If you had to pick one band to represent Kansas City in a national battle of the bands, would there be any better choice than the Life and Times? These guys have consistently been mammoth since their inception in 2002 — and don’t forget singer and guitarist Allen Epley’s decade-long run in Shiner prior to that. Tragic Boogie is the…
Just when you’re sure the cathartic wail and supercharged sexuality of real, big-beat rock and roll has breathed its last, you suddenly become aware that it’s still alive. You can see it moving, discern its growl. And, fittingly, with middle fingers first coming from the U.K., the Horrors come into view. Clad in tight black clothes with unbelievable hairdos, these…
Ever watch an old episode of Three’s Company, focusing only on the laugh track? Once you think about it being there, the prerecorded guffaws are all you can hear. Ever since we envisioned the Gaslight Anthem’s 2008 breakthrough, The ’59 Sound, as a new Replacements record, all we can hear is the voice of the gruff, soulful pre-Singles Paul Westerberg…
Critiquing Franz Ferdinand is a lot like critiquing Junior Senior or the Ting Tings: What’s the point? As long as the girls can shimmy and shake to it and the guys can follow right behind, it’s a smashing success. Anyone who dug on FF’s first two albums would have a hard time making a case against Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. The…
Fighting purports to offer an insider’s view of an illicit underground subculture that comes alive just as the city’s ordinary, decent denizens go to bed. Here, it’s the world of bare-knuckles brawling, whose competitors fight simply because they enjoy it or because there’s money to be made, not out of emasculated rage against an overly commodified society, like the angry…
Earth follows three animal families — polar bears scavenging for food in the High Arctic; elephants trekking across the Kalahari Desert in search of water; a humpback whale and her young calf on their annual 4,000-mile migration — as they struggle to survive the unrelenting harshness of their disparate climates, a task made all the more difficult by a dangerously…
On his fourth and longest release so far (at nine songs), Lawrence piano-banger Charles S. McVey puts his recording-school degree to extensive use. Piled high with booming keys, isolation-booth drums, power guitars, layered vocals, and the occasional flute flurry thrown in for good measure, Animal virtually smells of the polished wood of a fancy recording studio. As a singer, McVey…
It’s the night of Cherry Tree Parade’s CD-release party, and the Thursday-night crowd at Czar Bar doesn’t know what to expect from the young local band. Having never caught a show myself, I’m hard-pressed to find anyone who can even point out one of the four members to me. An acquaintance of mine hasn’t heard of them. But like many…
Greg Enemy hops onstage at the Brick in stepped-on Keds and a vintage Kansas City Jazz T-shirt. He dips the mic stand like a dance partner, rearing back with an I feel good holler as the first bars of James Brown’s “The Payback” flood the room. Leave it to the new school to take us back to the old school….
I was having a particularly stressful day last week and I said to myself, You need to get away! You need a tropical vacation on a Caribbean shore! Yes, that’s exactly what I said to myself. But before I dragged my suitcase out of the closet and pressed my swimming trunks and all that, I took a quick look at…
The Soloist opens with newspapers thudding onto lawns, a quaint sight that makes the movie practically a period piece, even though the events that inspired it took place within the last four years. The movie turns on a series of columns that began in 2005 by Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez. An old-school vox populi whose writings about his…
Douglass Freed and Barbara Rogers, who paint in wildly different directions, are unified by their attachment to the decorative: Freed to the drama of the divided canvas and Rogers to the ornamental flourish. These impulses serve the art now on display at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art — and sometimes undermine it. Freed’s moody iterations of water, clouds and bites of…
Tonya Davis lingers at a stop sign just east of where the Paseo meets 49th Street, looking left and right for lawbreakers. They’re easy to spot on this cloudy Friday morning. Davis, a longtime employee in the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Works Department, has the heat cranked up to Saharan temperatures, but her voice is cold. “See? Just from right…
Last week, I played watchman at the Power & Light District, walking through the downtown fun-o-rama and pulling on doors to see how many of them actually opened. Parts of the taxpayer-subsidized district opened a year and a half ago. Others parts remain dark. I encountered two dozen or so sets of locked doors. Tarps in festive colors hung in…
Last Wednesday, April 15, Americans had two choices: Make sure they had filed their income-tax returns by midnight or make sure they had filed their returns before going outside to shake their angry fists at the government and pretending they were willing to face prosecution for not paying their due. Across the country, newsrooms beefed up their usual stock stories…
Dear Mexican: First of all, please don’t think that I’m a self-loathing Mexican; I was born in the United States to northern Mexican parents. As far as I know, my ancestry is just Indian, Spanish and a little French. For some strange reason, I have developed an intense fascination — and, you might say, love — for Arab culture, language,…
Title: This week, an assortment of alarming medical correspondence Author: Various deans, doctors and professors associated with KU Medical Center Date: 1930s and ’40s Discovered at: KU Medical Center Research Library Representative quote: “Now it is true that Dr. Tracy had some brains in a container when the night watchmen went through the building.” Recently, your Crap Archivist enjoyed a…
This week, we bring you another Letters page of reader comments at Pitch.com. David Martin’s April 16 column about federal stimulus money paying for brand-new buses — even as the Area Transportation Authority is cutting routes — brought feedback and a driving tip: “The purpose of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is to create or save jobs. But if…
Earlier today, the former grunge (and now pop) wailer tweeted the following: Cornell, who is playing tonight in Kansas City at the VooDoo Lounge, is quite a Twitter-holic, as you’ll soon see if you begin following him @chriscornell. Always hip to the latest World Wide Web trends, CNN recently spoke with the Timbaland cohort about his Twitter habits and his…
Dear City of Kansas City, Missouri, Would it kill you to drop a pylon or two next time you take out a chunk of Main Street that’s four inches deep? Thanks, Taxpayer Categories: News Tags: City of Kansas City, metal plates, missouri
The corner storefront at 900 West 39th Street, the former location of the beloved — well, by me anyway — Pangea Cafe & Market, is soon to open again as a Mexican restaurant. The new venue, according to the building’s owner, Greg Patterson, will be the Caliente Grill, operated by Mary Jo Goetz and her mother. I peeked into the…
That didn’t take too long. Kansas Congressman Todd Tiahrt. Less than a week after calling Oxy-numbed mouth breather Rush Limabaugh “just an entertainer,” Tiahrt is back in his place. Sort of. Fresh from his spanking, Tiahrt made his spokesman, Sam Sackett, apologize for him. Sackett told The Wichita Eagle: “The congressman believes Rush is a great leader of the conservative…
I don’t claim to be the ultimate expert on this subject, but the closet thing I’ve found to the kind of pizza you can buy on the streets of New York City are the thin wedges of pie sold at The Original Antonio’s Pizzeria & Walnut Deli at 527 Walnut. The secret, of course, is getting a piece of pizza soon…
%{}% The people of Cameron, Missouri, may finally know why a scary number of people there have been diagnosed with brain tumors. A lawsuit filed with the help of Erin Brockovich blames sludge containing high levels of cancer causing hexavalent chromium from Prime Tanning Corp. of St. Joseph, which was given to farmers to use as fertilizer. The Kansas City…
