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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WHAT'S HAPPENING
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 30, 2004
JUNE 30
Romance/Romance is now playing at the University Theatre on Stage Too! Show runs today and Thursday beginning at 7:30 p.m., Friday beginning at 7:00 p.m., and Saturday beginning at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $6 for students and $12 for the general public.
The Lawrence City Band will perform at South Park, 11th and Massachusetts streets, to celebrate America. The Fourth of July concert will include a rendition of the Battle Hymn of the Republic and an audience sing-along
headhandsfeet perform at Stu's Midtown Tavern, 925 Iowa St. The show begins at 9 p.m. and is open to all ages. Also open mike night. No cover charge.
- "Freedom Unbound: Art From Within American Gulags" will be on display at 411 Studios, 411 E. 8th St. This opening night showing will run from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. The event is free and for all ages. It will include poetry, music and refreshments.
JULY
NEON will be at The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. The 18 and over show begins at 10 p.m.
Singer/songwriters Jeff Hanson and Matt Rice will perform at The Eighth Street Tap Room, 801 New Hampshire St. The 21 and over show begins at 10 p.m. The cost is $2.
John Weatherwax and the Junkyard Jazz Band will perform at the American Legion, 3408 W. Sixth St. from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. The show is for all ages.
JUNE 2
The Midwestern Music Camp will present a jazz concert at the Lied Center. The all-ages show begins at 7 p.m. Free.
The Rare Funk & Soul Review will perform at the Eighth Street Tap Room, 801 New Hampshire St. The 21 and over show runs from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. The cost is $2.
Singer/songwriter Steve Donna-Carlson will perform at Signs of Life, 722 Massachusetts St. The all ages show begins at 8:30 p.m. and includes live music, coffee, books and art. Free.
Big Metal Rooster will perform at The Jazzhaus, 926 1/2 Massachusetts St. The funk/rock show is for ages 21 and over. The cost is $4.
JULY 3
"E PLUBIRUS UNUM" art exhibition will open at Ad Astra Galleria, 205 W. 8th St. The event begins at 7 p.m. with a free public reception and features paintings, stone sculptures, and glass works.
Doris Henson, The Sound You Say and Ad Astra Per Aspera will perform at The Brick, 1727 McGee, Kansas City, Mo. The show begins at 10:30.The cost is $7.
MUSIC REVIEWS
PJ Harvey's new album perfect for hungover summer
PJ Harvey's last album, 2000's Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea is laced with happy, refined love songs. It was an unusual album for the woman who made a name for herself in the indie rock world with brooding, moody and mysterious music. It looked like Harvey had finally found love.
Well, now it looks like she got dumped and created Uh Huh Her the soundtrack for a hangover on a hot summer morning after a drunken break-up the night before.
With Harvey playing all of the instruments herself, the opening song, "The Life & Death of Mr. Badmouth," begins with a simple, grungy guitar riff coupled with drums that move with the speed of a hippo on Thorazine -- creating Harvey a tapestry to lament about the unfairness of love with her honest lyrics and light voice.
'UH HUH HER'
■ Artist: PJ Harvey
■ Album: Uh Huh Her
■ Label: Island
■ Grade: B
The album moves through all the emotions of post break-up trauma with a take no prisoners pace. "Shame" sounds like a crying ghost wailing her dedications to the man that left her — "I'd jump for you into the flame/Tried to go forward with my life/I just feel shame, shame, shame." Harvey quickly dries the tears and proclaims her independence with the noisy, punkish "Who the Fuck?" and shreds away a metaphorical
wedding dress with "Pocket Knife." only to beg her ex-lover to come back in the rocking "The Letter"
As with all good break-ups, Harvey seeks sedatives to ease her pain with "The Slow Drug," a song where her voice is almost emotionless over a hypnotic keyboard and staccato violin plucks. The emotional zigzag continues until the last track, "The Darker Days of Me and Him," where she finally gives up and, perhaps, moves on, "Promises, promises/I'm feeling burned/You taught me a lesson/I didn't want to learn."
Uh Huh Her is musical therapy for the jilted lover. Put buying this album on your back-to-school to-do list when that special someone you fell in love with last week at the bars turns out just to be a summer fling.
— Neil Mulka
Wilco leaves country roots takes on new rock image
When Wilco released Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002, amidst a hail of orchids and laurels from critics, there were some of us who were skeptical of lead-singer Jeff Tweedy's intrepid plans for the future. The twangy telecaster guitars were gone for good. Now a toying fascination with the mechanics of sound itself paved the way for computer beeps and squawky, atonal guitar crackle.
Since shedding their alternative country roots, the band has metamorphosed into a chancy, progressive force in American rock music, and the newest album, A Ghost is Born, is both a leap forward and a quiet retreat from the daring-do of YHF.
That is, A Ghost is Born picks up where YHF left off. It still contains much of the annoyingly experimental tomoolery, such as fifteen minutes of soft whistling over wavy, alien reverberation and humming machinery in a track not-so-cleverly-titled "Less Than
'A GHOST IS BORN'
Artist: Wilco
Album: A Ghost is Born
Label: Nonesuch
Grade: A-
You Think" (who do they think they are fooling?). Tweedy's always irritating and occasionally pathetic lead guitar in "Spiders (Kids smoke)" falls miserably short of interest, but happily gives way to a crunchy, descending refrain that redeems the entire tune. This proves, in Tweedy's words, that the devil can be hidden in the "precise and towering" chrome hell of production.
Yet the band has now attained a sincere coherence and artistic unity with their sonic experiments. In "Hell is Chrome," his quivering electric guitar is eerie and bewitching. There are thick layers of acoustic guitars and brilliant piano harmonies in many songs.
Tweedy's lyrical and songwriting skills thrive in the edgy avant-garde he
has created with producer Jim O'Rourke, whose credentials include the bands Sonic Youth and Stereolab. It is O'Rourke who has reinterpreted the magic of George Harrison's and Eric Clapton's fuzzy guitars, which complements the similar Brit-pop bounce of Mikael Jorgensen's piano in songs like "Hummingbird" and "Theologians." Tweedy's surrealistic lyrics ("his goal in life / was to be an echo") are calmer, more focused, rich with imagery, and at home with the wintry music.
These traces of a renewed interest in The Beatles are hard to ignore. The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London. Even Gladys Nilsson's art, in the album booklet, is a relic of 1968-9. It is impressive that Tweedy can approach the altar of Lennon and McCartney as supplicant, without letting their oracles smother his original genius. Then again, he has already proven his mettle under the hefty legend of Woody Guthrie.
Matt Gertken
JULY 4
411 Studios, 411 E.9th St., will host "Freedom Unbound: Art from within American Gulags" from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.The show features art by American prisoners and will be free to the public.
Dj Konsept will host "Dirty Boogie" at the Gaslight Tavern & Coffeehouse on Locust Street next to Johnnie's Tavern. Konsept will be spinning doo-wop, blues and old-soul beginning at 10 p.m. The show is 21 and over.
Carillon player Elizabeth Berghout will play a concert at the Campanile beginning at 9 p.m. preceding the
Jaycees' fireworks display.
JULY 5
Alove for Enemies, Anterrabae, American Culture Experiments and The Escape will be performing at The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. It is an all ages show and will begin at 6 p.m.
The Kansas International Piano Competition will take place July 5 to July 7 at the Lied Center. Times: July 5 and 6, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. July 7, 3 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
- Sertoma-Schiefelbusch Communication Camp will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. from July 5 to July 8 at the
Douglas County Fairgrounds. Nineteenth and Haskell streets.
Punk bands Entrails Massacre, Catheter and Voetsek will be performing at The Haunted Kitchen, 1900 Lousiana St. beginning at 7 p.m. The following night Forca Macabra, Akkolyte, Human Order and Oroku Choke Slam will be performing at 7 p.m. as well. Both shows are all ages and the cost is $6 for one night and $10 for both nights.
JULY 6
Watkins Community Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St., will host