat Puppets, from Rise to Your Knees (Anodyne): Reunited and raking in critical acclaim, the Meat Puppets join their Kansas City pals and fellow Anodyne Records signees the Hearers for the second time since sharing a stage in Austin last March at SXSW. We’ve already written about the Pups’ return and the making of their new album,…
Horse the Band boasts a diverse yet categorically lethal sonic arsenal. Its songs vary like the android bosses in Mega Man, the video-game franchise the quintet from California references with its signature tune, “Cutsman.” Horse the Band’s August 28 release, A Natural Death, ranges from vocoder-narrated disco to surreally chipper pop to dire guitar instrumentals, while reserving several tracks for…
“Evil Son” by the Willowz, from Chautauqua (Dim Mak): These two acts hail from different corners of the garage. The Detroit Cobras dig into their hometown heritage with classic garage-soul cadged from vintage forgotten tracks and delivered with sexy frontwoman Rachel Nagy’s throaty vocals. Live, the Cobras’ R&B vibe is yoked to an eight-cylinder guitar juggernaut helmed by Mary Ramirez…
“Hot Thing” by Talib Kweli, feat Will.I.Am, from Eardrum (Blacksmith/Warner Bros.): One of rap’s nimblest lyricists, Talib Kweli spits lavish, twisting interior rhymes that have earned him more props than commercial success. (Both Jay-Z and 50 Cent have given props, but Kweli has never gone so much as gold.) Kweli’s partner in the short-lived Black Star, Mos Def, has turned…
Al Jourgensen may be a pioneer in music’s industrial revolution, but when it comes to album titles, he always seems to fall back on cheap puns. Joining the ranks of The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste and The Dark Side of the Spoon, The Last Sucker (due September 18) marks the final chapter in the 26-year career of…
Topeka’s Static Bar always seemed more like a Kansas City outpost than a fixture in its host city, so the venue’s relocation to 423 Southwest Boulevard (most recently home to the Great Spot) feels like it was inevitable. The uprooted club becomes an immediate player in the hard-rock/metal scene, and its opening-night bill this Wednesday features extreme bands Ion Dissonance,…
Like long-suffering mistresses, Coalesce enthusiasts have hardened their hearts, jaded after a series of false-start reunions and rumored releases that never materialized. The seminal Kansas City-Lawrence band, which catalyzed some of the most violent metal-hardcore collisions ever recorded, hasn’t issued a new studio album since 1999’s 012: Revolution in Just Listening or embarked on a substantial tour since before that…
Gutter punks in sweat-stained, ragged threads stand shoulder-to-shoulder to watch a shirtless frontman spazz out on a bullhorn. There’s no PA system, so the guitar sounds like it’s playing through a pile of dogshit. Paint’s peeling off the walls, and a dude who got a little overzealous with his pogoing has punched a hole in the ceiling with his fist….
The first-ever goth night at Fat Matt’s Vortex was described as being “fetish-friendly.” And the fetishists definitely got friendly with each other — thanks to a couple of whips and a set of electro-vibrating nipple clamps. Fat Matt’s, which used to be called Irene’s, was a perfect place for a goth night. Located in Kansas City, Kansas, Fat Matt’s is…
“The Falling Kind” by Vedera, from The Weight of an Empty Room (Second Nature, 2005): Charm is deceptive. Beauty is fleeting.” So reads the script around the image of a pretty girl tattooed between Kristen May’s shoulder blades. It’s visible through the low-slung shirt that Vedera’s frontwoman wears on a hot day in early August. Just sitting outside is enough…
In this week’s Pitchcast, listen to excerpts from newscasts and statements made the night of the ChemCentral fire. 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
