Prairie Pop: Jump up and get down
Editor’s Note: Kembrew McLeod’s two-year-old son, Alasdair, is sitting in for our regular Prairie Pop columnist this issue. Like many adult music critics, he likes to coin genre names, and lately Ala...
Prairie Pop
Prairie Pop: The story of Quirk
When Too Much Joy frontman Tim Quirk played Riverfest in the early-1990s, things didn’t go well. Mother Nature unleashed a shitstorm of epic proportions, so after a long delay, the gig was relocated ...
Prairie Pop: For those about to pop
Regular Prairie Pop columnist Kembrew McLeod has turned over this month’s edition to Umläut Nideldick—the famous German song doctor and rock and roll life coach. The following text is drawn from Nide...
Prairie Pop: Girls got game
In the classic Destiny's Child song "Say My Name," the protagonist suspects that her man is cheating on her because his voice has changed: ...
Prairie Pop: Jonathan Richman: Playground Punk (Download)
Jonathan Richman will play at Gabe’s on Feb. 28 – 8:00 p.m. Most proto-punk legends don’t write songs like “I’m a Little Dinosaur” or “Ice Cream Man,” but Jonathan Richman isn’t your typi...
Prairie Pop: The World was a Song..Then it all Went Wrong – Review of Tom HooperR...
In 1915, American opera singer Mary Case took to the stage and sang alongside phonograph recordings of her own voice. She was Thomas Edison’s favorite singer, so the story goes, and she was par...
On The Beat: What shows are in store for the winter migration
Iowa City has been pretty quiet over the past few weeks. That tends to be the case when a big chunk of the population migrates to Chicagoland (or wherever), and another chunk goes into hibernation. W...
Prairie Pop: Radiolies? “Truth” in Sound and Storytelling
At the end of September, the podcast Radiolab went in search of “truth.” It was a daunting task, to be sure, but not wholly outside the scope of the program, which bills itself as “...
DOWNLOAD: The “ILLBOARD” Hot 100 playlist – Kembrew’s guide to goi...
DOWNLOAD THE PLAYLIST If you’re like me, Christmas songs probably send you into a murderous rage that ends with a trail of bloody reindeer and a decapitated Salvation Army Santa (those incessant ring...
Prairie Pop: Putting the Mental back in Instrumental
My son Alasdair turns two next month, and lately he has been immersing himself in the wild world of sound. If mom walks up the creaky wooden stairs to his bedroom, he’ll say, “Mommy sound!” Or, when ...
Prairie Pop: Making Music Work – David Byrne on the economics of the music industry...
I recently watched David Byrne give a Power Point lecture on the economics of the music industry. That a man with a flair for dramatic presentation, a wisp of a man who famously wore an outrageously ...
Prairie Pop: The Chump and the Champ
At the beginning of his professional boxing career, Cassius Clay was primarily known for winning an Olympic gold medal and possessing a loud mouth. Most sportswriters hated him, especially the old gu...
Brain Waves: MP3′s and the Science of Sound
“One of nature’s greatest wonders is the ability of the human ear to distinguish among the millions of sounds around us. Each sound has a distinctive pitch, loudness, and quality….these characteristi...
Prairie Pop: The Iowa roots of the “Paul is Dead” hoax
Did you ever hear about the “Paul is Dead” rumor, involving the Beatles’ Paul McCartney? Did you know it originated in Iowa? Back in 1969, news spread that he died in a car accident and was secretly ...
Prairie Pop: To Hell in a Handbasket – “Paradise Lost” and the story of ...
In 1993, three second grade boys were murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas—a deeply conservative community in the heart of the Bible Belt. Naturally, Satanism was blamed and suspicion was cast on a tri...