Kansas City News Blog

Satellite of Love

Between October 1957 and October 1958, the Soviets and the United States embarked on an international game of orbital brinksmanship that, thanks to all the phallic rocketry involved, is almost comically easy to caricature as geopolitical male-posturing. Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, and the U.S. space program has faded from the heights of its former glory, it’s a great time for a retrospective. The Linda Hall Library, at 5109 Cherry, highlights the formative year of these two national space programs with an exhibit called The Year the Space Age Began. This is clearly superior to other historical exhibits, such as the ones about Lewis and Clark that your mom likes to attend, in that it contains ROCKETS! The exhibit is open Tuesday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Art and Music at the Mercy Seat

Tonight at the Mercy Seat Tattoo Studio (210 East 16th Street), painter Jen Fridy’s opening – an exhibit called Monsterladyland – is accompanied by the soft-rock stylings of local band American Catastrophe, who will be playing their usual set list of covers by Seals & Crofts, Jim Croce, Anne Murray, Air Supply and other bands your mom thinks are totally happenin’. Ha ha ha, just a little joke there, at your mom’s expense. American Catastrophe will probably show up and play their usual dark, growling guitar-based Kansas City rock. Or, hell, maybe they’re playing a tribute to G.G. Allin tonight – you never know! And neither do I, because I didn’t bother to call anyone and ask.

Cognitive Dissonance

Sergio Leone shot a bunch of westerns in Italy back in the '60s, including three with Clint Eastwood, which were scored by the great Ennio Morricone. Your mom totally hates these movies and wishes they were more like Annie Get Your Gun.

The Italian countryside, with its rolling topology and the closeness of the sky, is obviously not the American landscape it purports to be in Leone’s films; coupled with Morricone’s soundtrack, the effect is otherworldly, like a visit to a Middle Earth where orcs and goblins are replaced by cartoonishly evil banditos.

Kansas City music fixture Rex Hobart, inspired by the whole sensory deal of Leone’s films, continues his theatrical experiment, Rex Hobart's Spaghetti Western, Saturday night at Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club (3402 Main). The dramatic flourishes, such as the band’s backlit entrance, are almost arch evocations of the minimal starkness of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The music is evocative of Morricone’s style, but not slavish, and the band is comprised of a host of great area musicians.

Plus, the bill includes preeminent local bluegrass combo the Wilders.

-- Chris Packham