In a basement dance studio in Prairie Village, Billie Mahoney practices her tap to Tony Bennett’s “Shine on Your Shoes.” Her feet lightly caress the scuffed wood floor. Her black shoes make delicate clickety-click sounds. Her hips and legs swivel along with the music, and she throws in some graceful arm flaps. She does a sassy head bob to…
When Bodies Revealed opens Friday at Union Station, the Department of Burnt Ends figures people all over town will be asking themselves one question: How can I get my own cadaver in on the action? The answer is, you can’t unless you’re a cadaver from China. Which you’re not. But don’t worry: Dale R. Abrahamson wants your corpse. Abrahamson is…
This high-stepping musical is a sequel to Miss Nelson is Missing, which was performed at TYA in 2004. Joan Cushing has again adapted and created the music and lyrics, based on the immensely popular books about the cunning school teacher Miss Nelson. This time she’s no longer the meanest substitute teacher; now she’s the meanest substitute coach ever. The ‘Swamp’…
Prints and drawings related to the mythology of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Oct. 24-April 13, 2007 Tags: Europe, Italy, Night & Day, Rome (Italy), Southern Europe
Literary event at Kafe Kiskeya. First Thursday of every month, 2007 Tags: Night & Day
At only 31, violinist James Ehnes has established himself as a pre-eminent concert artist, working with such luminaries as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Lorin Maazel and Charles Dutoit. He makes a Kansas City debut recital with The Friends in a performance of works by LeClair, Brahms, Bartók and Strauss. Eduard Laurel will accompany. Sat., March 1, 8 p.m., 2008 Tags: Charles Dutoit,…
Local country music legend Rex Hobart is back in town following an extended stay in wintry Buffalo, New York, and not-so-wintry Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Pitch shoots the bull with him to get to the bottom of his latest creation, the Honky-Tonk Standards Chuck Wagon Dinner Show. So, you’ve come back to KC after a three-year hiatus. Why…
Frank Hayde will be in the store to talk about mob bosses, corrupt police forces and the dark role the City of Fountains has played in the American underworld, and sign copies of his new book, The Mafia and the Machine: The Story of the Kansas City Mob. Fri., Feb. 29, 6 p.m., 2008 Tags: Frank Hayde, Kansas City, Night…
“Everybody Wants To Be My Man” by the Pink Socks “This song is called ‘One Quick Minute,’ and that’s all you have on this earth, you little wasters!” As the band launches into a punk-fast blues burner, someone lights off a firecracker. With a smoking hiss, the cigar-sized rocket skitters across the floor and hits the whitewashed basement wall, showering…
Abstract No. 2 Tomoko Takahashi’s work embraces chaos, order and paradox. Her large-scale installations typically focus on the things that pile up around us: bikes, toys, street signs, clocks. The work might look like a trash heap to some people, but in part, it’s about the accumulation of things and what that suggests about us; Takahashi trades on our Western…
A Marvelous Party A full-on, piano-stomping revue featuring the blazing stars of 2 Pianos, 4 Hands and celebrating the songs and wit of Noel Coward, this premiere production from the Kansas City Repertory Theatre would have to make several thousand mistakes to fail to live up to its title. Digging deep into Coward’s 400-song catalog, this party promises crisp dances,…
Before Kip Winger was the butt of many jokes, the Denver-bred Bon Jovi doppelgänger and his bandmates undoubtedly had busloads of Betties on standby in every zip code and were printing their own money, thanks to two consecutive albums that went platinum (a feat nearly unheard of in today’s digital age). Little did they know then, however, that they were…
Does anyone give two hoots about guitar shredders anymore? Steve Vai and Jeff Beck continue to draw crowds, but their recent records are futile exercises in dated ProTools exhibitionism. The all-acoustic California Guitar Trio isn’t immune to showboating, but it scores points for favoring live instrumentation (sometimes augmented with bass and drums) and tastefully wicked arrangements of the masters (Bach,…
Too many people’s fascination with the ’80s manifests itself in the occasional lame ’80s-themed dance party, complete with Hypercolor shirts and stirrup pants. (Or are those cool again?) Gil Mantera’s Party Dream lives in ’80s party mode but amps up the dirty, filthy, sexy qualities of the neon decade that so often get forgotten. Synths, pulsing drum machines, vocoders and…
When I take the prisoners swimming/They have the time of their lives/I love to watch them floating. As his song “River Guard” suggests, Bill Callahan is one weird dude. But the brains behind Smog has employed his wry sense of humor to great effect over the course of a 16-year partnership with Drag City records. Whereas Callahan’s early, lo-fi recordings…
In 2003’s “Medio-core,” NOFX singer Fat Mike trashes the average rock performance, citing everything from canned audience interaction (“How y’all doin’ tonight?”/You condescending fucks) to petrified set lists (They played the songs I knew they would/Some old, some new). By contrast, NOFX concerts offer rapid-fire observational quips and spontaneous set lists. Even when working within the 30-minute Warped Tour window,…
Semi-Pro is much better than Blades of Glory, which wasn’t nearly as good as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which was a little better than Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, which was almost as funny as Old School, which was better than anything else Will Ferrell had done up to that point — except maybe Dick,…
“El Guero Polka/La Fontera” by Tom Russell, from Lost Angels of Lyon (2008, Village Records) Though he studied criminology in college, singer-songwriter Tom Russell has traversed continents and musical styles during his 30-year career — sometimes aiming for hard honky-tonk, sometimes for conceptual folk dreamscapes. But his muse always leads him back to the convicts and the gamblers, the laborers…
Awhile back, I ran into a woman I’d met in the early 1980s. Back then, she considered herself one of the queens of the hipster scene. She hosted wild parties in her grungy apartment, bragged about sleeping with musicians in the local band of the moment, chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes and dyed her hair a different color every other week….
Burnt Ends, January 31 Unhappy Dancer What the fuck is Burnt Ends’ problem? I can’t even believe The Pitch trashed our city’s once-thriving burlesque scene, which is now struggling. (Thank you, Gov. Blunt, for bringing your outdated, racist and sexist “Christian” values to our bars and entertainment venues!) I’m sure I speak for women everywhere when I say it’s people…
Justice League: The New Frontier (Warner Bros.) Based on Darwyn Cooke’s comic-book miniseries — a masterpiece starring all of DC Comics’ major-leaguers at the dawn of their immortality during the Cold War — this animated adaptation plays stronger, faster, and further than any direct-to-DVD in recent memory. It’s a grown-up superheroes story, with scenes of startling violence (early and…
Lost Odyssey wants to be Microsoft’s answer to Final Fantasy — not that that’s such a good idea. Like Star Wars, Final Fantasy survives as a power brand thanks to the shining stars of its past, rather than the overwrought installments of recent years. Final Fantasy XII — the most bloated, exasperating chapter yet — has splintered the fan…
“Shake It Off” by Str8jakkett Way back in ’94/I was writin’ all my flows for 2000, D.L. rapped on DVS Mindz’ essential collection Million Dolla Broke Niggaz. On Mood Swings, D.L.’s DVS crewmate Str8jakkett puts his own twist on this space-time connection. His rhymes might be ahead of their time, but many of his beats sound like they’ve been sitting…
“Dance in the Rain” by Reach & Twelve A growing number of artists are mining the still-rich seam of golden-age hip-hop, almost 20 years after its heyday. Yet even though this sort of revivalism is poised to become the next big thing all over again (think the Cool Kids), there are few doing it better than Kansas City’s Stacy D….
