“October” by Able Baker Fox, from Voices Back in 2002, Kansas City’s Casket Lottery released a collaborative split EP with the Michigan band Small Brown Bike. Able Baker Fox represents another active partnership between the two (now dormant) groups, with Casket Lottery singer and guitarist Nathan Ellis joining Small Brown Bike members Ben Reed, Mike Reed and Jeff Gensterblum. Despite…
Dear Mexican: At a weekly Doors-tribute-band gig, I notice the majority of the crowd is Mexican. I swear, sometimes it seems like the crowd missed the exit to the Lupillo Rivera show or a Maná concert. Never realized Jim Morrison was the equal of Morrissey and Charles Bronson among other Mexican güero icons. Güero Riding on the Storm Dear Gabacho:…
Now that the legendary Nichols Lunch has been given both a new life — as Mama’s 39th Street Diner — and a facelift only slightly less dramatic than the one that septuagenarian actress Mary Tyler Moore is sporting these days, I’m free to hope that some other late, great Kansas City restaurants might be resurrected. Or at least brought back…
“Bloodclot” by Murderbot DJ and producer Murderbot is the latest in a never-ending line of diamond-in-the-rough musicians who have flown the KC coop. Chrissy Marie, as he’s also known, has run his own record label, Dead Homies, out of his home since 2005. (Now, home is in Chicago.) His latest vinyl release, which is available at Love Garden, is an…
A cardinal truth of American life: Scratch the present, and the past bleeds through. This was proved yet again in 2002, in history-ennobled yet racially troubled Philadelphia, when activists discovered that the new Liberty Bell Memorial planned by the National Parks Service wasn’t just being built on the grounds of George Washington’s old residence. It was being built on…
Tivoli Cinemas goes around the world in 708 minutes from January 25 through January 31, when the theater screens the seven movies reviewed below, which come from different countries (Thailand and Mali are on the bill) and disciplines (documentaries are well-represented) and haven’t played in KC before. See TivoliKC.com for details about discount passes (four movies for $20). Bamako…
“I Saw the Light” by State Bird, from Mostly Ghostly When planning your next vacation, take a good, hard look at Dover, Ohio. Maybe it doesn’t have Hawaii’s white-sand beaches or Colorado’s snowy mountains, but there must be something special about this town for it to produce a group as talented and diverse in its influences as State Bird. The…
Confessions of a Superhero (Arts Alliance) As one of those quoted on the package (“A more beautiful documentary you’re unlikely to find”), I can only reiterate my earlier praise: Matt Ogens’ doc, about mortals dressed as superheroes trolling Hollywood Boulevard for tourists’ loose change, is stunning to look at — the proverbial visual feast, best seen on home video…
There’s a point at which every fad overstays its welcome. Could it be that Guitar Hero is already just a sour note from being booed out of America’s living room? For evidence, look no further than the plethora of GH cash-in products hawked at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the annual parade of cutting-edge stuff that…
America! The Complete Series (RHI) Barney Miller: The Complete Second Season (Sony) Best Actress Collection (Fox) Best Picture Academy Award Winners Collection (Fox) Blonde Ambition (Sony) Butterfly Collectors (Koch Vision) The Catherine Cookson Anthology (Koch Vision) ER: The Complete Eighth Season (Warner Bros.) The Game Plan (Disney) Hawaii Five-O: The Third Season (Paramount) Inside the Smiths (Mams) The Jeff Corwin…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM • There’s a Wilford Brimley voice that talks in my head, deep inside a brain structure called the — uh, I’m not a neurologist — brainhole? Is that a word? Well, it talks inside my head and dispenses folksy, homespun wisdom such as: “Use the emergency eyewash station. Use it OFTEN. It’s the right thing to…
By JUSTIN KENDALL The Westboro Baptist Church didn’t waste time sending their condolences to actor Heath Ledger’s family. Yesterday, Topeka’s most famous homophobic residents announced they will picket Ledger’s funeral for his role as gay cowboy Ennis del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. “Heath Ledger thought it was great fun defying God Almighty and His plain word; to wit: God…
Much like Jason Lee endorsing Midlake, one of the acts on the bill tonight has a Hollywood endorsee. Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam on The Office and was HOT AS HELL* as Dewey Cox’s second wife in Walk Hard, likes her some Willy Wisely. According to the press release, Fischer met the chisel-jawed singer-songwriter when he scored her movie Lollilove….
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM • Once a week, a toothless tweaker and his pregnant 15-year-old girlfriend come driving down my street in their 1980 Dodge Colt and whip the week’s issue of Northeast News, “The Unwelcome Bilingual Newspaper of the Historic Northeast Delivered by Meth-Addicted Degenerates” into the accumulated pile on the sidewalk in front of my house. And they’re…
By ERIC BARTON Frances Semler announced her resignation in a letter faxed to The Pitch at 11:01 last night. The letter is telling about Semler’s state of mind. There’s a lot of anger here, directed at a variety of targets, including The Kansas City Star and illegals. Semler ends the letter, and perhaps the controversy, with all caps: “I feel…
By NADIA PFLAUM “Black Entertainment Television is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life…And now, I’d like to talk about Soul Plane…” Jason, 96.5 The Buzz’s noon radio jock, was just wondering on-air about why no one’s ever written a book or made a movie re-envisioning history as though Martin Luther King Jr. had lived, surviving the assassination…
How our life would have been different had we been raised by a Ska Dad. Categories: Music Tags: ska dads, YouTube
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM · Thing I learned on KCUR today: The proper pronunciation of “midwifery” is actually “midwhiffery.” So, great. Not only can I not penetrate the glass ceiling of unlicensed midwifery, I’ve also been saying it totally wrong. Look: I’m a simple man. I have to go with the letters you actually use to spell things. Are you…
By ANDY VIHSTADT Animal Rights Toonces the Driving Cat won’t go down in history as SNL’s crowning achievement, and my guess is the problem was casting. See what could have been with the Rosebuds’ video cover of Salt-N-Pepa’s ahh, “Push It,” or just grab the MP3 below. The Rosebuds: “Push It” MP3 courtesy of Pitchfork. Red Dawn Someone Still Loves…
One Republic, with the Daylights and Eric Hutchinson Saturday, January, 19 The Madrid Theatre By CALEB GOELLNER You know you’re in for a complete spectacle when you get to a concert and the roadies are dressed better than you are, the drummers play wearing designer wrist watches and the balcony is packed with trophy-wife tourists uttering condescending phrases like,…
Yo La Tengo, with Kurt Wagner Saturday, January 19 Randy Bacon’s Gallery Sounds, Springfield, MO File under: Art Gallery Rock and/or Q&Acore Better than: Kissing Ron Paul in a RuPaul costume. By RICHARD GINTOWT I first saw Yo La Tengo 12 freakin’ years ago at Lollapalooza 1995. It was mid-afternoon on a smoldering parking lot stage, and the artsy…
%{}% By JUSTIN KENDALL Out Magazine columnist Josh Kilmer-Purcell writes that Fred Phelps and his homophobic brood might be “the most important GLBT activists since Stonewall.” In his February column, Kilmer-Purcell posits that the gay community should be grateful for the Phelps family’s in-your-face homophobia because their sincere hatred exposes Middle America to “what homophobia actually looks like when it’s…
By NADIA PFLAUM This video is old (obviously, because Rummy’s in it), but it’s still funny. Sometimes the best jokes are the most immature. Categories: News
By CHRIS PACKHAM • A dude in Wichita named Marcus Johnson stuck it to The Man by driving his Lincoln Town Car straight through The Man’s house, City Hall, causing a reported $200,000 in damage. Nadia Pflaum linked a YouTube video of a camcorder video of a web video of Johnson’s arraignment. That’s “One… two… three levels of abstraction! AH…
