Across the country, celebrations spilled into the streets — at the gates of the White House, at Ground Zero, on college campuses. President Barack Obama had just announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden. Steve Drain watched the revelry on the 60-inch flat-screen TV hanging on his living-room wall. Drain, a devout member of Fred Phelps’ Westboro…
David Hasselhoff on Acid flirts with the possibility of having too much going on, with a genre-splicing jamtastic funk that is only one of such diverse elements as heavy-metal double-kick drums, guitars that sound as if they were recorded underwater, and a slap bass that’ll knock the taste of Red Hot Chili Peppers right out of your mouth. After ominously…
Iron Guts Kelly sounds like a crack squad of hardcore musicians preparing for battle, and frontman Robert “Boj” Stevens is the drill instructor, barking commands and threats. Sean Patrick Riley, Shawn Reynolds and Josh Leon back him like the most aggressive marching band ever assembled. The songs are menacing and threatening: hippies, Juggalos and junkies all come into the band’s…
Atlantic Fadeout’s debut, Better Run of Bad Luck, plays like a weathered book of short stories. It’s packed with tear-stained details, well-constructed jabs, hopeful dreams, and colorful battle cries. Abigail Henderson powers through every song with an intense vigor that most performers would envy. Amy Farrand, Chris Meck and Dutch Humphrey back Henderson’s voice with polished, bluesy ballads and amped-up…
Gypsy isn’t just any bigger-than-life story. It’s a showbiz story. And that has endeared it to generations of theatergoers. For many, Gypsy is the greatest and most beloved of all American musicals. The powerhouse team of Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne and Arthur Laurents (who died earlier this month) created a musical so immediately powerful and iconic that it has sunk…
The biggest stage that Quiet Corral has played to date was also its first. Last winter, the Lawrence band unleashed its Americana chamber folk in an admittedly strange spot: a sorority parking lot at the University of Kansas. Delta Gamma’s fifth annual battle-of-the-bands fundraiser, titled (of course) Delta Jamma, took place on a fold-out stage better suited for festivals than…
Having tackled obesity and Islamophobia in his first two films, Morgan Spurlock now takes aim at product placement and branding. According to Spurlock, Pom Wonderful paid a million dollars for the privilege of in-movie advertising, but it came with a host of demands, including final cut. You could accuse Spurlock of hypocrisy, but his featherweight film isn’t worth it. At…
There was nowhere to go but up after Pirates 3: At World’s End, which was a lot of sound and fury signifying utter contempt for its audience. Original trilogy director Gore Verbinski went off to direct Rango (good move), so reboot duties went to Chicago director Rob Marshall (uh-oh). On Stranger Tides isn’t a return to the grand form of…
Mel Gibson, who has said and done some indefensible things, delivers one of his finest performances in The Beaver. It’s possible that Gibson’s emotional disarray, the self-hatred audible on those infamous phone messages, is the very wellspring from which this odd art has emerged. Gibson plays Walter Black, a depressed toy executive. Not long after his wife, Meredith (Jodie Foster,…
Each year, among cranky film snobs who actually deign to pay attention to the Oscars, few categories cause conniptions as seismic as Best Foreign Language Film. To hardened cinephiles, the films that make it through the Academy’s balloting process appear to be the ones gruel-thin enough to offend the fewest people, but they’re also generally ignored by the mainstream audiences…
The only thing that’s a bit strange about Ramble on the Rails is that it isn’t held at Knuckleheads. For a night of song dedicated to “that long lonesome whistle of the steam engine,” the midtown setting is a bit far from the railroad’s winsome cry. (Unlike the famous East Bottoms blues bar, RecordBar isn’t known to shudder and shake…
Though the Greenhornes hail from Cincinnati, Ohio, the band was an honorary member of the Detroit garage revival after its formation in the late ’90s. Though occasionally straying into blues-psych territory, the Greenhornes prefer the soul-pop side of the garage equation. Originally a five-piece, the group was reduced to a trio shortly after the release of its third album, 2002’s…
The Airborne Toxic Event’s pulsing, chilly music — with the moody sweep and swirling keyboards of ’80s dark-wave revivalists such as the Killers and Interpol — moves with majestic aplomb. (Frontman Mikel Jollett even cites the Smiths in “Strange Girl,” off last month’s second album, All At Once.) Once an aspiring novelist, Jollett dove into music after his girlfriend broke…
No one can say that Lawrencians don’t love themselves some summertime, when many students head back home and Lawrence takes on a legitimate small-town vibe. The Spring Into Summer local music fest has become an annual celebration of that mass student exodus. Split between the Jackpot Music Hall and its neighbor, the Replay Lounge, the festival boasts an absolute bevy…
If white wine goes with fish,” George Carlin once asked, “do white grapes go with sushi?” There aren’t grapes of any variety on the menu at Drunken Fish, the three-month-old boutique sushi bistro in the Power & Light District, but there is a cocktail called a Japanese Viagra Shot made with sake, vodka and ponzu sauce, and topped with a…
You’re never too old to rebel against your parents. Take the 31-year old Dustin Ash, son of Wyandotte County Sheriff Don Ash. He’s accused of fleeing police during a traffic stop and ramming a police car. Johnson County prosecutors charged Ash with fleeing from a law-enforcement officer, aggravated battery on a law officer, eluding a law officer, driving with a…
Former Kansas City Councilman and parks commissioner Bob Lewellen died Saturday at age 73. The Star reported that Lewellen had been battling a number of health issues. To say Lewellen was active in city politics would be an understatement. He ran for mayor against Emanuel Cleaver in 1991. Lewellen lost by more than 6,000 votes. A “Lewellen for mayor” banner…
At this point in Sporting Kansas City’s epic 10-game road trip to start the MLS season, even fans who bleed Sporting Blue must be wondering why the team isn’t performing better. Take Saturday night’s game. Sporting initially took the lead, only to give it back on a Landon Donovan penalty kick just before halftime. And act two of the contest…
Hello, my name is iPad. I’ll be your server tonight … The pleasant waiter who asks you if you’ll be needing separate checks could soon be replaced by a tablet. CNN reports on the touch-screen phenomenon that is burgeoning in California, where math-challenged diners can peruse a menu, place orders through a tablet, and even play games at the table….
The Woodlands racetrack will host a tea party presidential convention in Kansas City, Kansas, at the end of September, KMBC’s Micheal Mahoney reported. The official announcement is expected to come Tuesday during a press conference at the Woodlands. The convention is slated for September 28 through October 2, according to Mahoney. The Rev. William Temple, leader of the Tea Party…
The Riot Room’s annual Local Artist Overthrow fought hard to take its place on one of the busiest weekends that Kansas City’s midtown has seen since the sun decided to make a seasonal appearance. With Rockfest raging down the road, and with that pub crawl we all love to hate and hate to love monopolizing the Saturday day drunk, Westport…
%{}% Last week former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich announced that he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination. The field of hopefuls features every stripe of conservative from Ron Paul, who recently called for legalizing drugs, to Mitch Daniels, who refreshing called for a truce on social issues and to aw-shucks Minnesota-nice Tim Pawlenty. Like those guys, Gingrich…
