Category Archives: Entertainment
Hearne: Olive Branch Alert; Warring Festivals Render Buzz Beach Ball a Beach Bust
About Friday’s Buzz Beach Ball at Livestrong Sporting Park in KCK…
Sources say the concert was a stiff, likely losing in the neighborhood of a quarter million bucks. Which comes on the heels of reportedly seven-figure losses the promoters of Kanrocksas, suffered 12 days earlier. (By the way, word on the street is Kanrocksas may return next year. The idea being that most big fests don’t break into the black until the second or third year.)
But face it, it’s been a long, ridiculously hot summer and entertainment times have been tough. With some exceptions, Arrowhead and Farm Aid to name two.
According to freelancer / blogger Noah Homola – who reviewed Beach Ball for the Star – there may have been, at its peak, 10,000 people at Livestrong for Incubus. In other words, half a house.
(By the way, Homola did a nice job covering the fest. Not to mention bringing a 30-year-old’s perspective to the review party rather than the newspaper’s usual 50s and up suspects.)
Now here’s what the entertainment community is saying about the red ink churned up at Beach Ball and Kanrocksas…
Sounds Good: Buzz Beach Ball@LIVESTRONG, HOD & Grisly Hand@Knuckleheads, Quixotic@Crossroads(FREE), Dumptruck Butterlips@Perry Bar & Grill, Janet Jackson@Starlight
Have you ever rolled up to someone’s house to pick them up, blasting Janet Jackson or something?
Then, before they come out, you put in a different cd, cue it up right at the exact moment that makes you seem like you’re the coolest ever.
And when they get in and ask what you’re listening to, you say something nonchalant like, "Umm, oh, that’s the new Bon Iver album. It’s been stuck in my player for weeks."
Then you drive to some cool-ass, acrobatic/ hip hop/ electronica show that is kinda like Cirque du Soleil but with awesome beats and bolster your coolness even further. I mean, Brandon Draper is there, it’s in an arts district, and it’s totally free.
This is going great, you think. Then, on the way home, she finds the Janet Jackson cd and asks, "Is this yours?"
You scramble, "Are you kidding? That’s my little sister’s. Janet sucks, she just rode the coat tails of her brother for 30 years."
And then she says, "Oh, I love this album. It’s really sexy."
You make a mental note to slap yourself in the mouth when you get home…alone.
Never happened to you? I can’t be the only one…
Edelman: STARLIGHT GETS IT SMART & FINAL WITH XANADU
I never could figure out why they called that store "Smart & FInal…"
I mean, it’s got all the same crap as a low rent Target. What’s so Smart and Final about that?
Then I checked out XANADU at Starlight this week– now THAT’s Smart and Final. The final show of Swope Park’s 2011 season is about as clever as outdoor musical theater gets. Like I said, Smart and Final.
Douglas Carter Beane writes terrific plays (THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED at the Unicorn several seasons back is more than proof of that). And his book for the musical of XANADU is a hoot. Instead of slogging through the sentimentality of your usual boy meets girl songfest, XANADU offers up "a children’s musical, but for 40 year-old gay men" (per Beane).
Its whipsmart send up of the horrible big budget film that set back movie musicals at least a decade (and killed off Gene Kelly) is chock full of those kinds of zingers— including a few none too blunt barbs at the whole juke box musical genre of which XANADU is an audacious member.
Donnelly: Farm Aid at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, August 13, 2011
It was the 26th Farm Aid but the first-ever concert at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park.
How did it go? How did it sound?
How was the crowd? How high was Willie?
Were there any kinks that need worked out before this weekend’s Buzz Beach Ball featuring Jane’s Addiction, Bush, and others?
Yeah, a few…
Sounds Good: Mardi Diaz@Bottleneck, Farm Aid@ LIVESTRONG, Pitch Awards@Uptown
What a month for music in KC…
Last week, My Morning Jacket decimated the Uptown’s face.
Then Kanrocksas dropped its bomb on KCK’s punk ass.
Coming soon is Steely Dan at Starlight, Bon Iver at the Uptown, and Jane’s Addiction at LIVESTRONG.
Not to mention Yonder Mountain String Band and TV On The Radio.
But first, some old school musical legends would like a word with you…
Donnelly: Muse@Kanrocksas Day 2, August 6, 2011
Day two of Kanrocksas boasted what I considered the better lineup of the two days – Muse, The Black Keys, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Cage the Elephant, and a bunch of others.
If you can’t tell, I’m more into the rock than the electronic and hip hop stuff.
Saturday night’s headliner was the band I was most looking forward to, English prog-rockers, Muse. I mean, how can you go wrong with the band that Queen’s Brian May called "probably the greatest live act in the world today"?
You can’t .
Muse emerged to warning sirens blaring, right on time at 11 p.m. – just like nearly every other act of the weekend, the on time part, not the sirens – and they were coming hard right off the bat, with one of their biggest hits, “Uprising.”
Too bad the crowd was probably half that of the previous night for Eminem…
Donnelly: Kanrocksas 2011 Wrap Up
So what’s my takeaway from the inaugural Kanrocksas festival at the Legends?
First, I have a question:
What was the actual attendance? No, wait, even better:
How many tickets were really sold?
I’d like to know.
If you can answer that you win half of a happy hour cocktail and 30 minutes of meaningful conversation with none other than KCC godfather Hearne Christopher, Jr.
On to the observations…
Hearne: Kanrocksas 2011, The Gnarly, the Obnoxious & the Excellent
Here’s the deal on Kanrocksas….
Forget the official accounts from newspaper reporters who went for free, get majorly schmoozed and aren’t about to bite anything resembling the hands that feed them. I think readers can smell something funny when they read headlines with expressions like "top notch" and "world class" and are unable to locate a single critical comment in the coverage.
Donnelly: Kanrocksas Day 1, Friday August 5, 2011
Oh, it was hot all right….jpg)
Thousands of music fans flocked to the Kansas Speedway this past weekend to partake in one of the weirdest named festivals ever: Kanrocksas.
When I first arrived I noticed the main stage was packed out with half naked twenty-somethings pumping their fists in the air.
Who was playing?
It sounded like a DJ, spinning tunes at the Granada or something. Nope, it was none other than Bassnectar, spinning records for probably the biggest crowd of the festival.
What happened to live musicians?
They’ve been rendered obsolete.
Or so I thought until the sun went down and I wandered to the second stage…
Donnelly: My Morning Jacket@The Uptown Theater, August 3, 2011
There may not be a more interesting personality in rock music right now than My Morning Jacket’s enigmatic front man, Jim James.
During his band’s Wednesday night concert at the Uptown Theater, James mentioned that the brightly painted interior of the venue made him feel like he was in a small village in Mexico. (Maybe that was because of the heat and humidity inside the Uptown. Or maybe that’s just James.)
He raised his open palms to the sky in what looked like a pagan rain dance while spewing guttural shrieks at the sky. And at times he wore a hooded cape that looked like it came straight out of Sleepy Hollow.
Obviously he and his band have ample style, but their substance is what really sets them apart as one of the premier live acts around right now. And Wednesday night they delivered big time.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of openers, Delta Spirit…
Mancow: Changing Times Alert, Lame Comics Today Groupie Magnets
Watching a fascinating documentary on the legends of stand-up comedy…
George Carlin says "Comedians (of the 60’s and 70’s) never had groupies. If you were a woman that went home with a stand-up comic, it was the equivalent of going home with the monkey instead of the organ grinder."
HA!
Mancow: Paul McCartney Cranks to Life @ Wrigley Field in Chicago
Paul McCartney on a HOT summer nite in Chicago took a couple of cranks to get started like my old Chevy Impala in winter…
And everyone there seemed more content just being in the same vicinity of the legend, than they did being swept up in the energy of the concert.
After his facelift he looks like an old English Python Woman now to me…
But Sir Paul was exuberant and very much game @ Wrigley Field.
Sounds Good: My Morning Jacket & Delta Spirit@Uptown; Eminem, Muse, Ween @Kanrocksas
This week is looking like one of the best of the summer if you’re a live music fan in KC.
There is literally something for everyone, as long as you don’t mind getting a little hot and sweaty.
You don’t mind, do you KC?
I mean, at this point hasn’t your right elbow developed a callus from being burned so often on your center console?
Barbarick: Even Foolish Dreams Come True: Cinderella @ Starlight 07/26/11
For a story hell-bent on making the audience wish it were the protagonists, Starlight’s production of Cinderella succeeded.
It did a great job of making me wish I was a member of the ensemble – one of the nameless, nearly faceless human props. If I could be so fortunate, all I’d do is dance with an attractive member of the opposite sex, wear brilliant costumes that accentuate the better parts of my body, look happy, sad or puzzled (when appropriate), sing choruses (with not too much passion), take my bow, then pick up my paycheck after the curtain dropped.
No eternal love, no happily-ever-after, but I’d feel honest because I’d have said nothing – would not have declared a passion I did not demonstrate.
Sounds Good: Cowboy Indian Bear@Jackpot, Hearts of Darkness@Legends, Hottie@Stanford’s
Think of this weekend as a little warmup…
You know, go out Friday, see a few good bands, have a drink or two. Wake up Saturday with a dry mouth and ringing in your ears.
Then Saturday hit it even harder.
Drink more. See more bands that are even louder and more rockin’. Lose even more of your already diminished hearing.
Why, you ask?
Well, Wednesday, on August 3rd at the Uptown, My Morning Jacket is going to rip your damn face off three times before you hit the ground if you’re not ready for it. This is an absolutely can’t miss show that also features one of my new favorites bands, Delta Spririt, doing the opening honors.
So go out this weekend, feel some bass pounding in your lungs, and get ready…
Donnelly: Bela Fleck and Bruce Horsnby at Crossroads KC, July 22, 2011
Bela Fleck has been described in a lot of different ways.
"Best banjo player ever."
"Musical buffet."
"Humblest superstar I know."
And it makes sense, because musically, he is a virtuoso, who moves effortlessly through styles and genres – and sometimes even makes up entirely new ones – while plying his trade alongside musicians from every conceivable background and style.
But until Friday night I had never heard Fleck described the way Flecktones bassist, Victor Wooten, did…
Sounds Good: Old 97’s@Crossroads TONIGHT!; Blitzen Trapper@Riot Room; Bela Fleck & Bruce Hornsby@Crossroads
Have you ever written a song before?
If you have, you probably thought it was really great at first, really original and profound. Maybe you got the balls to play it for a friend, and then tried to gauge their reaction. But inevitably, their reaction didn’t match your high opinion of the artistic merit.
“What do they know about music?” you thought.
Then a few days later you went back to it and realized what a sappy, derivative, huge piece of shit your song is, amiright?
Now imagine that your friend is Bob Dylan. And you are re-writing the lyrics to one of his most iconic songs.
This is not going to go well.
That is, unless you’re Rhett Miller, the boyish front man of the Old 97’s, who sat silent and nervous while Bobby D himself read Miller’s new words to the classic, “Desolation Row.”
“He turns down, he says, a hundred requests like this out of hand every day,” Miller recently told Dan Weiss of Village Voice. “I had to type out the lyrics and let Dylan sit there and read my lyrics. The next day I got the call that Dylan likes it, and he likes it enough to give us half the publishing on it, which we didn’t even ask for.”
Photo Essay: Rob Zombie at Sandstone Amphitheater, July 16, 2011
We sent KCC photog, Katie Grogan, out this past weekend to see what was going on at Sandstone Amphitheater.
Her report?
Lots of sweat, some hard hitting bands, and of course, zombies.
Enjoy the pics…
Donnelly: Gin? Check. Juice? Check. Snoop Dogg Coming To Crossroads July 26th
Try this out: Ask your mom if she’s ever heard of Snoop Doggy Dogg.
I bet she has, and I bet she knows he’s a rapper.
And I bet she even knows that with so much drama in the LBC it’s kinda hard being Snoop D-O Double G.
Okay, maybe not that last part, but it just goes to show you what a ridiculously wide swath the Doggfather’s career has carved out…
Today: What’s in a Name? Jazz Club Owner Changes Name…Again!
Where to begin…
See, there’s this woman who worked her way up through hard charging, powerful partying and blind faith into becoming the most powerful and influential person on the Kansas City jazz scene. She’s from India, of all places and you probably know her as Beena.
For me it’s a bit more complicated…
