Hip Hop and Hot Wings returns after a month-and-a-half-long hiatus. The Innate Sounds Crew performs.
First Friday
Garrett Nordstrom Situation
By JUSTIN KENDALL Joe Axelson’s death Saturday was a sad reminder of the Sprint Center’s lack of an anchor tenant. Categories: News Tags: AEG, Clay Bennett, Joe Axelson, Kansas City Kings, Kansas City Star, NBA, Seattle SuperSonics, Sprint Center
By NADIA PFLAUM For years, locals have been reporting paranormal sightings to the database at the Mutual UFO Network. MUFON’s Web site lets viewers look up reports by county. Here are some highlights from Missouri and Kansas: Suburban Kansas City, May 10, 2008: “My wife and I were sitting in our driveway during a neighborhood garage sale. My wife noticed…
By ERIC BARTON Hallmark’s announcement this week that it’s laying off another 335 workers isn’t big news for a company that has already laid off a quarter of its workforce since 1999. What’s unique about this announcement is Hallmark’s candor: The company admitted that it’s sending some of the work to Asia and Mexico. Categories: News Tags: China, hallmark, outsourcing
By CHRIS PACKHAM “Hot tamales”? Really? As a lily-white privileged trust-fund debutante who nibbles on Pepperidge Farm sweet biscuits while enjoying reruns of Mad About You, it’s obvious that I’m not in a position to know anything much about black America. %{}%If you ever talk to me on the phone or somehow manage to get me to make eye contact…
Having been on the air for nearly six years, Saturday night’s Retro Red-Eye Express (R2E2 for short) on 90.1 FM KKFI community radio is a hardcore survivor, especially considering the music: New wave, postpunk, indie rock, krautrock, dreampop, a little bit of goth, plenty of Duran Duran … it ain’t the stuff most people associate with Kansas City — and…
Kansas City’s American Catastrophe migrate this month to Toronto, where they play their murder ballads at the city’s North by Northeast fest on June 14th. The band’s brooding, black cloud alt-country has found ample audience in the higher latitudes. Click here for the full NXNE lineup and here for more news about OxBlood Records. Categories: Music
Jukie Jukebox By ANDY VIHSTADT The Definitive Jux label launched its new website yesterday, and along with making those out-of-print 12” B-sides available in a digital format, you can score a few freebies from the likes of Chin Chin, Aesop Rock, Hanger 18 and Junk Science’s Baje One. Check it out here. Categories: Music Tags: definitive jux, junkie jukebox
Rhymers and breakers, rejoice! Remodeling forced the Peanut at Ninth and Washington to close their doors for a month and a half, but the bar celebrates its reopening tonight with an evening of Hip Hop and Hot Wings. Now in its fifth year, Hip Hop and Hot Wings brings together the underground elite and area amateurs for a night of…
Summer reading recommendations generally take the form of prescriptions for escapism, the literary equivalent of striding around a sunny beach with a Dos Equis, your hairy beer gut hanging over a jaunty, tropical-colored banana warmer. The idea behind such lists is a far cry from Franz Kafka’s injunction that “a book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen…
Early on in the Unicorn Theatre’s production of the inventive Broadway hit Well, just a couple of seconds after we realize that the play has, in fact, started, actress Melinda McCrary insists that what we are about to see is not a play at all. “It’s a theatrical exploration,” McCrary grandly says, “of issues of health and illness both in…
Michael Stern brings the season to a dramatic conclusion with Symphonie Fantastique – Hector Berlioz’s revolutionary musical embodiment of the love of his life concludes an inspired season. Plus: Beethoven’s regal third piano concerto, showcasing the talent of guest pianist Jonathan Biss. June 6-8, 8 p.m., 2008 Tags: Hector Berlioz, Jonathan Biss, Ludwig van Beethoven, michael stern, Night & Day
Since the early 1990s, Chakaia Booker has worked almost exclusively with recycled tires. Through a physically demanding process of twisting, slicing, and weaving found rubber tires (primarily from bikes, cars, and farm equipment), she forms dynamic, whimsical sculptures that fuse ecological concerns with questions about racial and economic differences, globalization, and existing sociopolitical power structures. Featuring more than twenty sculptures,…
Used to be that Sluggerrr had the only raging mullet in Kauffman Stadium’s home dugout. But there’s a new man in town with business in the front and party in the back. Manager Trey Hillman brings his bi-level to Kansas City, along with a whole lot of optimism for the youngsters that dominate his lineup. Names like Gordon, Butler and…
A new, ongoing film event in which classic feature films will be shown preceded by short cartoons, cliffhanger serials, and other vintage shorts. Every other Saturday. No screening on July 5. Sat., June 7, 1:30 p.m., 2008 Tags: 532, Night & Day
Join Jane Kurtz at an Ethiopian Buffet — Adults $15.00, Children $ 7.50. Proceeds benefit Ethiopia Reads, an organization with a mission to build a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books. Ethiopia Reads builds libraries for children, publishes books in English as well as local Ethiopian languages, and trains teachers and librarians to cultivate a love of…
It’s that time of year again, when the Royals fade into obscurity with the likes of the Tampa Bay Rays. Wait, the Rays are batting for first place this year? Well, OK, it’s that time of year when the Royals fade into obscurity alone, apparently. Now in last place, the boys in blue may become desperate to attract fans. So…
“I’m Fuckin’ Dead” by Fag Cop, from I’m Fuckin’ Dead (Eat Records): Fag Cop’s I’m Fucking Dead is a fast and brutish EP that growls like a rat bike and stinks like a basement show. This Lawrence band plays blistering garage punk, with scummy guitars and raspy vocals distorted all to hell. A guitar grounds out during “Dope Womb”; somewhere,…
“Touch Me (But If Only You Knew How)” by the Beautiful Bodies, from Touch Me (self-released): The Beautiful Bodies’ debut, Touch Me, is an awkward and only occasionally rewarding combination of pale Yeah Yeah Yeahs mimickry and roaring classic rock. It’s as if Karen O hijacked Rush before either of the parties were fully formed. Bodies frontwoman Alicia Solo, for…
“Ex-Guru” by the Fiery Furnaces, from Widow City (Thrill Jockey): What took this NYC bro-sis outfit so blasted long to get into the live-album game? The mad-genius, labyrinthine-indie Pop-Tarts that Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger bake in the studio turn willy-nilly when they hit the stage, stretched like salt-water taffy or rudely squished into baffling, near-unrecognizable arrangements and styles — making…
Not regularly listening to the Age of Rockets? That probably means you’re either (a) allergic to Auto-Tune, or (b) not a MySpace-obsessed 14-year-old girl. These aren’t cheap shots – just listen to the vocoded utterings of lead singer Andrew Futral while checking out the doe-eyed “fan art” on the New York natives’ profile and see if you don’t agree. But…
For one evening every summer, the Liberty Memorial becomes the world’s biggest lighter, its simulated flame saluting a parade of rock-radio fixtures. Rockfest’s musical menu consists of McDonald’s entrées — the type of bands that satisfy millions using a basic formula. The bill’s most broadly respected group, headliner Stone Temple Pilots, spent the mid-’90s as a critical punch line, ridiculed…
