You’re driving west on Interstate 70, and you’re about to reach those blinking yellow lights that tell you you’re going too fast. Slow down or you’ll miss, to your left, the place where they used to play serious baseball in Kansas City. That stadium, if you didn’t know, is now used three or four times a year for the western…
Larry Gaunt was a regular customer at Chris Smedley’s Bicycle Shack, just off Blue Ridge Boulevard. One day in late July, Gaunt brought in his granddaughter, 14-year-old Sierra. She was giddy over a new helmet, a pair of gloves and the chance to ride with her grandpa. Gaunt, 59, had retired from AT&T but still did some computer consulting. He…
If late-’80s local band the Pedaljets was ahead of its time, it was the members’ own time as individuals that it was ahead of. The songs on the group’s self-titled third album were written nearly 20 years ago, but the subject matter is all grown up. Disillusionment, deferred dreams, resignation toward one’s own mediocrity, the overwhelming desire to fuck the…
Saul Williams pulled a Radiohead last week. The hip-hop slam poet is giving away his third LP, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, on his Web site. Riding shotgun is Trent Reznor, who has publicly condemned the record industry for unfair pricing, telling his fans in Australia and China to steal his latest disc. The Nine Inch Nails…
“Fidelity” by Regina Spektor, from Begin to Hope(Sire) Singer-songwriter Regina Spektor gets understandably frustrated when listeners try to distill parts of her private life from her songs. After all, she reasons, no one really believes that Matt Damon is an amnesiac spy with some serious frequent-flier miles. “People think music is always personal, but not movies and plays,” she says….
Tori Amos is now on tour supporting American Doll Posse, her best CD in years. It’s the piano-playing singer-songwriter’s 10th studio album — if you count the record she made with Y Kant Tori Read, a cringe-inducing hair-rock band she formed in Los Angeles at the end of the ’80s. On American Doll Posse, Amos assumes the roles of a…
The Best of the Colbert Report (Paramount) Blame It on Fidel! (Koch Lorber) Blood Car (TLA) The Crown Prince (Koch) Deck the Halls (Fox) Election (Tartan) Flight of the Conchords: The Complete First Season (HBO) Help!: Deluxe Edition (Capitol) I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (Universal) James Bond Ultimate Collector’s Set (MGM) The King of Queens: The Complete Series…
Controlling a crowd of feisty clubgoers is the mark of a maestro. DJ Shad, who was just named Best Club DJ in our “Best Of” issue, continues to display his careful command over the patrons at Karma on Saturday nights. With Club Kandi and Skybox shutting down, many of those spots’ clientele now jam the lines outside Karma to get…
Although he plays a college professor in his latest film, Robert Redford was, by his own admission, never much of a student, consistently more interested in what was going on outside the classroom window than inside. But there’s one moment from Redford’s academic past that burns brightly in his memory. The year was 1950, and Redford was a junior-high student…
The Night Ranger is about to turn 5 years old in December and, quite frankly, I’m feeling a bit sodden. During that time, I’ve written roughly 240 columns and left a trail of drink umbrellas that would surely stretch from here to Topeka. Suffering what’s beginning to feel like a permanent hangover, I figured I needed to seek some…
A reader called me last week to complain that one of his favorite fast-food fried-chicken spots in Kansas City, Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits, had stopped serving his favorite side dish: macaroni and cheese. So I called Jim Eddy, whose family owns the local Popeyes franchises. “We still have the macaroni and cheese at select locations,” Eddy said. “But we stopped…
Dear Mexican: I like to think that I’m an open-minded sorta guy for a teenager. I fervently oppose racial stereotypes, though I do think that they’re good for a laugh or two sometimes. I have several Mexican friends, and none of them live up to the “Mexican standard” of lawn mowing, stupidity and the like. One is going into international…
Shooting dirty pool, one of Kansas City’s best-known companies has landed a big contract to fix a mistake of its own making. The engineering giant HNTB is in line to receive $1 million to study the feasibility of putting a deck over Interstate 670, the southern band of freeway ribbon around downtown. Like the loop itself, the contract takes…
Feature: “Sex Police,” October 25 The Porn Supremacy I found Justin Kendall’s “Sex Police” insightful and intriguing. I also find appalling the extent to which certain Christian organizations endeavor to impose their values on a society that may not share their particular beliefs. Does anyone else see their hypocrisy? They fight from their moral high ground against what they view…
Hip-hop’s bubble has burst. All those allegedly real gangstas are about to become personally acquainted with the capitalist concept of creative destruction. The only question is what will fill the empty lot that formerly housed Gats, Bitches & Bling Inc. Though indie and conscious rappers seem eager to step into the breach, hip-hop may be in need of something more…
Castlevania, the vampire-hunting series that stretches over 20 years and as many games, has basically two kinds of fans. There are the traditionalists, who’ve followed the games since they were straight-up action titles with thumb-busting combat and infamously steep difficulty curves. Most agree that the best of the old-school Castlevanias is 1993’s Rondo of Blood, a scarce Japanese release…
Sesame Street: Old School Volume 2 (Genius) On the heels of the Electric Company boxed sets, which were at once educational and groovy as all get-out, comes the latest in greatest hits from Sesame Street before the neighborhood was gentrified for Elmo’s protection. Chief among the copious highlights in this triple-disc acid trip down Amnesia Lane is the rarely…
Pedaljets “Giants of May” by the Pedaljets, from the album The Pedaljets (OxBlood): If late-’80s local band the Pedaljets was ahead of its time, it was the members’ own time as individuals that it was ahead of. The songs on the group’s self-titled third album were written nearly 20 years ago, but the subject matter is all grown up. Disillusionment,…
Plenty of indie-rock bands make tongue-in-cheek references to Prince, but the only ones worth listening to are the ones that can actually back it up. Tigercity is one of those bands, and there’s an equally contagious concoction of Hall and Oates, the Cars and Roxy Music permeating the band’s sexy, disco-ball rock. Falsetto vocals and ’80s synths reign supreme, but…
With its most recent album, It’s a Bit Complicated, London’s Art Brut takes a step away from being simply a hilarious concept and toward being an actual rock band. Lyrically, its meta concepts recall a particularly uproarious Wes Anderson movie; meanwhile, the band’s scattered sound draws from art-punk and indie rock. The band’s sweaty stage shows usually offer a side…
On its 2000 debut album, A Life Once Lost played frenzied dervishes, with squiggly technical riffs and thrashy drumbeats overshadowing Robert Meadows’ underenunciated growls. Since then, the Philadelphia group has drastically altered its musical physique, moving from pummeling the speed bag to building brawn through powerlifting. September’s Iron Gag reinvents the band as circus strongman, every track tracing a hammer’s…
Amy Winehouse’s various shortcomings make for big news these days, but thankfully, she’s not the only throwback singer out there worth her weight in torch songs. Lavay Smith, San Francisco’s residing queen of classic ’30s and ’40s jazz and blues, has been wowing plebeian crowds and fastidious jazz enthusiasts for years. With her seven-piece jump-swing band throwing down behind her,…
I’m one of those people who, when sad, wants to either cry or eat. I’ve been known to do both at the same time, but it’s not really a pretty sight. I recently cried through a movie that I thought was supposed to be a comedy, Lars and the Real Girl, in which the title character is such a…
This was worth the wait. In the elegant and subtle new Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, architect Kyu Sung Woo has designed a light-filled space whose primary duty is to showcase art, not itself. At the October 27 public opening, overwhelming crowds seemed pleased by what they saw. Inaugurating the first-floor galleries is American Soil, an exhibition of borrowed…
