“Body Buzz” by Aloha, from Light Works (Polyvinyl): In the beginning, Aloha earned its indie-rock stripes with mathy, off-kilter tunes that prominently featured vibraphone. The band’s unorthodox instrumentation ignited word-of-mouth buzz in towns such as Lawrence, where the group frequently played DIY house shows. Since then — and especially on the band’s latest EP, Light Works — Aloha has vastly…
Like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, Nanci Griffith relies on an understated delivery that belies her songs’ countrypolitan ease. The Texas-bred songwriter has traversed the realms of folk, country, pop and Celtic during her three-decade career. Her biggest hits have been penned for other performers (Kathy Mattea, Suzy Bogguss), but Griffith’s own voice as a writer has also endured, despite…
“Birmingham Jail” by Chatham County Line, from IV (Yep Roc): Like a classic ’50s muscle car, the neo-traditionalist Chatham County Line echoes with its picking a different age whose beauty still rings true today. The North Carolina quartet varies its speeds from loping, pedal-steel ballads to racing bluegrass with the fiddle and banjo engaged in a fevered game of tag….
THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED. Looking at the success of Tokyo Police Club, one can’t help but weep for the music lifer — you know, the guy who uses the baby-formula money to fix his Fender. He lives and dies for rock and roll, and the biggest success he’ll ever know is playing to the bartender and her boyfriend at…
Do macho, gestural paintings seem to define Kansas City’s aesthetic? Perhaps the legacy of Kansas City Art Institute professors Lester Goldman and Warren Rosser is simply too hard to shake. Kansas Citian John Ochs graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, but his work carries the stamp of abstraction so common among Kansas City artists. Jan Weiner…
Steve Johnson fought valiantly at my side during the toughest battles of the Spanish-American War. He lost his jaw during the charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. He was forced from then on to suck mush through a tube in his throat. That didn’t stop him from serving the city for 40 years on the Platte Valley…
All this talk about metal plates has gotten the Department of Burnt Ends riled up about another street-related pet peeve: narrow traffic lanes. Thanks to our fat cars, skinny lanes, metal plates and sunken sewer covers, driving through midtown during rush hour is usually a festival of near scrapes and heart-stopping, Frogger-style swerving action. Only without the lady frog to…
I’m not superstitious or anything, but I’m rubbing the rabbit’s foot on my desk (next to my lucky penny and my ceramic Maneki Neko figurine) as I write about a new restaurant in Lee’s Summit, because the last two places I reviewed there closed! It had nothing to do with my reviews, mind you. I actually liked one of…
Most touchstone albums draw on some zeitgeist. Others create their own. Recorded in November 1987 and released 20 years ago, Cowboy Junkies’ second album, The Trinity Session, still sounds like the latter case: a small, quiet, self-contained world of sound that defies everything around it, even as it hints at a future slowly coming into focus. The album’s relentlessly languid,…
The Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s all-singing, all-dancing, truth-in-advertising production of A Marvelous Party mostly celebrates Noël Coward’s arch little songs and witty aphorisms. It climaxes, however, with a song he didn’t write, Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It,” updated with a clutch of new, 2008-specific rhymes that lay out who is doing it to whom. We get Tom Cruise and wife…
Sometimes it’s the terrible ideas — say, a TV show about nothing, or stirring corn into your mashed potatoes — that turn out to be genius. Super Smash Bros. landed on the Nintendo 64 nearly 10 years ago, kicking off a concept that initially sounded nauseating: “lovable Nintendo characters in a fight to the death.” Seriously? Jigglypuff vs. Yoshi? There…
A few months ago, the University of Missouri-Columbia proudly announced that one of its professors would share the Nobel Peace Prize. The professor, Tony Lupo, is an associate professor of atmospheric science in the School of Natural Resources. He also happens to be a global-warming skeptic — a member of a tribe that even the Southern Baptists are abandoning. Lupo…
Just Because A Dressing Down I’m not against the Power and Light District’s dress code, but it seems unfair for a project that leaves the Kansas City taxpayer with such a large portion of the bill to prohibit certain taxpayers from using its facilities. Sweat suits and work boots are not against the law. I think it would be a…
Dear Mexican: Since moving to Aztlán from Boston, I’ve spent so much time with my next-door neighbor from Mexico City that I’ve taken to using the word manito as a term of endearment for my buddies, regardless of who and where they are. It’s been my observation that most Anglos think mano a mano means “man to man.” Being a…
When I was telling a friend about the relatively new barbecue joint Beauchamp’s on the Rail (see review, page 29), he asked why I’d never written about one of the city’s more historic places for smoked meats: the 44-year-old Quick’s Bar-B-Q and Catering Company at 1007 Merriam Lane in Kansas City, Kansas. I’ve never written about Quick’s, I’m ashamed to…
“Ave Maria” by The Life and Times, from The Magician: South by Southwest is, for me, an overlaying of the unfamiliar over the familiar. I lived in Austin, Texas, for about a year in my childhood and grew up four hours northwest (not that far by Texas standards) in Abilene. To me, the sun is brighter in Texas, the air…
By JEN CHEN Really, all you need to know about last night’s episode of The Real Housewives of New York City is summed up in this clip (via Jezebel). It’s fashion week in New York, and Alex, our former Fort Scott resident, is invited to one of the shows. “Is it a good designer that I’m going to know…
By NADIA PFLAUM On Saturday, members of Anonymous, the Internet-dwelling Scientology protest group responsible for leaking that insane Tom Cruise-laughing-in-an-armchair video to the world, gathered at 39th and Main to “celebrate” L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday. They wore party hats in honor of Scientology’s creator, along with the prerequisite bandanas, Guy Fawkes masks and signs calling the religion a hoax….
%{}% By ERIC BARTON The Germans named Manhattan, Kansas, and it means “whale’s vagina.” The 3 O’Clock A.M. blog found this video proof that Will Ferrell will be rooting for K-State over his own alma mater, USC. And now we go to Champ Kind for sports. That’s the smell of desire, my lady. Actually, it’s the smell of people who…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Hangover o’ the Irish: It rained yesterday, but a hard-core coterie of daytime drinkers turned out for the parade anyway. I also personally witnessed the subspecies of daytime drinkers who can’t afford day care, and had to bring their kids along to their traditional Irish celebration of green Mardi Gras beads and public intoxication. Is there…
By JASON HARPER A small patrol of Pitch went down to Kansas City Live! at the Power and Light District this afternoon to catch the St. Paddy’s revelry. U2 was playing over the PA and rain was leaking through the roof. Here’s what else was happening. (Some photos have *magical* enhancements.) Bono’s favorite place to get a taco I’m still…
What kind of showing did Kansas City make at SXSW? The sexy kind! See this hot photo and more in our KC @ SXSW slideshow. Categories: Music Tags: slideshows
By ANDY VIHSTADT Black Magic Holding onto his Pixies pseudonym for a little while longer, Black Francis is hitting us with a new mini LP. SVN Fingers, which is a reference to the Irish mythological figure that had seven digits and toes, comes out via Cooking Vinyl on April 1. Grab the lead-off track below, thanks to Fluxblog. Also, Black…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Now, I’m no economist. But from what I can understand, JPMorgan Chase bought gi-mongous mortgage underwriter Bear Stearns for, like, two dollars, causing America’s gross national product to melt down and sink through the earth’s core in an apocalyptic Jane Fonda-starring China Syndrome effect. Also: It’s like dominoes. Now all the other global economic dominoes are…
