A hodgepodge of local rock hit the Riot Room last Friday night, and the ol’ Wayward Son was in top form, taking photos, throwing back PBRs and other intoxicating things, saying and doing ridiculous things he doesn’t remember, and, you know, the usual live-music-joint shenanigans. If you were there, you better make sure you’re not in this slideshow. Whoa,…
The Smoking Gun recently reported in a long, investigative entry that R&B singer Akon, who has built a career on making a huge deal out of his alleged criminal past, is not as bad as he says he is. Since the release of Akon’s 2004 debut, Trouble, the singer has claimed that he did hard time in a Georgia…
By PETER RUGG Last Sunday, the Ginger Man and I were lured to Overland Park by the promise of a Kiss Expo. I resisted the urge to blog about it until now, when someone put up this YouTube video of former guitarist Bruce Kulick jamming with the cover band Dressed to Kill near the convention’s end. I kept away from…
By ERIC BARTON Oakland’s East Bay Express this week features this tell-all story written by a reporter who worked as a tax preparer for Kansas City-based H&R Block. The reporter, Steve Koppman, writes that Block preys on the poor, pushes bogus “add ons” on its customers in order to drive up profits and employs people at minimum wage with…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Eh? Earthquake? Didn’t feel a damn thing. The Replacement Dukes: During the Wednesday night ABC-hosted Democratic debate, once-respectable journalist Charles Gibson and pseudo-journalist George Stephanopoulos, the Coy and Vance Duke of debate moderation, choreographed a pretty astonishing sequence of attacks on what’s-her-face and presumptive 44th President Barack Obama that made me wish for the real Bo…
If anybody needs help in these troubled times for the music industry, it’s the owners of independent record stores. This Saturday, April 19, close your iTunes and get out and buy some wax (or CD or poster — hell, something) at one of our fine local, independent retailers. Many stores around the country are offering up sales and hosting in-stores….
By FLANNERY CASHILL FRIDAY Milwaukee DJ Kid Cut Up entertains alongside local remix weirdos Tactic at Glow. The 21 and up show begins at 10 p.m. and runs until 3 a.m. Also this Friday Bandit Teeth and the Dactyls play the Brick. Bandit Teeth plays brisk, intelligent indie rock that recalls Dinosaur Jr., or the best band you…
Khrusty Brothers Introduction Vol 1 This has to be one of the best-conceived intros a band has ever come up with for its fake history. Listen to the man, focus on the beard, then get over to the Khrusty Brothers’ MySpace to check out three refreshing and refreshingly well-recorded tracks that sound like some righteous sundae-topping mixture of Beck, the…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Bite Me, Charlie Gibson: Democratic presidential candidates Hillar E. Clinton and Barack O. Bama met last night for the infinity +1 debate of the campaign season, which I am predicting changed nobody’s minds either way about the candidates but probably made a lot of people hate debate moderators like Minutemen hate Mexicans. Because seriously, were the…
Eleven years later, it’s about as uncool to admit enjoying Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” as it is to say the movie that made it famous is your favorite. But not everything about the Titanic soundtrack is cheesy and dated. How about those wrenchingly gorgeous wordless vocals — primal-sounding oohs that recall the song of an icy sea…
“When you’re in your 20s, it’s your job to be an asshole,” says Kids in the Hall founding member Kevin McDonald. “But when you’re in your 40s, you’re calmer, you maybe have families, children, wives — in my case, dogs and cats. And that calms you down.” He’s talking about the group dynamic behind Live As We’ll Ever Be, the…
Race fans will be able to view race show cars and seek autographs from drivers. Thu., April 24, 5-8 p.m., 2008 Tags: 1050, Night & Day
Halloween seems like a natural time to stage The Rocky Horror Show. But, really, fishnets and transsexuals from outer space are exciting any time of year. Hence, Johnson County Community College’s current production of the swinging cult classic. The run at Polsky Theatre inside the Carlsen Center (12345 College Boulevard in Overland Park) begins tonight; show times are 8 p.m….
The Kansas City, Missouri, Public Library ends its Sounds of Silents series today with Louise Brooks’ good-girl-gone-better-when-she’s-bad classic Diary of a Lost Girl. The 1929 film was her second and last with German director G.W. Pabst, who remade the exiled Hollywood starlet as a fearless siren. Former dancer Brooks, a native of Cherryvale, Kansas, was four years into her movie…
Nothing says rockabilly like coiffed hair, hep moves and cars with fins — all of which will be part of tonight’s full-on Rockabilly Prom. Rock-N-Ride, a group of local rockabilly music and classic-car enthusiasts, hosts the second-annual Rockabilly Prom tonight at Knuckleheads (2715 Rochester, 816-483-1456). Equal parts shindig and fundraiser, the event is a benefit for Temporary Lodging for…
Theater people are used to traveling long distances to practice their trade. Once a year, it’s to Independence, Kansas. (Town motto: “No, the other Independence.”) There, the William Inge Theatre Festival celebrates its 27th year of bringing together writers, actors and the curious for a long weekend of shows, scholarship and practical know-how. After tonight’s opening festivities, get ready…
Get Apriled in Paris this weekend without traveling farther than Overland Park. Johnson County Community College stamps your passport for four free French movies at the school’s sleek new Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (12345 College Boulevard in Overland Park, 913-469-8500). The most satisfying of the quartet is the first, Cléo From 5 to 7, which plays at 6:30…
Green consumers will feel they’re doing Mother Earth proud when they grab their reusable tote bags and drive their hybrid cars to Earth Day events this week. To Derrick Jensen, such celebrations are like singing “Kumbaya” while your house is burning — the flames sure are pretty, but your grandma’s still inside. Jensen is an environmental author and activist….
The story didn’t end with Geena Davis. A League of Their Own, the 1992 film that briefly put women’s professional baseball at the center of the cultural landscape, focused on the female players who satisfied the nation’s yearning for baseball during World War II. But even after the men returned, women’s participation in the national pastime continued — this…
Please, take a second, shake off the pace of modern life and do whatever mental dustbusting you must to prep your mind for staring, for just a breath or two, into a verse of antiquity. “Once in a lifetime/the longed for tidal wave/of justice can rise up/and hope and history rhyme.” That’s Sophocles, as polished up by Seamus Heaney….
Left unchecked, cities tend to expand into every available undeveloped square mile, choking off native flora and fauna in favor of Citgo stations and highway interchanges — not that there’s anything wrong with that. Operating on the assumption that scraps of metropolitan nature might have some benefit, Bridging the Gap has been connecting businesses, government and people as partners…
Given the growing social acceptance of cannabis consumption, it’s only a matter of time before pot smokers the world over ditch those paper-towel rolls stuffed with Bounce sheets and exhale into an atmosphere in which their favorite plant is legally recognized and utilized. Until that day, the counterculture remains in charge of spreading the gospel of drug-law reform at…
Released in 1994, Pulp Fiction proved that films addressing heavy topics could still maintain an absurd comic tone. Writers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary infused hit men, usually stock heavies whose witty quips came in the form of post-murder one-liners, with likable personalities and amusing insights. Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic bad mofo Jules Winnfield said best that it was…
Author Scott Heim may live on the East Coast now, but he’s a Midwestern writer at heart. Born in 1966 in Hutchinson, Heim is a University of Kansas grad best known for his first novel, 1995’s Mysterious Skin. Set in Hutchinson, the disturbing story concerns two boys and the memory that one represses and the other savors. It was…
