D.C. rapper Wale (pronounced wah-lay) has been drumming up a lot of support with his free online releases. He recently issued the Seinfeld-inspired Mixtape About Nothing on his Elitaste blog. The 19-track collection features plenty of sound bites from the ’90s sitcom and, of course, “The Kramer” reminds us of that other thing Michael Richards is famous for. Julia Louis-Dreyfus…
“Collaborate” by Five Star Crush, from Sleepless Nights (self-released): It’s storming outside the bar. but inside, there’s sunshine. Sunshine Patten, that is, host of the Saturday night Retro Red-Eye Express show on community radio station 90.1 KKFI. The weather has no doubt kept many revelers away from the Record Bar on this Thursday night, but this party for Sunshine’s 35th…
“Porn it Up” by Bandit Teeth, from Demos (self-released): Brad Shanks has been home for a month. His warm bed and his record collection have been his closest friends since he came off the road. Four weeks of arduous touring can make even the most dedicated rocker into a wussy homebody. “I’ve just been sitting in my room eating peanut…
I collect old postcards of Kansas City restaurants. Over the years, I’ve found full-color cards depicting some of this city’s most iconic fried-chicken places — all long gone — including the legendary Wishbone, the Green Parrot, Victor Hugo’s and the Southern Plantation. Although this cowtown is probably best-known to outsiders for its steaks and barbecue, the locals have always been…
Palladium prints are beautiful and exotic entities — not unlike the succulents in Michael Eastman’s images. Palladium prints are characterized by their beautiful, soft, velvety shades of gray. Images made through this process are extremely rich and detailed; think of early Steichen, Stieglitz and Weston photographs. Eastman is a well-known St. Louis photographer whose work is in the collections of…
So, look. A couple of pros and a host of amateurs are putting on a passionate, angry, didactic, sometimes unwatchable play about Hurricane Katrina that I had to climb over rubble to get to. That’s verisimilitude, people. Thanks to construction around the Just Off Broadway Theatre in Penn Valley Park — and to the confusion and roadblocks of Rockfest, which…
A couple of Amish guys ride a horse-powered hayrack past the snow-covered town square in Stanberry, Missouri. The town of 1,243 people is 94 miles north of Kansas City, but it might as well be a century away. The horses trot past a Dollar General Store, a pizza parlor and a local shop that sells T-shirts and cell phones. It’s…
Dear Fans: This letter to you is long overdue. I’ve been in charge of the Royals for almost 15 years. There hasn’t been a lot to cheer about in that time. A once-proud organization has become a source of nearly constant frustration and disappointment. My name is at the top of the club directory, so I need to take responsibility…
When Terence O’Malley’s documentary Shots Back in Time: The Union Station Massacre debuts at Union Station next week, it’ll put an end to some of the denial that haunts this city about its past. June 17 is the 75th anniversary of the infamous massacre, when gangsters botched an attempt to free one of their own, Frank Nash, while lawmen were…
Dear Readers: Obviously, not enough of you have bought my paperback, because the first issue here is addressed on page 192! The second question, on the other hand, is brand-new. Now, back to smuggling illegals across the Arizona desert. Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans swim in the ocean with their clothes on? I mean, denim? Vicente Fox’s Mustache Dear Mexican:…
Martin, May 29 On Track David Martin’s column proposing a Jackson County-only light-rail system looks like it could be the start of a serious discussion of mass transit in KC. This sounds horrible, but I agree that Johnson County cannot and will not initiate a system on its own but would act to attach to an existing system such as…
Charlie Hoopers 5:30, Brooksider 6:30, Granfalloon 8:30
Sigur Ros live at the Uptown Theater
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN To many Americans, soccer is boring, foreign and, according to the National Review, a manifestation of the “Marxist concept of the labor theory of value.” I like watching international soccer, even when I don’t have a rooting interest and often while curled up on the couch reading a well-worn copy of Das Kapital. Nowhere else in sport…
By CHRIS RASMUSSEN To many Americans, soccer is boring, foreign and, according to the National Review, a manifestation of the “Marxist concept of the labor theory of value.” I like watching international soccer, even when I don’t have a rooting interest and often while curled up on the couch reading a well-worn copy of Das Kapital. Nowhere else in sport…
By CHARLES FERRUZZA There’s been some significant movement in Kansas City’s restaurant scene this week. After failing to keep her Overland Park restaurant 40 Sardines open as the sole chef-owner, Debbie Gold is bouncing back from her divorce from chef Michael Smith (who has remarried and now runs his own namesake restaurant at 1900 Main Street with his wife Nancy)….
