Last night’s LKxRR show at the Granada, organized by Treet Ward of Lawrence’s Young Bull, ably demonstrated that a solid bill can pull a hundred people out on a holiday weekend. The show was stacked top-to-bottom with the finest heavy music the Lawrence and Kansas City areas have to offer, and there was no finer way to starting kicking 2016…
All Star Rock Bar, 7210 N.E. 43rd St., 816-452-2660: Another New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Mojo Moji featuring members Shane Evans and Ross Childress of Collective Soul, special guest Green River Kings, appetizer buffet, midnight toast, party favors; $20/$25, 8 p.m. The Bat Cave at Rhythm & Booze, 2111 Washington: BET’s Master of the Mix Champion DJ P, all-you-can-drink wells…
The MavericksIn 1989, the Mavericks came together in Miami. A quarter-century later, the group is keeping the party alive. In October, the Grammy-winning country outfit released All Night Live: Volume 1, another dose of pure pleasure: Cuban rhythms, old-fashioned rockabilly, even ska, all in fluid, joyful arrangements. (Lead singer Paul Malo’s unmistakably robust tenor remains the core sound.) But not…
For anyone who lives in one of Kansas City’s many neighborhoods without easy access to a grocery store, it sounds too good to be true: Instead of battling the weather, coordinating transportation and lugging a week’s worth of food back home, what if the store came to you? That is the simple premise behind Rollin’ Grocer, the Kansas City area’s…
Thursday, December 29File this one under: Heart, Not for the Faint of. Dog Eat Dog is the latest batshit movie from Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader, who disowned his last film and hasn’t exactly been a model of consistency since the 1970s.%{}%Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe play a pair of amoral ex-cons in this blackest of violent black comedies. It…
It’s been obvious since at least April, when Prince died, that 2016 wouldn’t be just any old lamentable year. No, 2016 was now a garbage year.And then it got worse.Every Trump tweet, every WTF celebrity death, every battlefield bulletin made a bad thing worse. This was now a colossal monster-mudder dumptruck of a year, its course set for the heart…
Tapas: Spanish for tricky.The imported custom-turned-gimmick of small, shareable plates does not easily align with the American way of eating. We guard our fries zealously from encroaching girlfriends. We live the Louis C.K. joke that a meal isn’t over until we hate ourselves. We prefer a one-Randian-superman, one-plate dining experience.So the all-tapas night out is not embarked upon without a…
History seems destined to judge 2016 a flaming, rancid dumpster fire. Sounds right, but that doesn’t mean you have to usher out an awful 12 months with awful food and drink. Not at all. In fact, here are 12 worthy options for the year’s final food and drinks. Prix fixe is largely the name of the game on New Year’s…
Rachael parks the truck by the river and we all walk to the shore. We look up at the top of the hill. The sheriff’s department is present, and there are a few snipers behind rolls of razor wire.Among the protesters, I see only unarmed people — men and women, elders and children, standing and looking quietly at the deputies…
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon loves sports metaphors. He once described his governing philosophy as “three yards and a cloud of dust,” the strategy of the legendary football coach Woody Hayes.So it’s fitting that Nixon, in his final days in office, has been talking (and tweeting) a lot about sports, specifically the public’s role in building stadiums.First, Nixon took umbrage with…
If a life well lived is evidenced by the relationships we create, Jennifer Maloney – known for her work as executive chef at Cafe Sebastienne – built a wonderful one. Maloney passed away this morning after falling ill and being admitted to the ICU on Friday. The cause of death is private at this time. Below are just a few of…
The terrible news just keeps coming this year, and this time it’s almost cruel. We learned this morning that Murray’s Homemade Ice Creams (4120 Pennsylvania Avenue), a 32-year midtown destination (which this year once again earned the top slot for ice cream in The Pitch’s Best of Kansas City readers’ poll), has closed. Not just for the season, as usual,…
The murder rate in Kansas City, Missouri, is up this year. There have been 126 homicides, an increase from the 111 homicides in 2015, which was also more violent than recent years. Other cities are also struggling high murder rates. The 2016 murder rate is projected to be 14 percent higher than last year in 26 of the country’s 30…
The FlooziesMatt and Mark Hill must have sipped on some funky juice in the womb. Whatever weird and imaginative childhood they had growing up in Lawrence — perhaps a steady diet of Back to the Future and Parliament Funkadelic — it’s led them down the path of electronic music. Today, the brothers are best known for their work as the…
Christmas, libations and live jazz meet this weekend at Green Lady Lounge. The red-draped club opens both Christmas Eve and December 25, with trumpeter Ryan Thielman leading a trio and quartets. At 6 p.m. on December 24, he’s joined by Everett Freeman on organ and DeAndre Manning on bass. Freeman (on piano) and Manning make up half of the Jazz…
Gov.-elect Eric Greitens announced this morning that he is appointing Anne L. Precythe from North Carolina to be the director of the Missouri Department of Corrections.Precythe, assuming that she is confirmed by the state senate, would replace George Lombardi, who resigned as director last week after a story by The Pitch revealed that the state had quietly paid millions of…
Thursday, December 22If you see only one movie in the theater this week, make it Jackie. Natalie Portman has been rightly praised for her prickly, multilayered performance as the most famous widow of the 20th century, in a movie that opened yesterday.%{}%But much of the credit for this wrenching examination of JFK’s assassination and its immediate aftermath goes to director…
One look at the best performers at the box office and you might get the idea that 2016 was a weak year for movies. The Top 25 (each of which grossed at least $100 million) contains the usual mix of animated movies, superheroes, franchises, sequels and remakes.But the glut of mainstream escapism — whether effective (Doctor Strange) or offensive (Batman…
Twitter handle: @kimbikeskcInstagram: kim_horganHometown: I consider Kansas City to be my hometown now, but I was born in California and grew up in Oklahoma.Current neighborhood: Prairie VillageWhat I do: After being laid off last year, I spent some time doing photography, working at a bike shop — and anything else that interested me — while I looked for the right…
Pool drinks obviously feel aspirational this time of year, but you’ll have another option for your cooler starting in January. Torn Label Brewing Company is about to issue three of its regular-rotation beers in 12-ounce cans: Alpha Pale, House Brew and Monk & Honey.“It felt like the right move at the right time,” says Rafi Chaudry, co-founder and CEO of…
The tattooed cooks behind the counter at Grinders follow with their eyes as Trey Hock and I rush into the restaurant’s men’s room together. We shut the door behind us and flip on the light switch.In the weak glow, we see a pile of ice melting in the urinal. Some past patron has used a blade to etch his thoughts…
Gov. Sam Brownback’s holiday gift to the hardworking Kansas statehouse press corps is the end-of-the year sit-down he grants reporters, who are invited individually or in pairs to his inner-office sanctum. There, like an understuffed Santa, the sweater-clad governor dispenses a bag full of excuses, falsehoods, underwhelming plans and promises he can’t keep.Brownback is always a pretty unjolly Santa, but…
Gail McCann Beatty, a state legislator from Kansas City, is calling for Gov.-elect Eric Greitens to conduct a nationwide search to replace the embattled Missouri Department of Corrections director who last week abruptly announced his impending departure.George Lombardi, the department’s director, sent an e-mail to the more than 11,000 employees who work under him on December 15. It reads, in…
Who gets to wear the black hood?The Missouri Court of Appeals in Kansas City considered that question last week. A three-judge panel heard arguments in a case over whether the Missouri Department of Corrections can keep secret the suppliers of its lethal-injection drugs.The department has tried to expand the protections of the state’s so-called “black hood law,” which conceals the…
