Since tooting their first note as a band in May 1998, the members of the Grand Marquis haven’t taken more than a week off in 11 years. Add in the four (soon to be five) albums and 175 gigs a year and that, dear friends, is the portrait of one hardworking band. Of course, anyone who has been to a…
Katlyn Conroy’s debut record, I Think I’ll Stay Inside, opens with soft keys and sleigh bells. She’s singing about a Kansas winter and all the unfortunate things that come with it — the loneliness, the bitter wind. The rest of the album focuses on the struggle to overcome that loneliness and turn it into something productive. Conroy, who sings with…
Jim Button is one of Kansas City’s more melodically astute songwriters, employing adventurous chords and offbeat changes to conjure his own brand of ’60s-tinged guitar pop. But those who thought they knew Button may be surprised by his new foray as Continents. The sounds of the home-recorded project have a darker and more experimental tone, with songs that are more…
I’m wading through a sea of self-proclaimed virgins at the Rock the Light music festival at Starlight Theatre September 5. The first familiar face I see beams a 1,000-watt smile and issues an order: “Go to the Time Warner stage at 2:45!” It’s Carson Land, the handsome blond frontman for the band with the most misleading name in Kansas City:…
As striking as Brother Ali’s bio might be, what makes Minnesota’s best-known white albino Muslim hip-hop artist great is the swinging, preacherly sonorousness of his voice and how he puts it to intimate use when talking about “us” — as in, whoever is identifying with what he’s saying. He’s a rare cultural amalgam, not because his between-worlds experience is so…
Set in the bucolic suburbs of early 19th-century London, Jane Campion’s Bright Star recounts the love affair between a tubercular young poet and the fashionable teenager next door. Fanny Brawne (Australian actress Abbie Cornish) is a self-assured, imperious girl who makes her entrance in a dress of her own design, accessorized with a bright-red, yellow-plumed stovepipe hat. She immediately gets…
In a biz full of loudmouths and attention whores, Booker T. Jones lets his Hammond B3 do the talking. As the organist for Stax house band Booker T. and the M.G.’s, Jones helped give instrumental rock a swift kick of country-fried soul during the early ’60s, with such groovers as “Green Onions,” and laid down key textures on classic records…
There’s a fantastically phallic billboard in the heart of Westport. The advertisment, which features a cartoonish rendering of a red rocket, reads “Harrah’s VooDoo Lounge: Re-Launched.” It would be an apt tagline for R&B singer Ginuwine, who performs at the VooDoo Lounge Sunday in support of A Man’s Thoughts, his first new album in nearly four years. Rocketed to fame…
Since his 1996 grunge-rock documentary Hype!, Doug Pray has become an even more adept assembler of polished images. And where else would that tendency lead but the world of advertising? Most filmmakers moonlight in the field, but here, Pray trains his camera on the guys behind the ads — the ’60s boomer revolutionaries who advanced the field out of the…
Whereas we used to know them by the Trail of Dead, now we know them by their ability to write memorable songs and make high-quality albums. Austin’s …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead has been giving copy editors fits for years — not to mention pissing off the owners of the clubs they trashed en route…
In western Blue Springs, there is an ordinary home with an ordinary yard. And in that yard is a shed. With its rust-hued exterior, it seems no different from any other shed. But step inside and ye shall enter the Slowdown’s studio. Thrust within walls spattered red, green and brown are all the band comforts: instruments, equipment, spare studio foam,…
It’s been awhile since I’ve eaten in a restaurant that was so ridiculously understaffed that I was tempted to get up out of my chair and help the stressed-out — and solo — waitress clear plates and refill water glasses. It’s a natural instinct for anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant: You feel for the servers who are…
Sparkling, joyous and black as pitch, the wonders of the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s marvelous new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods could manifest themselves only in the theater. Director Moisés Kaufman and the Rep’s distinguished design team have dreamed up a sumptuous fairy tale, an enchanted forest touched by nightmare, that matches the dark allure of Sondheim’s score….
A year ago, Darryl Burton walked out of the Jefferson City Correctional Center wearing state-issued gray pants and a white T-shirt. Today, on the anniversary of his release, he’s slipping on a gold suit from Harold Pener. Tonight, Burton will be honored at the West Side Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis. The church’s Page Avenue façade features a mural…
Dear Mexican: In Garfield strips in the funny pages earlier this year, Garfield was wearing a sombrero and taking siestas. While cute and all, isn’t that the sort of thing we have been striving to stop? What was Jim Davis thinking? Maybe he needs a refresher course in not making pendejadas. Odio Odie Dear Wab: Garfield is still around? Have…
Title: Berdella: The Movie Date: 2009 Directed by: Paul South and Bill Taft Discovered at: My mailbox at The Pitch The poster promises: Either David Cross playing George Costanza or Jason Alexander playing Tobias Fünke Representative quotes: Bob: “I marinate all my meat and beans in a … nice … special … homemade sauce. One bite, and you never ever…
Letters: “Smooth Operator,” September 17 Grown-up Talk This isn’t a letter as much as a request. After reading, then rereading Paul Jones’ letter to the editor last week, I wasn’t able to find anything specific in the gentleman’s comments. He referred to a “dictator” who is “transforming” our “once-great nation” but provided no specifics. Paul, Walter Mondale put it best…
As if piloting a speeding hulk of metal wasn’t enough, Kansas City drivers often feel compelled to bully cyclists who dare to ride on local roadways. There are precious few bike commuters who haven’t been the target of hurled obscenities — hurled objects, even. The last Friday of every month, though, that urban hierarchy turns upside down. The Critical Mass…
%{}% Let’s try this again. The trial of Scott Roeder, the man accused of killing Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, is now scheduled to begin on January 11, 2010. Jury selection is scheduled for the the 11th and the trial will start after. We’ll let you know if anything changes because it probably will. Categories: News Tags: abortion, George Tiller,…
One-time Kansas City, Missouri, School District Superintendent Anthony Amato has been fired from his new gig in Stockton, California, The Kansas City Star reports. This isn’t a surprise — even after 14 months on the job. During his KC tenure, Amato pissed off just about everyone involved in education. Unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons; he rammed canned programs into…
New lead singer for Alice In Chains William DuVall recently listed his “ten songs that blow me away” over at AOL Music, and surprisingly, they don’t suck. Let’s put all our cards on the table, all right? Replacement singers, especially for artists with as distinctive a voice as Layne Staley, have a lot to live up to. And, frankly, we…
It’s been three weeks since we reported that the city was looking at changing the requirements for bars with 3 a.m. liquor licenses. All of this was in the name of making late-night-boozing in Kansas City synonymous with tourism areas (exemptions in the proposed resolution allowed 3 a.m. liquor licenses for bars in entertainment districts like the Power & Light…
