By CHRIS RASMUSSEN We weep with you, Sluggerrr. I give up. This season’s over. It isn’t just the eight-game losing streak or that the Royals are once again in last place. Yesterday, the Royals trailed 4-0 in the second inning. The game was over — they are fortunate to score four runs in a weekend, let alone an entire game….
What Became of the Likely Lads by ANDY VIHSTADT After the Libertines split, Pete Doherty became a tabloid cover-star and his co-frontman Carl Barat formed Dirty Pretty Things. Sign up here at the DPT headquarters for a free MP3 of “Hippy’s Son” from the band’s forthcoming Romance at Short Notice, out June 30 on Vertigo Records. Categories: Music Tags: dirty…
by FLANNERY CASHILL Texas folk-pop marching band Mount Righteous preach their ecstatic and irreverant gospel tonight on the YJ’s patio. The 11-strong ensemble will then lead a procession, which they’re calling the Mermaid Parade, to the Brick, where the Mount will play with free-jazz locals Wee Snuff. Mount Righteous encourage attendees to dress like mermaids and mermen, because why the…
They Might Be Giants Friday, May 23, at the Beaumont Club Saturday, May 24, at Crown Center By RICHARD GINTOWT It was a They Might Be Giants weekend in Kansas City. The busiest geek-rock band in show business performed an “adult” show Friday night at the Beaumont and a “kids” show Saturday at the Crown Center “Jiggle Jam.” Please people,…
By JEN CHEN I don’t usually wear T-shirts emblazoned with words or logos, but I love the idea that the KCATA is extending its brand by coming up with a new line of T-shirts. Recently, local blogger M. Toast wrote about these shirts, which depict the MAX bus route. For $8 more, it comes in a box that’s shaped like…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM Westport decides it no longer needs customers: In an effort to completely and permanently cede all nightlife business to the Power & Light District, Westport has made the douchewitted decision to start charging for parking starting at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. In an M.C. Escher display of solipsistic Moebius strip logic, some unnamed…
Don’t laugh — John and Yoko met online. Or was that Sid and Nancy? Anyway, here’s your chance to meet the love of your life or the psycho who will jab you in an artery with a meat fork, stuff you in a blue plastic barrel with a bouquet of roses and dump you on the highway while singing wildly…
Just now, I went over to the Argument Machine, that longstanding source of occasional music-scene gossip, and found that it is no more, or rather that it has transformed into something else. Something … happy. At the old URL, the proprietor left this explanation . Try this instead. It has been named the “Degriefer.” For now you can get there…
You won’t find it on CBS.com or YouTube, just on whatever this player thingy is below. Thanks for being the first Google result, JP. The song, of course, is “Buildings and Mountains.” Priceless: At the end, Dave warmly walks onto the stage and compliments them and asks them where they’re from. He mishears “Kansas City, Missouri” as “Australia.” Unfortunate: Like…
I’m Impressed: Underappreciated Pop Giants By ALAN SCHERSTUHL Between touring, their TV work, and peddling CDs and MP3s to as loyal a fanbase as exists in what’s left of the music industry, They Might Be Giants hardly needs me to defend them— especially considering the fact that they’ve achieved their 25 plus years of success without ever sacrificing vision or…
The Wrath of Khan by ANDY VIHSTADT King Khan & the Shrines finally got some US recognition last year with What it is?! The 12-piece psychedelic garage-funk outfit will be issuing its greatest hits album June 17 on Vice Records. Grab a few tracks from The Supreme Genius of King Khan & the Shrines below. MP3: “Welfare Bread”, King Khan…
%{}% By CHRIS PACKHAM If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains/Every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains. Ever since my co-workers appointed me as their union delegate, I have to go to the weekly Friday night IBEW Local 124 meetings while they go out, get drunk and accumulate the socially embarrassing…
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN On Sunday, Kauffman Stadium hosts the Eucharistic Family Crusade to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. It would be easy to mock the inherent contradiction of praying for peace in today’s world at the same time one celebrates a naval victory over the Muslims in the 16th Century. But I identify with our visitors. After all, these…
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN On Sunday, Kauffman Stadium hosts the Eucharistic Family Crusade to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. It would be easy to mock the inherent contradiction of praying for peace in today’s world at the same time one celebrates a naval victory over the Muslims in the 16th Century. But I identify with our visitors. After all, these…
by FLANNERY CASHILL This Friday, the Bottleneck gets nasty with a night of Detroit garage rock. The Dirtbombs play retro sleaze alongside the Terrible Twos, new-wave punks with Screamers keyboards. Rockabilly troubadour Dan Sartain joins. Bring your fifteen-year old girlfriend. Lawrence’s The Roseline play dusty, back-porch indie rock the same night at the Brick. The Roseline and local dainties the…
American League By ANDY VIHSTADT Being avid Twins’ fans (80 percent of its lineup are relocated Minnesotans), Brooklyn’s the Hold Steady has more reason to be positive this season than us. The band’s fourth LP, Stay Positive, hits stores July 15 on Vagrant. Take a listen to the first single, “Sequestered in Memphis,” via the group’s MySpace. Categories: Music Tags:…
By CHRIS PACKHAM I do not review your nerd films: All’s I’m saying is, M. Night Shyamalan’s Indiana Jones and the Lady in the Water, you guys. FAIL. Also: KC Museums eating WIC-approved tuna: %{}%Since I’m not a parent, I never have to go to museums, which pretty much frees me up for all the not walking around for hours…
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN It is impossible to feel sorry for multimillionaire teenagers. That said, consider the plight of Big 12 graduates selected in the NBA Draft. First, college is a form of indentured servitude, as the NBA deems 18 year olds mature enough to enlist in the military but not play for the Grizzlies. Then, bouncing ping pong balls used…
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN It is impossible to feel sorry for multimillionaire teenagers. That said, consider the plight of Big 12 graduates selected in the NBA Draft. First, college is a form of indentured servitude, as the NBA deems 18 year olds mature enough to enlist in the military but not play for the Grizzlies. Then, bouncing ping pong balls used…
The Nicotine Fits, Mr. Gnome, and Hopeless Destroyers May 21, 2008 The Record Bar Better Than: Band practice in the garage with the car running. By GRANT SNIDER I challenge you to find a review of a two-piece, male-female rock band that doesn’t reference the White Stripes. This comparison is unavoidable, so I’ll get it over with quickly. The Cleveland…
CANNES, France—No need for dreaming here. Each Cannes Film Festival generates its own metaphors for a 10-day regimen of visions in the dark. It’s impossible to forget, let alone transcend, one’s unnatural situation here. The opening film of Cannes’s 2008 edition clobbered participants with a cautionary allegory. Regardez: The civilized world suffers a mass loss of sight in Brazilian director…
CANNES, France—The competition for the Palme d’Or is ongoing as I write, but the story of the 61st Cannes Film Festival is Steven Soderbergh’s two-part, four-and-a-half-hour Che—an epic non-biopic that might well have been approved by Roberto Rossellini, envied by Francis Coppola, and even appreciated by its subject. (And the greatest disappointment? Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York—a maiden directorial voyage…
Call them the comeback kids: In its early days, the 2008 Cannes Film Festival has served as a staging ground for a number of unlikely returns, beginning with that of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who’s been absent from movie screens (except as an occasional actor) for nearly as long as Indiana Jones — 17 years, to be exact. In the…
The Great American Barbecue isn’t your typical cook-then-eat BBQ festival. Take today’s activities in the event’s “Town Square Area:” carnival, $5 Segway rides, tofu tasting, beer garden, Southern Living culinary demos and hot air balloons. Okay, one of those things is made up, but you get the idea. Sure, there are barbecue contests from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but…
