By ANDY VIHSTADT Led On Those of you waiting on a full-scale reunion tour from Led Zeppelin should find something else to obsess about in 2008. According to Robert Plant’s site , he and Alison Krauss are launching a European tour in May with US dates to follow. In the meantime, here’s the setlist and a couple of vids from…
By NADIA PFLAUM According to Barack Obama campaign volunteers, his is the first presidential candidate with a headquarters on the ground in both Kansas (Lawrence) and Missouri (in KC). I stopped by the Kansas City office at 3911 Main during an open house on Wednesday night to survey the scene. Tom Kessler, a 28-year-old Cerner employee, was kind enough…
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Next year, Shout Factory will release Hopeless Romantic: The Best of Billy Vera & the Beaters. With a voice so competent and completely indistinct that to hear it, you wouldn’t know if it was Darryl Hall or Billy Joel or any one of a dozen 80s pop balladeers. Vera and his Beaters stroked the yolk of the bar circuit for…
Dinosaur Jr. Thursday, 12-13-07 The VooDoo Lounge at Harrah’s Casino Better than: Gambling, smoking, gambling while smoking Review and photos by Richard Gintowt Ever wondered what it would sound like to be plummeting towards earth in a 747 jet with the doors ripped off? Probably a lot like last night’s Dinosaur Jr. concert at the VooDoo Lounge. I’ve seen ‘em…
By CHRIS PACKHAM I have nothing to contribute to the body of writing about Tonya Harding. It’s like an assignment to write three pages about Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery for English class: There’s absolutely nothing original to say about either one of them. Shirley Jackson is dead. But the last page is yet to be written in the chronicles…
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Over the next week or so, we here at the Pitch Music Laboratories will be looking back over the past year’s local releases and choosing our favorites to commend in the December 27th issue of the The Pitch. This means … 1. If you’re in a band and you released an album this year, you better email jason.harper@pitch.com and make…
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By CAROLYN SZCZEPANSKI There’s a lot of buzz going on at the Uptown Theater this week — but it’s not the kind that owner Larry Sells looks forward to. Sells has been deluged with faxes and e-mails begging him to cancel an upcoming event by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. In September, Kansas City Parks Board member Frances Semler got…
After a lifelong career of changing the world through trad. American music forms and profound lyrical incantations, the Bobster has finally gotten hip to punk rock. And he’s chosen the oeuvre of Kansas City group the Rich Boys for his early experimentation in the genre. Behold, Dylan Gets Rich! Categories: Music Tags: bob dylan, parody and pastiche, the Rich Boys
By DAVID MARTIN Hallmark is outsourcing work to China, costing dozens of Missourians their jobs. Carrollton Specialty Products Co. is closing two plants after losing a substantial piece of the card assembly work it performs for Hallmark. A facility in Mexico, Missouri, will close on December 20. A plant in Carrollton, 70 miles east of Kansas City, will fold its…
Mark Funkhouser’s first seven months as mayor may have been controversial, but at least no one has suggested that he used mob ties to rig the vote. Historically, though, Kansas City has been an intersection of the mob and politics. Prairie Village native Frank R. Hayde will explain why the town always comes up in movies such as Casino when…
The United States was instrumental in the creation of the West African state of Liberia, and a local member of the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is responsible for the development of its police force. In the 1940s and 1950s, Leon Jordan and his wife, Orchid, lived in Liberia, and Orchid took snapshots of the exotic country. The photographic results…
Is this the final home game of the Carl Peterson era? The Chiefs’ general manager, a savior to long-suffering fans when he arrived, is now widely considered an arrogant failure, never delivering a Super Bowl victory. When the Chiefs face the Titans today at Arrowhead Stadium (1 Arrowhead Drive), fans will forget (unless they’re too young to remember) how much…
Nationwide, the second-leading cause of cancer-related death in women is one of the diseases they fear most: breast cancer. Despite advances in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, money is still needed for research and for getting the word out about preventive measures. (Note to scientists: We’d especially welcome further research showing that antioxidant-rich foods such as dark chocolate…
Kansas City’s newest burlesque troupe puts the nip in nippy at tonight’s performance of Baby, It’s Cold Outside! Burlesque Downtown Underground, which is made up of professional actors, dancers and singers, made its debut at last summer’s Fringe Festival. After its successful run there, the group decided to make a holiday comeback. “It’s something fun and different, especially in Kansas…
In 2001, Jazz Times called Kurt Elling “the thinking man’s vocalist.” Sure, the University of Chicago Divinity School dropout pens his own lyrics. But what sets Elling apart is his reverence for the ancient mystics, beat poets and French philosophers whose writings he incorporates into standards by Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon and other jazz legends. Elling’s mastery of…
It was the “WHY?” heard ’round the world when ice princess Nancy Kerrigan’s kneecap was smacked weeks before the 1994 Olympics. Who was behind the attack? Jeff Gillooly, ex-husband of figure skating’s bad girl with the bad perm, Tonya Harding.After becoming persona non grata on the rink, Harding pursued other careers, including Internet porn star and wrestling manager. In 2002,…
Traction enthusiasts are people who, like author Ed Conrad, are interested in the history of now-defunct small rail lines connecting localities and streetcar lines that served metropolitan areas. “If the automobile industry had been delayed by 10 years, the interurban industry would have had 10 more years to prosper,” Conrad says. “And they probably would have flourished during World War…
Kerry and Michael Amigoni had something good going on in their basement. It had been seven years since they bought a 10-acre vineyard near Warrensburg, and the stuff they were stomping and bottling in their basement in Leawood was something their friends actually looked forward to having as gifts. Finally, it became clear that the couple needed to sell this…
Swing dancing has passed in and out of fashion over the past 70-odd years, and throughout its history, it has been a popular pursuit in Kansas City. Folks in these parts have been jumpin’ and jivin’ to good old party jazz since Count Basie’s Orchestra began throwing down back in the ’20s.Swing dancing and the music that drives it haven’t…
Hollywood may be no country for old men — and it damn sure ain’t one for old women. But director Sidney Lumet, who is 83 and looking it, remains master of whatever he chooses. In his great heist drama Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Lumet demonstrates an audience-stoking vigor that would launch any taut-skinned film-school buck right onto the…
With the Sprint Center (1407 Grand, 816-949-7050) scrambling to woo an anchor tenant, the debut of University of Kansas basketball in the big glass bowl invites a fleeting breath of optimism. The annual Jayhawks game at Kemper Arena was nifty for Kansas City’s KU faithful, but the event always had the vibe of a misplaced street-ball game — as if…
