KC Confidential.com

Knock-knock! Who’s there? Weekend! Weekend, who? Weekend make it, but we’d better get going before it’s time to punch the clock again.

Attention and good morning, fellow citizens. Welcome to the first official day of the three-day Labor Day weekend holiday. Time to rise and shine and cockle-doodle-doo something just for the fun of it.

I know that some of you started celebrating early on Friday. Hell, some of you started celebrating early on the Friday before last year’s Labor Day weekend and haven’t stopped since.

In any event, it’s time to nominally detail some of the essential falderol that makes weekends worth the wait, even for those for whom every day is a Saturday. Ready, set, kick back! Continue reading

I almost lost my mind watching my Kansas City Chiefs lose to the Philadelphia Eagles in Friday’s preseason home opener at Arrowhead Stadium.

But it wasn’t the game that threatened my hold on sanity. It was the totally distracting, please-make-it-stop advertising on the high-tech HD ribbon board extending around the entire inner circle of Arrowhead.

The board’s video overkill promoted future football games, the Chiefs Cheerleaders calendar, soft drinks, beer and so much more. It qualified as the most exasperating thing I’ve encountered in 20 years as a Chiefs season ticket holder. And that’s pretty exasperating.

To say that the board – let’s just call it the “ad ribbon” – constantly sidetracked my focus from the game on the field only begins to communicate the inappropriate pummeling taken by my attention span. Continue reading

You can ham it up or pig out this weekend. Wait a sec. Why not both?

Other than doing some sort of gratuitous mental or physical harm to yourself, there’s no reason not to stretch your swinish side when it comes to partaking in the squealing laughter of “The Producers” at Starlight Theatre and the gastric self-indulgence of Bacon-Fest in Waldo.

Separately, these events can do only so much to transport you from routine responsibility. Together, they can slather on enough crazy distraction to make you want to blow off work on Monday. And if you don’t have to work on Monday, then you already know what to do.

Now how about a few details to go with your double downward spiral? Continue reading

Credulity took a sock to the jaw this weekend, although it took a little while for the blow to sink in for thousands attending Chicago Comic Con at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Ill.

Everyone I saw rummaging through boxes of comic books mostly devoted to the exploits of implausible characters appeared bewildered when the initial announcement was made that former Ill. Governor Rod Blagojevich would be a late addition to the guest list at the annual event catering to fantasy fans.

Only a few days earlier, “Blago” had been convicted on one count of lying to federal agents and more than a dozen counts of wearing silly hair that looked too much like a toupee.

He really needs to do something about that noggin, don’t you think?

In any case, here’s a disgraced guy facing up to five years in the clink – and probably worse when the government finally gets its act together – and he’s charging tax-paying citizens $80 to have their picture taken with him and $50 for his autograph in the very same state he violated the public trust. Continue reading

Rufus Wainwright unquestionably had creative coin at his Sunday night concert at the Midland by AMC.

The virtuoso Canadian performer spent it extravagantly with 600 fans by singing his handsome head off and flourishing behind a grand piano in a show clearly intended to offer flip sides of the same polished piece of theatrical tender.

Wainwright silently entered stage left, looking like Nosferatu meets Edward Scissorhands poured into a black dress  that dragged a bizarrely long train behind him. His face was self-consciously vacant as his methodical gate eventually took him to the piano, where he proceeded to sing and play the entirety of his latest album, “All Days are Nights: Songs for Lulu,” including adaptations of several Shakespeare sonnets.

There was no applause from the audience – nor would there be for the concert’s entire first half – due to a pre-show request that Wainwright not be interrupted during his melancholy song cycle. A screen showed video of a giant eye – sometimes several at once – opening and closing with its eyelid painted black.

Affected? Obviously. Gutsy? That, too – because, in one way or another, the graveyard gravitas was connected to the illness and death in January of Wainwright’s mother, folk singer Kate McGarrigle. Continue reading

Another Friday, another excuse for my senses of wanderlust and wonder to explore the possibilities of go and do in Kansas City.

Call it wanderment…hey, that’s not bad. Not as good as the actual weekend, of course, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

Just consider it lucky that none of my meandering suggestions go down today – Friday the 13th. Yeah, I’m going to tell you about them. But they’re all actually on Saturday or Sunday. So it’s safe. Not to worry. No problem.

Still, in case anyone might be a tad superstitious – not me, mind you – let’s get on with it before my computer crashes or something. Did I just say that? Um, you know, whatever I can do for others.

First up: Corvette love! Continue reading

He didn’t sing the song – and probably wouldn’t be interested in mustering the will to do so at this stage of his career – but the Bob Dylan whom several thousand fans paid homage to Saturday at Starlight Theatre could well have been a bewildering character in his 1966 magnum opus, “Desolation Row.”

Along with Cinderella, Romeo, the Phantom of the Opera, Ophelia, Casanova, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Good Samaritan, insurance men, fishermen, mermaids, calypso singers, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood and Cain and Abel, the 69-year-old Dylan would have fit right in with the epic song’s odd cast as a once-divine serenader who now struggles to merely sputter to members of the human carnival.

Or to get overtly metaphorical: Dylan onstage is a dedicated yet aged working man with lots of nails in his tool box, but little strength left to usefully wield the hammer.

The genius songwriter proved for the umpteenth time that his singing voice is totally shot and he no longer has any stage presence to speak of. It might help if he bothered to speak to the audience, which he essentially doesn’t. So other than to provide a viewing for those who wish to extol him in person, perhaps Dylan should just stop wasting everyone’s time by performing in concert.

Who am I to suggest such a thing? Continue reading

How does it f-e-e-e-e-e-l to be Bob Dylan? Like a rolling stone, of course, and not just figuratively.

The totally unpredictable, phenomenally rule-changing, absolutely one and only, incredibly influential Robert Zimmerman may be more tangled up in blue than forever young these days. But he just keeps rollin’ and tumblin’ around the globe and sharing his epic catalog of words and music that – I’ll just say it – changed the world.

The single most important singer/songwriter of all time apparently enjoys making audiences from Greece to Texas think twice, even if it’s not all right, by hitting them with often bizarre arrangements of his hit tunes. No doubt fans will get a similar strange earful when Dylan does his thing at 8 p.m. Saturday at Starlight Theatre in Swope Park.

This can be seriously vexing or suddenly inspiring or sometimes both, but here’s how it usually works for me: Halfway through a supposedly familiar Dylan song in concert, I can still find myself going, “Gee, is that ‘Masters of War’? Yeah…nah…well, maybe…wait…huh?” Continue reading

Tickets cost $55 to see bigwig comic Bill Maher at 8 tonight at Ameristar Casino (quick, you can still make it!), but it’ll cost you only a walk-up cover of $3 to behold big-bearded stand-up Kyle Kinane at 10 p.m. Sunday at the Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts in Lawrence.

Not that it should be all about the money. But I’m pretty sure that Maher, for all his fame, isn’t 18 times more amusing than Kinane.

Besides, Kinane is a lot hairier – and everyone knows whiskers are just plain funny. Why do you think Santa Clause ho-ho-ho’s so much? He’s cracking himself up. Continue reading

Paul McCartney did what only he could do on Saturday night at Sprint Center: Be Paul McCartney.

The master tunesmith, remarkable performer and living legend led a nearly three-hour, 38-song epic of retro hits and hero worship that went down as an immediate classic.

If you happened to be part of the near-capacity throng that hung onto virtually every note, joyfully sang along and cheered in awe, this momentous gig constituted a cherished memory guaranteed to raise a smile for years to come.

If you weren’t on hand to put your hands together for this one, let me fill you in: McCartney and his fantastic four-man band enthusiastically entertained fans with sterling examples from his popular canon, including 22 brilliantly executed Beatles songs spanning the astoundingly fruitful seven-year recording career of the best rock band ever. Continue reading

Paul McCartney last performed in Kansas City on Memorial Day in 1993 at Arrowhead Stadium.

I saw the show, which was great, and wrote about it in The Kansas City Star, which this week quoted a small piece from my review in its Preview cover story devoted to fan memories of McCartney.

Allow me to thank my ex-employer for the nostalgic exposure. Further allow me to share the same tidbit, but with a quote from McCartney that didn’t make the newspaper’s reprint but restores some missing context: Continue reading

A good number of unsold tickets remain to behold Paul McCartney and his mostly baby boomer fans recalling when they were young courtesy of the septuagenarian ex-Beatle’s historic music this Saturday at Sprint Center.

The economy is still lousy and too many unemployed people are still looking for jobs. So it’s not a mindblower that folks here, there and everywhere may prefer to let it be rather than feel like fools on the hill by spending $185 for seats on the lower level or $250 on the floor. But that’s all that’s left at the box office after the “cheap seats” – $58.50 and $88.50 – were scooped up by budget-conscious fans on the day that tickets went on sale.

But, for the moment, let’s put aside the reasoning that it’s too pricey for a lot of people to go see Sir Paul, and address the uncomfortable possibility that the creative force who gave the world “Yesterday” is today no longer that big of a deal.

Jesus! (Whom, you may recall, the Beatles were supposedly bigger than.) It irks me to even suggest that McCartney has been marginalized by the passage of time and changing tastes. How it makes you feel is probably a reflection of your stake in the Beatles’ amazing catalogue of music and accompanying mythos.

Me, I’m up for Saturday’s show. Here’s why: Continue reading

The guys in Gaslight Anthem are too young to remember the heyday of the retro touchstones that roll around their music like vintage marbles stored in a mayonnaise jar.

That’s fine – you don’t have to be old to like old things – but the jar the band is using still has mayonnaise in it.

Just about every tune that the totally sincere but ultimately bland rock band pounded out for upwards of 800 fans on Saturday at the Midland by AMC sounded like the tune right before it and the tune right after it.

While there was no shortage of heart on display, there was no range. And not a whole lot of impressive musicianship, either. Organic fury, yep; compelling chops, nope.

Going in, I probably should have figured this would happen. It’s not as if the band’s three albums vibrate with variety. But popping in a CD and having a little fun with songs that cop a big feel from 1970s Bruce Springsteen is one thing. It’s definitely another to experience a full-blown gig from a band with such a limited sonic palette. Continue reading

All together now: “Jazz-sssss.”

No, gang, that’s not the sound of the life being let out of America’s unique musical art form from lack of caring – at least not this weekend, when the masterful Jeff Hamilton Trio performs at Jardine’s Restaurant and Jazz Club.

For four sure to be shining gigs – 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. today and Saturday at the club at 4536 Main – let it be the sound of shared intimacy and, above all, unsparing cool.

So let’s try it again: “Jazz-sssss.” Doesn’t that feel better?

Keep your ears all the way open once the world renowned Hamilton picks up the sticks. For decades, he’s laid down sweet and subtle rhythms for a litany of legends, including Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Rosemary Clooney, Oscar Peterson and Barbra Streisand. Along the way, he’s become a drumming legend. Continue reading

There should be no lack of places to lay down a blanket and be dazzled by fireworks this Fourth of July weekend, but only one will have the Kansas City skyline in the patriotic picture.

That’s KC RiverFest, the sixth annual downtown area celebration of America’s independence from Britain (if not the corndog) at Richard L Berkley Riverfront Park on the south bank of the Missouri River.

The high-tech rocket’s red glare is scheduled to ensnare both ooh-ers and aah-ers – there’s room for everybody, people – at 10:05 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Saturday’s night-sky spectacular is to be a six-minute preview of Sunday’s 18-minute extravaganza.

And what about the live music? Thank you for asking. And right on cue, too. Continue reading