Aseethe

With its debut full-length, Reverent Burden, Iowa City drone metal outfit Aseethe finally has enough wax to stretch out and show their stuff. The album is comprised of two mysterious, side-long pieces on a vinyl, without track titles or even clearly marked a or b sides.

Aseethe opens the longer of the two epic cuts with a four-plus minute display of eerie, aural horror. Metal clacks and clicks, like tree branches against a window pane, as the faint buzz of guitar feedback swells and retreats through a bed of electronic hissing that floats on the mix like fog on the moors. Just past the four minute mark, the fog seems to lift, but just for a brief moment. The trio attack their instruments with the plodding, hypnotic crush of the tide slamming against a rocky ridge.

The second, shorter piece—a relatively lean 12-minute catacomb-rattler—packs more punch than its longer partner. Though an equally mesmerizing dirge, the composition of the second track is more complex. The riff which carries its first movement, providing a backdrop for ethereal squeals of guitar and vocal howls, adds just a little swing to the stomp. The bass and the drums not only get beaten to hell but they also have a bit of melodic direction. The second movement draws out the drone of each mammoth crash. Aseethe bleeds each towering crunch of its last ounce of sustenance before unleashing another bash.

The third movement is the biggest stand out of Reverent Burden. After bleeding every decibel out of one last chord, the vocals enter and the most forceful and propulsive riffage of the whole album commences. It’s a relentless, mid-tempo attack fortified by the splash of cymbals and clamber of snare and tom beats, punctuated with deathly howls and searing flashes of guitar. After nearly a half hour of being slowly pummeled, it’s one hell of a release to cap off the album.

John Schlotfelt is currently fighting the “blue screen of death” on his laptop; pray for him as he wages this epic, and almost certainly hopeless war against technology and his desire to not pay for a new computer.

Caterwaulla

Since I was born in 1957, my life corresponds approximately to the life-span of rock and roll.  In that 55-plus years, there have been times when rock has seemed to be tired and played out. But there’s always some snotty group of kids who come along and beat it back into shape. Caterwaulla is one of the latest groups to have a go.

Their self-titled debut isn’t a revolutionary addition to the rock canon, but there are some fresh elements to Caterwaulla’s music, beginning with the strong voice of lead singer Lauren Murphie. Murphie’s singing hints at her percursors—Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Grace Slick—but the great thing about the voice as an instrument is that everyone’s is unique. Murphie’s voice has the kind of power and timbre that will cut through the roar of any band, but she uses dynamics skillfully to keep the listener from feeling like they’re being yelled at.

Terry Yin’s electric violin adds distinctive texture to Caterwaulla, taking the parts usually taken by lead guitar and freeing Gabe Starbeck to focus on rhythm guitar most of the time, which is the heart and soul of the rock sound. Gabe takes a few short solos along the way, but this isn’t a band that leans on jamming to make their point.

The song “Cat Lady” stands out to me as a roaring show stopper. It’s a classic F-you breakup song with showcase moments for each band member, but it’s solidly grounded in pentatonic blues riffing and rave-up cymbal crash drumming. It reminds me of the story about Chuck Berry insisting Jerry Lee Lewis open for him, and Jerry Lee gives a literally scorching performance, setting his piano on fire. Caterwaulla is a hard act to follow, even without actual pyrotechnics.

Kent Williams bought the first copy of Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols to arrive in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Larry Baker, Photo by Ofer Sivan

An excerpt from the new novel Love and Other Delusions, by Larry Baker

“My name is Alice Marcher. I’m your teacher, for better or for worse. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I expect presents.”

Danny sat in the back of the room, near the door, sullen and slouching, wearing baggy black jeans and a white oxford cloth shirt that was two sizes too big. He was going to work at the Centre Theatre after class. Because there was a freakishly large boy in front of him, he had to lean sideways to get a good view of his teacher. That was when she first saw him too, his head appearing as if out of the shoulder of a giant.

Ten years later, in bed together, they would both misremember the moment. Neither would claim it was love at first sight, but both wanted that first eye contact to have had some significance. With him almost thirty and her turning forty, they were breaking up for the second time, and there was a lot of history to romanticize. In another few years they would break up for a third and final time, but whereas all three had been her idea, the second break up was mutual and sentimental. They had convinced themselves that they were doing the logical thing. So that second time was important, to organize their history between them, to reminisce, to even videotape a tour of St. Augustine as they drove around and talked to each other about all the places that meant something to them. But they still glossed over that first look with too much sentiment. Their first private words to each other, however, were etched indelibly.

That day in class, Alice had looked at Danny and smiled. The head out of the shoulder image was amusing to her. But it was the opening day of her own drama, and she had a script to follow. Danny was just another member of her audience, “I would prefer diamonds, but use your best judgment.” The Dean had warned her about irony, about most students’ failure to understand it. Alice didn’t care. The Dean was her husband. He understood her, and she always assumed that he would protect her.

The woman Danny saw that morning seemed tall, but was not, with long black hair pulled tightly behind her ears and a face that was interesting but not beautiful. The individual features were unremarkable, but the sum of her face was in her eyes, and those other features, as soon as Danny got close to her, coalesced around those dark brown eyes and became a seduction. In all the years of looking at that face, Danny never saw it change, except when they were about to have sex. Eventually, it seemed as if most of their time together was a slow dance always leading to sex, so her face was not as it was when he first saw it, but more often as it was when their bodies came closer together, soon to be one.

Alice had no impression of Danny until the end of that first class. Roll taken, syllabus explained, first assignment given, she dismissed class early. As she made her opening presentation, she had walked slowly around the room, forcing her students to turn their heads and follow her, finishing her waltz at the back of the room, a few feet away from Danny.

“See you tomorrow. Reading quiz first thing. Extra points for presents. Now, go and sin no more,” she said, opening the door behind Danny and standing back as the rush began. Within seconds the only people left in the room were her, Danny, and the giant student in front of him, who was having trouble getting out of the standard-sized desk. Alice first really noticed Danny when he stood up. He was over six feet tall and had remarkable blue-green eyes. Her first impression was that he was a young man who had probably done time in the military and was starting his life over, perhaps mid to late twenties, thirty at the outside. The most incongruous part of his appearance was that his hair was too long for his face. A man his age, she thought, would look better with a good haircut, but he certainly had potential.

As Danny had stood he had taken a more direct look at her face while she was looking in the other direction. She had looked younger from a distance, and her wedding ring was obvious when she came closer.

The turning point for her, the moment Danny separated himself from the blur of her other thoughts that morning, was when he turned back to help the other student get out of his desk. He put one hand on the back of the chair to hold it in place and offered his other hand to the giant, who squirmed out and then up from his desk, grunting as he rose, his red face beaded with sweat. He thanked Danny for his help, but, seeing his teacher, he lowered his head and left the room embarrassed. Alice watched him lumber past her and then turned back to see Danny staring at her. His face was different. He was stunning. It was this moment of their history they both remembered accurately, their first private conversation.

“What do you really want for your birthday,” he had asked.

The thing that she remembered best about that moment was that she was at first speechless because she was still thinking about his helping the giant. It seemed like such a kind gesture, almost gracious, as if Danny were a servant and a lord at the same time. And she was aware that she was staring at his face, as if he had stepped off a movie screen and entered her world.

“I want to be surprised,” she finally said.

The conversation lasted twenty more minutes, the two of them not moving from that spot at the back of the classroom, in no hurry since the next class would not start for half an hour. The opening two sentences were all they remembered, but that was enough. The rest was just small talk between teacher and new student. Details to supply a context. Personal traits were revealed immediately, traits that might have required weeks or months to be revealed around someone else, someone who was a close friend, someone who could be trusted, but revealed instantaneously with each other within minutes of meeting.

As she and Danny talked that first morning, she started to think about him in ways that she had thought about other men; but then she discovered that he was eighteen, a shock to her, and disappointing because it narrowed his appeal to her. As mature as he seemed, as much of an adult as he was required to be by his home life, he was still too young. Handsome, but a child. She had made many mistakes in her life, wrong choices in men, but cradle-robbing was not on the list. Other women she knew could joke about young hard boys as perfect lovers, quickly renewable and easily disposable, but Alice had a horror of becoming a cliché.

Danny went to the Centre and sorted his feelings. In their constant self-analysis over the years, Alice most resented his refusal, or his inability, to express those feelings. When he had told her that he went to work that first day and did not think about her, her feelings had been hurt, but he was untruthful. She admitted to looking forward to seeing him again, and he had tried to convince her that he had not thought about her, so she reminded him that he had, indeed, brought her a present on her birthday, so he must have thought of her after that first day, right? Of course he had, he admitted, but not, evidently, as much as she had thought about him. The pattern was established early. She did most of the talking, and he was silent a lot, silence that she somehow interpreted as depth, but that he knew was merely insecurity. “My god, Alice,” he would tell her on his thirtieth birthday, “I was a teenager. You were a married woman with a master’s degree, my teacher. I was absolutely intimidated by you for those first few years. I thought I would bore you, and, besides, you had no problem doing most of the talking.”

But he had thought about her that first afternoon, about how nobody else in class seemed to understand her humor, how she walked, how she had stood next to him as class ended and he first noticed how she smelled. The only other woman whose smell he could remember was his mother. Hers was sweeter than Alice’s, almost heavy sweet, almost whorish, and it had never faded in Danny’s mind. Alice’s smell was lighter, virginal and sensual at the same time, if that could be a smell, but it had been enough to have him keep his notebook in front of him as he talked to her after class. He sat in the Centre later and thought about going to Sears or Penney’s after work, to the perfume counter, testing every sampler until he found the same smell, and buying her a tiny bottle. That would be the perfect gift. But his sister needed to be taken shopping for a new swim suit, he had promised her, and his father had a prescription to refill, and there was no time, as always, for Danny to shop for himself. So he improvised.

Alice stood in front of her class the next day and asked, “And my presents?” With a mute group in front of her, she glanced at Danny but he did not look back. Disappointed, she laughed, “Why is it that nobody ever believes me? Every year, the same. Oh well, I’ll just add some extra questions to the quiz.” That, they believed.

After class, Danny lingered, waiting for all the others to leave the room, including the giant, and Alice knew he had something for her. She stayed at her podium. “Mr. Shay, Mr. Shay, you’re my last hope. Bring that diamond up here.” Another moment they would remember.

He walked to the front of the room and handed her an envelope, obviously a birthday card. Inside the card were two passes to the Centre Theatre. Alice almost cried, “Oh, Danny, how did you know I love the movies?”

“Everybody likes the movies,” he had said.

“Not like me, Danny, not like me.”

Larry Baker served two terms on the City Council in Iowa City and he currently serves on the Board of Adjustment. He has published four novels and numerous short stories. His first novel, The Flamingo Rising, was a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie in 2001.

Tom Garland

Tom Garland is no stranger to the Iowa City comedic scene. Emcee of the Yacht Club’s weekly comedy night, One Night Stand, the stand-up performer and touring comic has fully embraced and helped expand on what Iowa City has to offer up-and-coming comics.

Garland has opened for such acts as Joel McHale, Alonzo Bodden and Steve-O, and now has released a full-length album for digital sale on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody and more.

On the basis of Leash Your Kids, it would seem that Garland’s biggest comedic influences are Dave Atell and Jim Gaffigan, blending observational humor with more in-your-face themes.

The 16-track, 56-minute album was recorded in March at the Yacht Club with the assistance of local comic Don Tjernagel, in one take, with no edits or laugh tracks.

“We wanted to bring the listener in as close to the intimate Iowa-Comedy-scene feel as possible,” Garland said.

With subject matter ranging from rewriting the Bible to hot button headlines like Jerry Sandusky, Garland fearlessly forges through his routine despite the mixed audience reactions caught on the recording.

The real meat of Leash Your Kids is found in the graphic personal stories Garland shares with punchlines often taken at his own expense. The stories take the album to a deeply personal place where Garland exposes his own flaws as a boyfriend and human being.

With moments of hilarity and moments of silent awkwardness, Garland’s stand-up album shows potential not only for an up-and-coming comic, but also an up-and-coming local scene.

Erin Tiesman is a web writer and freelance journalist living and laughing her rear end off in the heart of Eastern Iowa.

Surf Zombies
Lust For Rust
facebook.com/surfzombiesband

My dad tells a story about seeing the seminal surf-rock band The Ventures at the Melody Mill Ballroom outside of Dubuque in the early 1960s. He happened upon a comb on the sink in the bathroom left by the band. He picked it up and shortly after sold it still dripping with pomade from the pompadoured greasers to a collection of girls spellbound by the band.

Brook Hoover first heard surf music when his uncle played part of “Pipeline” by the Chantays on a guitar for him at age 14, and from then surf music would be a staple in the music he made. The latest Surf Zombies record, Lust for Rust, finds Brook with a newly-minted lineup that adds Ian Williams (The Wheelers) on guitar and Tyler Russell on drums to the band along with longtime bass player Joel McDowell.

Songs by The Ventures, the Surfaris, The Chantays, Dick Dale and others serve as the template for decades of surf rock. Lust for Rust also follows these templates: galloping rhythms, BIG reverby tremolo guitar; but updates the sound with the occasional edgy distortion thanks to some influence by Williams, who also produced the album.

I have memories of laying on the floor in front of the large console stereo staring at the beautiful girls on the covers of the records dad spun by The Ventures. The raw energy of the tribal drums and the blistering guitar soundtrack seemed at once electric, sexual and forbidden. This intersection of rock music with our baser instincts exists in its purest form in instrumental guitar rock. I thank The Surf Zombies for giving me another album full.

Michael Roeder is a self-proclaimed “music savant.” When he’s not writing for Little Village he blogs at www.playbsides.com.

Trumpet Blossom Café, 310 East Prentiss St. Iowa City, Iowa

Grand Opening Celebration
Trumpet Blossom Café
(310 East Prentiss St.)
May 19, 2 p.m. – Midnight

Iowa City was left with a void in January with the swift and unfortunate demolition of vegetarian staple, The Red Avocado. As a new apartment complex begins to rise up in its place this month, The Trumpet Blossom Café comes to the rescue, providing Iowa City with a new place to grab a vegan meal. The Trumpet Blossom is located on Prentiss St. (behind The Vine and next to 30th Century Bicycle) and is now open for business. Their menu features healthy lunch and dinner meals that are organic and locally grown with an extensive drink list featuring many beers from regional breweries.

The Grand Opening Celebration will be chock-full of food and drink specials. Watch out for an all-inclusive deal that will consist of an appetizer, entrée, desert, a non-alcoholic drink, a mixed drink and a tap beer. There will also be live music by local musicians throughout the evening.

Musical Lineup:
Happy Hour: Irene Schroeder
Early Evening: Dustin Busch
Late Night: Brooks Strause

I’d heard whispers about that space: that it was cavernous, that it was beautiful. That for whatever reason the owner refused to let people use it, that he didn’t want to be a landlord, that he just wanted it gone. Basically, this was downtown Iowa City’s equivalent of the suburban haunted house with the grumpy, mysterious groundskeeper narrative, and I needed to ride my bike to it and get lost inside.

Golden Dust performs in the Deadwood space during Mission Creek 2012.

That opportunity arose when Mission Creek Festival hosted two all-ages experimental music shows at the end of March. Inside the indeed cavernous, urban-decay-baroque graffiti lies the once-palatial space with a stage, big back room, storage and even an empty bar built right in. One Deadwood employee called it “the single biggest waste of real estate in Iowa City.” But there we were, enjoying experimental musicians wail away on guitars riding waves of reverb. I spoke with Craig Eley, one of the MCF masterminds, riding high in the mid-week tremolo of music, arts and food events all over town. I asked him how he rented the space. “We came to (Jim) with a really nice pitch,” he told me, “and I think being part of the festival really helped … The festival has great relationships with a lot of venues. This is an unbelievable space, an unbelievable room.”

When I asked him about any plans to run more shows up there, Craig optimistically told me, “You know, that’s really not up to me. Jim has reasons and times he wants to use it and doesn’t. When it’s available and possible—the right time—, we’d love to use it again.” As I looked around at the high ceilings and graffiti-mapped walls with crumbling veneer right out of a warehouse in a Hollywood gangster movie, and then at Iowa City’s gratefully hip swaying to the music, I wondered when would it be “the right time?”

So I knew I had to meet the mystery man himself. And he was as pleasantly awesome as the misunderstood tend to be. Jim Bell has the face and handshake of a man you can trust. His smile is the kind that might make one want to tell their life story on a porch, or at least buy a drink from The Deadwood, a place he bought 21 years ago April 6. “It means I’m just getting broken in,” Jim says, and he laughs good and clean with a smile full of trustworthy teeth. “I understand the questions, but don’t know all the answers yet.”

I asked Jim about the history of the building and about its current state of shallow-breathing disrepair. “I bought the building 12 years ago,” he explained. “There was a viable tenant up there for many years; it was BJ Records, then another person trying to do a similar thing. Then it became vacant; obviously, the CD market sort of crashed. Then the tornado came through and damaged some of the structural members in the roof. The trusses cracked. We had to take out the suspended ceiling and the duct work in order to put beams up there supporting the trusses. That was 2 years ago, the tornado was 3 years ago. It’s been vacant since then. I’ve been thinking about trying to put a few apartments up there. The space is 40 feet by 80 feet (!). I was getting $2500 a month rent when a tenant was up there, but the bathrooms need to be updated. It needs $50-$100 thousand to make it viable for a business, $200 thousand might convert it to apartments. So there’s a barrier for entry. I would need $2000 a month rent plus the cost of remodeling and we could finance that over a long term. And the nice bar area? If you thought you could make money doing two shows a day, a couple all-ages shows, this would be a great venue for that. But there’s not drinking upstairs. Our liquor license covers the ground floor.”

Suddenly, the haunted house is a lot more like a Jenga tower of subtle rules, a limbo game against city codes, and one misstep in planning can see it tumble down. But just what could such a tricky venue be viable for? “…for art shows—we’ve had 6 or 8 people display art up there. You could do a party or live music, as long as it’s not too hot … that ventilation was taken out with the suspended ceiling. It’s an interesting space with 22 foot high ceilings! They used to play basketball up there pre-World War II. It’s a big room with a visually stunning appeal … we have zoning issues. Lack of ventilation. Lack of bathroom facilities. It would be a major commitment to put those in. As long as you have fire extinguishers and exit lights, you can do things occasionally like art exhibits or events on a small scale, as long as you’re not trying to make a lot of money, like a fundraiser or small concert.”

“You know,” Jim tells me with the “listen to this” eyes of a kid at heart. “That used to be a tuberculosis ward during World War II. A lot of people died up there!” This is back to being a haunted house story.

“People were in here, spook people who look for the harmonics of ghosts. They got one good vibe of a spook.”

“When?” I asked excitedly.

“Oh, this was a week or two ago,” Jim says. “They had real fancy equipment that detects electrical disturbances. They were in the basement and upstairs late at night. We’ve always known this building was haunted. Some people have seen them in the basement, I’ve felt them go past. We just ignore them. We know they’re not evil spirits. But you can feel them when it’s quiet. The ghosts stay away when it’s loud and busy.”

Attention artists: I channeled your spirits and spoke thus: “Jim, could artists use the space for shows?”

“If artists wanted to pitch ideas,” Jim said, and stopped. “Certain bands can come in and make money, but other ones run people out. But upstairs is another world. There are insurance liabilities and, of course, we’d like to make at least SOME money doing it. … I look at the economy and when I’m going to commit that much money, work, time and effort to making it viable. It’s not losing money, so I’m content to wait for the right time, the right economy.”

May this house of restless spirits not rest too long.

Russell Jaffe is filling in for R.A.D. Wudnaughton, who has become stricken with image poisoning after encountering some particularly evocative visuals.

Harriet Woodford, photographs by Steve Erickson

Photos by Steve Erickson | On display until June 8, 2012 | UI Hospitals and Clinics (Near the Rooftop Cafe on the 8th Floor) | FREE

Benefit ft. Alejandro Escovedo w/ Illinois John Fever| May 19, 2012 | The Mill | $50/$60. | 19+ after 10 p.m.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in Oct. 2010, Iowa City resident and Leaf Kitchen co-owner Harriet Woodford underwent 5 months of chemotherapy and 2 months of daily radiation treatments, along with a mastectomy. Currently cancer-free, she is grateful for her journey, and aware that it might not be over.

She watched her body transform day by day. Weight came off, her hair fell out with chemotherapy, and she lost a breast. As she watched herself change, she enlisted the help of photographer Steve Erickson, friend and preparator at the University of Iowa Museum of Art, to help document the metamorphosis.

“My diagnosis and surgery was so quick that after coming home, it was difficult for me to accept my body and what just happened,” Woodford said.

In the photography project, she and Erickson utilize a technique called a shadow box, which creates a dark background, but brings out detail in the image, making it look more three dimensional. The images–over 200 total–are striking in detail. From the stitches on her chest to photos with her family, Harriet’s life was captured frame by frame.

There are shots of her torso revealing her chest with one healthy breast and one missing, another of her holding her cat, and a  few that she had taken with her parents.

“I don’t know why, but I thought it would help me see myself better if I could see myself in a photo,” Woodford said. “Something not me, but still me.”

The project is now on display at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in the Project Art gallery. It can also be seen at bodyspirits.blogspot.com.

“Cancer sounds horrible and it is/was,” Woodford writes in an email, “my decision to make it very beautiful and to make it art was just my way of coping.”

Harriet and her father William. Photographs by Steve Erickson

She went through the ordeal with her father, William, who battled cancer for over a decade. He died in May, 2011, at age 87.

“He was a really great man and I think he stayed strong for me until my radiation was done,” Woodford said, adding that her father ended radiation treatment in April and went into hospice care. “There’s a great portrait of us when we’re both bald. It’s really striking seeing that portrait, even though it hangs in my house.”

In retrospect, Woodford sees the project as a chance to see herself “literally and figuratively,” facing the scrutiny for her shaved head and the loss of one breast.

“Women’s breasts are often identified as what it means to be a ‘woman,’ and to have one removed makes you experience a whole range of emotions from, ‘I’m more than just my body,’ to ‘Am  I still attractive?’ Having a creative outlet for me was very helpful,” she said.

For Woodford, the project helped her mark the time from the minute her body stopped being attacked by chemicals to the rejuvenation and repair process. “It was awful, it was like the worst flu ever but it never went away,” Woodford recalls. “Having a photo shoot somehow defined events and time. I knew it would get better.”

And it did. Throughout her treatment, Woodford said she realized how much she meant to her family and friends, and she has also gotten feedback about her portraits at the hospital, people finding them beautiful and inspiring.

“I had no idea how people would react, but it’s cool,” she said. “Whatever we can do for one another is what it’s all about–life, that is.”

Now cancer-free, Woodford faces the expensive medical bills from her treatment. To help ease the debt, her friend and touring musician Alejandro Escovedo is hosting a benefit for her on May 19 at The Mill at 8 p.m.

Escovedo, of Austin, Texas–himself a survivor of a life-threatening bout with Hepatitis C–will be performing an acoustic set featuring new material.

Woodford wrote that Escovedo is “an amazing musician and an old friend who wants to help,” explaining that they decided to do the show after catching up in person last year when he performed for Iowa City’s annual Iowa Arts Festival.

Of the upcoming benefit, Woodford says “I really want this benefit to be more of a thank you. I’m cancer-free one year; it’s pretty amazing.”

Slip Silo - Monsoons / www.slipsilo.com

Slip Silo and Koplant No are two local groups which share two members (Brian Lewis on trumpet, keyboards and laptop, Drew Morton on bass, synth and vocals) with adjacent releases. This invites a classic English Final “Contrast and Compare” review.

Firstly, Slip Silo (also starring Matt Logan on vocals and guitar and Justin Leduc on percussion) is the more conventionally poppy side of the coin … without really being conventional at all. These guys studied in The University of Iowa’s Jazz program, so they have the chops and music theory to write and perform sophisticated music. Thankfully, they don’t mistake widdly trickiness for sophistication. Their songs are songs, not scaffolding for exhibitionist soloing.

Lewis’s keyboards owe more to left-field electronica than any jazz precursor, and his trumpet playing is fluidly integral to the arrangements. Rock music rarely features trumpet as a lead instrument and yet it really works here.

I get the impression that they had some Radiohead CDs mixed in with their Mingus and Coltrane, but Slip Silo stay out of Radiohead’s shadow. They emulate the UK’s grandest mopes only in that they fearlessly experiment, but integrate their experimentation into accessible song forms. Leduc’s drumming elevates every song with propulsive, restless virtuosity. He finds the freedom to jab and weave within the song structure, sometimes (as on “I Need To Know”) approaching the barely-controlled chaos of Keith Moon.

Slip Silo’s music is hard to describe by comparison to contemporary groups, which is good. The thing I’m reminded of most is the brief time in the 1970s when bands like Genesis, Brian Eno, Soft Machine and Traffic pushed rock music into new, weird directions. Slip Silo gets plenty weird, but they do so without leaving the listener behind.

Koplant No - Transit EP / www.koplantno.com

On Transit EP Koplant No incorporates Rob Baner on drums, vibraphone and sampled percussion, and Joel Vanderhayden on Saxophone. If Slip Silo derive indirect inspiration from Radiohead, Koplant No derives theirs from Boards of Canada. For all the weird swirly noises they incorporate into these pieces, they’re more conventionally jazzy, but it’s a contemplative, through-composed music, closer to Carla Bley than the jazz of a dour traditionalist like Wynton Marsalis.

Maybe someone’s already doing this and I just haven’t heard it yet, but I’m impressed with how organically perfect the fractally dubbed-out abstract electronic textures fit with the trumpet and saxophone as lead instruments. It seems seductive, inevitable and necessary when Koplant No does it.

Monsoons and Transit EP are similar in the way they realize a common attitude of adventurous lyricism. None of these songs are three-chord bangers or one bar drum loops. I’ve been left cold by a lot of music I’ve heard coming out of university Jazz programs—always technically accomplished but lacking in soul and fire. These guys seem to have internalized the craft taught at the University without letting it become a straightjacket.  —Kent Williams

This is the craziest thing that ever happened in my taxi.

One day, many years ago, I got to work and scored an airport run right off the bat. Better yet, it was a package delivery out of a medical lab so pay was guaranteed. Plus, boxes always make decent passengers.

I was in the yard prepping the taxi when my friend P. snuck on me. God love her, P. had a crank habit and her bills were suffering. I-Wireless had cut her phone off and she needed it for work, so I’d thrown in the money to get her phone back. Today she wanted to repay me.

“It ain’t cash but it’s green,” she chirped, slipping me a cigarette cellophane pouched with marijuana. It was sort of green but looked like burrs you’d pull off your socks.

“Aw honey, don’t do that,” I told her. “Just get at me when you got cash.”

“Weed, money—same difference!”

With the delivery run leaving me no time to make a drop at home, I rolled to the lab, picked up the package and hit the road north. But I disliked carrying grass in the taxi. So I chuffed as much of the evidence as I could until it gave me headache and the remainder I stashed in my hip-pouch.

The box, meanwhile, said not a word.

When I reached the airport, an apparent disaster was underway. The highway was closed for a mile to both sides of the airport’s access road and cop cruisers were parked catawampus in the shoulders. This was in October, a couple of years after 9/11. From a rooftop in Brooklyn I’d watched the second plane come in and two years later I was still pretty wazzed out. My mind raced wondering what the hell was wrong now. Suddenly from the airport rushed a motorcade of gleaming black Suburbans and escort cars. These exited the access road and boomed north on Edgewood. Cruisers scrambled to join the parade.

The highway opened thereafter and I drove to the access road, which is how you get to FedEx. This is when I noticed men in suits roving the grounds. I saw others posted on the roof of the FedEx warehouse. They looked like snipers. My taxi whined to a halt at a police cruiser blocking the road, out of which leapt a serious dude. He wore a suit and a red tie, sunglasses, the earbud and haircut, and somewhere under the coat he kept a hefty sidearm.

It was then I’d realized the ashtray was open with the roach showing in its teeth. I was busy jamming it shut when the suit announced, “United States Secret Service! Stay in your car! We’re on lockdown!”

There was no turning back. “But I got to get to FedEx. It’s a medical delivery. Look—it’s human eyeballs.”

My heart was pounding but I wasn’t screwing around. I eagerly showed him the package. A bright orange sticker slapped on the box showed the drawing of an eyeball: CONTAINS HUMAN ORGANS/PLEASE RUSH.

He stared at me and at the box and then waved at the cruiser. Now the cop came jangling with the handcuffs. The agent checked my license and taxi badge, and he pulled the lading papers and saw the eyeballs were shipping from the eye bank to a university in Texas.

“Pop the trunk,” he said to me, and to the cop, “Let’s give her a look.”

Were they going to check everywhere? My eyes clapped on the ashtray as the cop brought out from his side a telescoping mirror which he used to peep the undercarriage.

The agent spoke to me, his hand snaking through the window to unzip and search my hip-sack, “So do you live in Iowa City? Are you a student? How long have you driven a cab? I bet you see some wild things.”

“None wilder than this, sir! What’s all going on here?”

“Let’s step out of the car, please.”

I would later learn Dick Cheney had just landed on Air Force Two and that this routine was standard protocol. But I sweated a river standing half through a jumping jack as the agent patted me down. As my luck further had it, I was wearing that HOMELAND SECURITY shirt—you know, the one that shows four of my indigenous kinfolk carrying long-guns, FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492.

The cop glanced at the taxi’s interior and gave his thumbs-up. But the agent wanted another look in my purse. As advertised, the hip-sack had two “stash” pockets. I kept one filled with quarters and I’d stuffed the ditchweed in the other. Special Agent found the quarters first.

This was going to end badly. I’d be arrested by Secret Service and lose my job and make national news all at once. I could imagine the scene as it was viewed from the perimeter through a fence, “In related news, a taxi driver was arrested at the airport on drug charges….” And for fucking ditchweed, no less. But then I felt the agent tugging the zippers closed over both stash pockets.

“Go deliver your package.”

I flopped back in the taxi and my hands shook as I steered past the roadblock. Why did he let me go? I didn’t want to know.

I made the delivery without note and rushed for the exit. It was then I saw another suit running through the trees, hustling to keep pace and barking in his radio. At the roadblock my agent just waved me through, grinning at me like a cat. So I continued my egress. But a county cruiser pulled me over soon as I hit the public roadway and I saw the sky turn red. It hit me then: The agent had let me go because Secret Service got to do its job and I got to do mine. Now Linn County was going to do its job too.

The deputy, to my surprise, was full of apologies.

“I’ve just been informed you had clearance, sir. You are free to go and to have a good day!”

Vic Pasternak will unsuccessfully seek the Republican bid for President of the United States. Please write him in.

You might be covering your plants for tonight’s frost, or you might be heading out for ice cream because you’re sweltering in 100-degree heat. That’s the kind of spring it’s been. Granted, spring in Iowa is often full of such swings, but the spring of 2012 has literally been one for the record books.

If this year’s calendar were its own Bizarro World, the month of March would be the capital. Many of us basked and frolicked in summer-like heat and, of course, who can regret 80-degree weather in March? But I don’t think it was just worrywarts who wrung their hands at the heat wave. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the “lower 48” experienced “the warmest March ever in the warmest start of the year ever in the warmest 12-month period ever” (“Record Warm March Temperatures Continue Record-Breaking Periods,” commondreams.org, April 9, 2012). What’s even more shocking is that, also according to the NOAA, over 150,000 warm temperature records were broken during the month.

Because the weather was so lovely and we weren’t burning up in wildfires or drowning in tsunamis (though there were a number of unusually deadly tornadoes), many of us probably didn’t quite appreciate that, as the meteorologists and scientists often said, the record-breaking warm streak was in fact an “extreme weather event”—and one of the most extreme weather events ever. The Midwest was ground zero of the most extreme of the extremes. With ten days in the 70s and four in the 80s (not to mention nine in the 60s), Iowa City’s average temperature was 52 degrees, nearly 15 degrees above average. Cedar Rapids recorded its earliest 80-degree day ever.

This is classic climate change—not so much the warmth per se, but the frequency and the persistence of extremes. Honestly, I was frightened during March. I’ve seen plenty of weird weather in my life, but it did seem to be among the weirdest to me, even at the time. I tried to squelch the Debbie-Downer attitude with friends and colleagues, but if I did share my fears, I hoped that I was more Cassandra than Chicken Little. Regardless, anyone who wasn’t at least a little concerned hasn’t been paying enough attention.

So March was weird for me on the one hand because of my worry for our planet. But on a more localized level, I truly missed the seasonal transition that is March. While we didn’t really have much of a winter (that warmest start of the year in the warmest 12-month period, don’t ya know), I still didn’t expect to lose the run-up to spring.

Admittedly, this is not a time of year that I especially relish. I can’t think of too many people who love the persistent cold and brownness of late winter and early spring as we wait for the vernal burst of green. But I do appreciate the pace of nature renewing, largely because it is part of where we are here in this spot of the world.

I am a patient person, and, usually, I sincerely love the practice of patience. In early spring, I do enjoy the seeming dormancy, knowing what is to come. I do enjoy the languorous browns and grays before the fledgling spots of soft green. I do enjoy the distant, subtle aria of a single first cardinal before the full chorus of birds during a late spring dawn. These modest signs and tokens are quiet heralds. Historically, heralds are always single individuals, not armies or royal entourages. And in its metaphoric sense, heraldry is about foreshadowing, not climax.

If I listen to Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” I want to be sure to hear the entirety of the long, one-note, sustained contrabassoon/string bass/organ/bass drum ostinato before the first quiet, gentle entrance of the trumpet. And if I’m watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, which of course begins with Strauss, I need to start at the very, very beginning of the black screen accompanied by this same rumbling bass. As with “Ode to Joy”—sung at the end of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, not the beginning—the climactic end cadence of the full orchestra and ecstatic sunrise over the Earth in Space Odyssey’s title sequence would mean little if that was where it started.

That’s how early spring should work in our home in the Midwest. And this year, it was denied to us. You might say, “Well, Tom, you got your cold—in April.” And indeed, April was more seasonal, even bringing freeze warnings back into our forecast. Of course, that was a monstrous problem in and of itself as our apple orchardiers and other fruit growers may have lost some, most, or all of their year’s livelihood and the fall delights they usually share with us. April truly was the cruelest month as delicate blossoms, opening to welcome warmth, were flash-frozen before their time. But in terms of my lament for a lost March, it wasn’t the cold that I missed so much as the transition itself. By the time we were covering backyard blooms, the magnolia trees had already exploded in creamy beauty (which was indeed lovely) and the daffodils and jonquils had already reminded us what yellow looked like. We hunted for morels at my wife’s March birthday rather than Mother’s Day.

The environmental implications of climate change are certainly more dire than my feelings over the loss of order in my seasonal rounds. But our altering planet is creating disruptions of many sorts. The regularities of nature’s unfolding cycle are major tonic notes to what grounds us in the world. We certainly can and do delight in variations on a theme over the years, but a violent thrust into atonality destroys the music of living in place.

Thomas Dean hopes he won’t be sweltering in the Dog Days of Memorial Day.

This month, the Englert's screening of an adults-only documentary will feature a live opening act by Iowa City's own Les Dames du Burlesque

If you like sex and art (especially in that order of enthusiasm), then you should definitely make a point of getting to the Englert on Friday, May 18, to see the Iowa premiere of Frederick Wiseman’s Crazy Horse, a documentary about Paris’s legendary cabaret. To sweeten the deal, FilmScene, the host of the event, has found a sponsor in Deluxe Cakes and Pastries. Before the screening they’ll put on a pre-show reception, replete with pastries and drinks, in the Douglas and Linda Paul Gallery on the second floor of the Englert. Even sweeter, Iowa City’s own troop of cabaret-style dancers, Les Dames du Burlesque (isn’t it curious that the Parisians wanting to sound sexy use an American name, Crazy Horse, and Iowans use a French one?) will perform an opening routine inspired by the film!

Horse, founded in 1951 by Alain Bernadin, is a crucial ingredient in the Parisian mystique, right up there with the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and strolling the boulevards with a baguette under your arm. Seven days a week, twice a night and three times on Saturday, gorgeous naked women with bodies lithe and strong as jaguars (to a person they seem to aspire to Josephine Baker’s body-type) dance artistically-choreographed numbers, bespangled by swirling lights, while knowing audiences—a healthy mixture of men and women—sip champagne. (By the way, you have to be over 18 to get into the movie. The Englert will be serving their customary beer and wine; I’m working on the champagne.)

In the poem “Adam’s Curse,” W.B. Yeats’s lady friend remarks, “To be born woman is to know—/ Although they do not talk of it at school—/ That we must labour to be beautiful.”

Wiseman’s documentary unobtrusively chronicles both the dancers’ extremely sexy performances and their strenuous labor to be beautiful night after night. Not only do you get the naughty pleasures of breast and thigh, you get to listen in on heated debates about how best not to make buttocks look bony.

Frederick Wiseman must feel a deep, albeit strange, kinship with Crazy Horse. One of the greatest documentarians, he’s known for his seemingly effortless glimpses into real life (no voiceovers, no talking heads, no information other than what the camera shows); and yet his documentaries are elaborately edited films, with story arcs he weaves carefully and seamlessly into them. It seems appropriate, therefore, that his portrayal of Crazy Horse gives just as much love to the hard work of famous choreographer Phillippe Decoufle and his team of designers and dancers as to their seductive artistic product.

Thankfully, his movie doesn’t make a big deal of the obvious fact that the dancers move within the contours of the male sexual imagination. You could easily imagine a lesser documentary boring us with a half-hour debate about the morality of cabaret. Nevertheless, the question of who is the ultimate beneficiary of gorgeous women dancing naked, Man or Woman, is in the air. At one point, one of the female organizers of Crazy Horse suggests to an old male journalist that the dances are liberating to women, empowering them to play with their sexuality and use it to their pleasure and advantage. At another point, one of the male producers—a creepy yet charmingly obsessed character—starts going off on how Crazy Horse touches on the unconscious with the same artistic power as Fellini and Michael Powell; meanwhile, the head choreographer is rolling his eyes, as if to say, “We’re talking naked women, for God sake!”

While I don’t want to forget that these nude dancers are writhing around to the delight of many a man, I do think that there’s something to the pretentious talk of liberation and art. The desire of heterosexual men is so strong that beauty is practically synonymous with the soft curves of femininity, even for women. The dances of a good cabaret, like all true things of civilization, allow us to reflect on the weirdness of who we are and the world we have wrought.

As sexy as the dances are, they are also at times silly, sad, intelligent and spooky. They hold the mirror up to desire—in fact, one of the best dances is organized around mirror-reflections. In showing us its power, the dancers do in some ways transcend the male gaze more effectively than if they were simply to chastise it and act like it wasn’t there. Maybe that’s why smart, spunky women autonomously form troops like Les Dames du Burlesque: Sometimes the best way out is through.

In any case, Crazy Horse is sexy, fun and gracefully intelligent. And we’re talking naked women, for God sake!

Scott Samuelson teaches philosophy at Kirkwood Community College and blogs about music with his son at billyanddad.wordpress.com.

Also Showing

Rural Route Film Festival
May 5th, 7PM
Bijou

From tulip farmers in Michigan to beekeepers in Lebanon, this traveling show of short films
about rural people and places is definitely worth checking out.

Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
May 4th-5th and 8th-10th
Bijou

This fascinating new film lights up a common subject, the difficulty of romance, with an
imaginative freedom that reminds you of the 1960s. Nance blends live-action filmmaking with
various styles of animation to explore the interiority of love and desire.

Hardacre Trivia Night

The Hardacre Film Festival, the pride of Iowa, will hold its first-ever fundraising event, the
Hardacre Trivia Night, on Saturday, May 12th, at St. Mary’s Hall in Tipton. Doors will open at
6:15 p.m., and the event will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. Proceeds from the Hardacre Trivia Night will go toward the 2012 festival, set for Aug. 3rd and 4th. Admission is $10 per person, or $80 for a table-capacity group of eight; registration deadline is May 4th.

UI student William Goldberg is watching out for workers rights.

The name Alta Gracia means “high grace.” In the Dominican Republic, the Virgin of Altagracia is the protector of her people. Her name is invoked tenderly and with reverence by those seeking blessing on their land and on the many hands that help cultivate it, particularly in the poverty-stricken community named for her. Villa Altagracia is a small village about an hour’s drive from the capital city, Santo Domingo, in the easternmost part of the Dominican Republic. Villa Altagracia and surrounding villages have experienced high unemployment and, as a result, are awash in poverty.

In the United States, Alta Gracia has become synonymous with fair trade. The clothing line Alta Gracia was launched in 2009 by Knights Apparel, the largest distributor of clothing and apparel to colleges and universities. It is among the few apparel companies in the world that pays a living wage to the workers who make its clothing.

The Worker Rights Consortium, an independent watchdog group, determined the living wage standard for free trade zone apparel workers in the Dominican Republic by performing a comprehensive market-based analysis. The WRC determined that the Dominican minimum wage, expressed in US dollars, is $0.84 an hour and the living wage is $2.83 an hour.

Long before the death of Trayvon Martin equated the wearing of sweatshirts, particularly hoodies, with a statement of social justice, college students across the country saw the political power of their clothing. The anti-sweatshop movement has been embraced by undergraduates since the 1990s, when co-eds began protesting the support of companies linked to sweatshops by their universities. Today, groups like United Students Against Sweatshops, continue to boycott companies that employ the use of sweatshop laborers. The USAS is entirely organized by college students and other youth. Its mission is to plan strategic student-labor solidarity campaigns against sweatshops, which the organization defines broadly. It considers all struggles against the daily abuses of the global economic system to be a struggle against sweatshops.

Student activists on the University of Iowa campus have embraced the anti-sweatshop movement by creating a campus-wide initiative to raise awareness of Alta Gracia. The movement, led by members of the student groups Students Abolishing Slavery, Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, Young Democrats and Amnesty International, has educated UI students about Alta Gracia, sent out emails, made announcements about the products in classes and distributed flyers about the company.

Christina Carberry, president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance believes that women are disproportionately affected by the absence of a living wage because they are trying to support their families.

Christina Carberry, a senior at the UI and president of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, said she was drawn to the cause because of the way the garment industry has historically mistreated its primarily female workforce.

“Women are disproportionately affected by the absence of a living wage because they are trying to support their families,” Carberry said.

William Goldberg is a junior and a board member of Students Abolishing Slavery.

“We speak out against modern-day slavery of any kind whether it is sexual, forced labor, wage slavery or another kind,” Goldberg said. “And we aren’t just in support of Alta Gracia. We support any company that is truly fair trade and truly provides a living wage.”

Part of student efforts to raise awareness about the atrocities of the garment industry has included a campaign to increase the amount of Alta Gracia merchandise available in the campus bookstore. Alta Gracia apparel is available at the UI campus bookstore and on the store’s website the merchandise is listed under its own heading, along with other merchandise suppliers, and buyers are encouraged to “make a difference with their Iowa pride.” But Goldberg and Carberry would like to see more of a growth in Alta Gracia sales at the UI bookstore and increased promotion of the product. Earlier this year members of the UI student organizations mentioned above filed a petition with the campus bookstore’s management asking for its increased support of Alta Gracia by purchasing $300,000 in merchandise wholesale, or 30 percent of the store’s merchandise.

“In the past, students would go there and have to ask about Alta Gracia merchandise because they didn’t see it in the store,” Goldberg said. “We want there to be more prominent signage and better placement of the product. We know people will support this product, but they have to be able to find it.”

In response to student requests, the bookstore has crafted an inventory, marketing and merchandising plan to support a sales goal of $100,000 of Alta Gracia during the fiscal year beginning this July 1, and placed an order from their fall line, which begins shipping on August 1. The store’s management has also agreed to track sales and inventory levels. Re-orders will be placed and new products will be introduced as required in support of this sales goal.

Goldberg said students want to see Alta Gracia get the same promotion as less labor-friendly companies like Nike. In the 1990s Nike was criticized for the conditions of its factories. Many universities are paid licensing fees by brands like Nike for the right to use their names, logos and mascots on the clothing they produce. Nike and its competitors are widely accused of continuing to employ workers in Asian sweatshops.

The University of Iowa has a Code of Conduct that requires licenses to “engage in business practices that effect positive change.” The Code also explicitly states that there cannot be benefit from “exploitation of U.S. or international labor” (Section 1).

“We don’t know if Nike still purchases items from factories that abuse their workers, but we know that Alta Gracia doesn’t,” Goldberg said. “We may not be able to prove that Nike is doing something wrong, but we can prove that Alta Gracia is doing something right, so why not stick with the company we know isn’t doing anything bad and promotes a true living wage?”

Alta Gracia pays its workers $510 a month. That equates to a 340 percent increase to the legal minimum wage of $150 per month in the Dominican Republic. The ripple effect of employees receiving a living wage is expansive. According to Taber, with their income workers can make improvements to their homes, which in turn helps the construction industry; they can buy computers for their children and send them to school; they can access clean drinking water; and they can contribute to the overall betterment of their community.

Alta Gracia also prides itself on its safe work environment and welcomes unrestricted monitoring of its factory by an independent watchdog group, The Worker Rights Consortium.

In June 2010 Alta Gracia established a union and elected leaders. The union and management have a joint health committee, and they meet often to discussion production, employee morale and facility conditions. The union conducts vaccination programs and HIV prevention workshops. All with the support and encouragement of management.

“What makes Alta Gracia so unique is that we aren’t just throwing some concessions toward fair trade and living wage,” said Rachel Taber, Community Education Coordinator for Alta Gracia. “We’ve sat down with workers and students and nonprofit groups to listen to what they’re looking for, and we’ve been extremely observant and responsive to those needs.”

Members of the watchdog group visit the factory weekly to check the water quality and the temperature in the building, and discuss work conditions with workers. Representatives of The Workers Rights Consortium also meet with workers in the community, not just at work, to be sure that they can talk freely.

“If a monitor comes up to you at work and your boss is standing right behind you what are you going to say?” Taber asked. “The monitors [from the Consortium] are very cognizant of that and so they meet the workers outside of work.”

For only being in business a short amount of time Alta Gracia has seen tremendous growth, Taber said. The company boasts 135 employees but would like to see more.

Meanwhile, Goldberg, Carberry and others will continue to raise awareness of the work of Alta Gracia. They hope student organizations will partner together to create a social justice coalition on campus to promote not only issues of labor violations but other social justice issues.

“We’d like to see a group like Hawkeyes for Sustainable Labor,” Goldberg said. “We want there to be a group that will continue efforts like this one in the future so the momentum doesn’t disappear.”

Jill Bodach is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She teaches creative writing at The University of Iowa and is a writing tutor at Kirkwood Community College.

Everyone loves it but I have no clue why. When I asked John’s Grocery bier guy Joe Hotek to explain it, he shrugged his shoulders. Is it the invigorating and refreshing citrus? The strong, bitter bite? Hotek mentioned its very minor THC-like chemical effect, so perhaps it is that. (Note: IPA will not get you stoned.) Regardless of the reason, though, it is good brew.

Following my “introduction” to hoppier brews last month, it is time to venture away from the shallow end of the hop spectrum toward the deeper middle (à la the City Park Pool) for India Pale Ale. Hotek gladly built me a custom IPA sixer, which ran the gamut from tame and well-balanced (Goose Island India Pale Ale and Lakefront IPA) to bitter and well-hopped (Founders Centennial IPA). Founders Red’s Rye PA was a solid brewski, too, but the two beers I am recommending for May impressed me the most: Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA and New Belgium Ranger IPA.

Neither beer will provide a fix for raging hopheads, but both offer invigorating citrus, adequate bitterness and a solid malt base. Both can be poured into regular pint glasses, but to get the full effects of the aroma I recommend using a tulip glass. In color, both are a medium/golden copper. Torpedo is the definition of balanced: Scents of caramel, toffee and toasted malts are tinged with a hint of pine spice and grapefruit, lemon and orange citrus. The flavor is smooth and the hop citrus and spice shine, providing an even zest and astringency. Ranger is a touch more bitter and citrusy. Its malt base is overshadowed by floral hops, pine and enticing citrus. Overall it offers a bitter hop experience with a blend of grapefruit, tangerine, lemon and orange.

Early in Andy Kaufman’s career, the comedic performance artist sometimes opened for musicians—including, implausibly, schlock-popper Barry Manilow and R&B greats the Temptations. The latter group’s predominantly black fan base wasn’t feeling his inept Foreign Man routine, so they unleashed an avalanche of boos as he wept uncontrollably. Kaufman then pulled out a large cap gun, walked behind the curtains, fired the pistol into the microphone, and thudded to the ground.

The audience had come to hear “My Girl” and “Just My Imagination,” so this was not exactly what they paid for. The Temptations reportedly “sang extra hard that night to make up for it.” Kaufman caused a similar reaction when warming up for Barry Manilow’s white bread audience a couple years later. He had such an effect on the crowd that the crooner said it was all he could do “to try to bring them back from the edge of revolution.”

As you can tell, Kaufman specialized in troublemaking. During his 1981 appearance on a short-lived Saturday Night Live rip-off named Fridays, he broke character and mumbled he couldn’t play along anymore. Michael Richards—one of only two people who were in on the prank—got up and threw a stack of cue cards at him, and then a fight broke out between Kaufman and the cast and crew.

When invited back to host the next season, he claimed to be a Born Again Christian who was now engaged to Kathie Sullivan, a gospel singer from The Lawrence Welk Show. He reintroduced television viewers to the benign Andy Kaufman, who now wore a three-piece brown polyester suit and sported neatly trimmed hair. Remarkably, he only antagonized the audience once. Right before a performance by The Pretenders, Kaufman gave a lecture on clean living, delaying the start of the song.

When he appeared as the boorishly unfunny lounge lizard Tony Clifton, Kaufman remained unrecognizable in a fat suit, sunglasses, wig and prosthetic makeup. In 1981, Clifton sent an audience over the edge while opening for Rodney Dangerfield. Rolling Stone reported that after arriving twenty-five minutes late he insisted that he would not perform until all cigarettes were extinguished, putting the crowd in a rotten mood. When Clifton finally strutted onstage he lit up a cigar and warbled his rendition of “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”

All hell broke loose. As he plodded on with the next number, “Yankee Doodle,” people launched tomatoes, eggs and a banana cake that splattered on the Clifton’s shoulder. On cue, he shouted, “Drop the net!” A protective barrier came down as someone screamed, “YOU SUCK!” And when Clifton dedicated “this song to the hostages,” someone shot back, “THEY SHOULD TAKE YOU HOSTAGE!”

Then a coin flew through the net and barely missed his ear, so Clifton donned SFPD riot gear—complete with a microphone mounted on the helmet—and continued singing: “… stuck a finger in his ear and called it macaroni!” After an apple ripped through the netting and exploded on Clifton’s helmet, he spent the remainder of the show berating everyone from the wings. The promoter Bill Graham, who booked the chaotic final Sex Pistols gig not long before, had never seen anything like this.

When Kaufman was offered a posh job on Taxi, he refused to sign on unless Tony Clifton was given a guest star turn, with an option for two more. After the show’s producers caved, they were horrified to find that Clifton could not act, was rude to other actors and strutted around the set with a prostitute on each arm. He was escorted off the studio lot while screaming, “I’ll sue your fucking asses! You’ll never work in Vegas again!” Kaufman showed up to work the next week as if nothing had happened, which further irritated the cast. “I don’t know if I’d want to go through that again,” Danny DeVito grumbled. “We all felt it was a big waste of time.”

This wasn’t the first time Clifton had been thrown off a television set; he was also ejected from The Dinah Shore Show after a cooking demonstration gone awry. She often had guests cook up their favorite dishes, but the rogue performer surprised the hostess by tossing a whole stick of butter in the frying pan and crushing a dozen eggshells in her hands. “Do you know who I am?!,” Clifton yelled as security dragged him out. “I’m a big star!” Jean Stapleton, who played Edith Bunker on the 1970s sitcom All In the Family, locked herself in the greenroom with another guest, David Copperfield. The magician recalled, “she was weeping and sobbing when all the pandemonium broke loose in the studio. It was amazing.”

Tony Clifton could be mean-spirited, in an over-the-top cartoonish way, but this was an anomaly in the pantheon of Kaufman characters. His Foreign Man confounded nightclub audiences by transforming from a bumbling entertainer to a spot-on Elvis impersonator. “I come down tonight from downtown Wisconsin,” he would say in faintly Slavic-sounding accent. When the crowd tittered nervously, he shot back, “No, no. Wait teel I give you thee punch.” Catch a Rising Star comedy club owner Rick Newman recalled: “I really didn’t know he was putting me on. He did Foreign Man until the audiences were booing and walking out. But then suddenly he broke into his incredible Elvis imitation and caught us so completely by surprise that we ended up crying, we were laughing so hard.”

Soon television producers were inviting Foreign Man on the air. His 1978 appearance on The Dating Game pitted the hapless character against two quintessential ‘70s studs: a bearded man with a wide-open lapel draped over his hairy chest, and another who was tanned, permed and suited up. “How ya doing Patrice,” Studs #1 and #2 said with smooth confidence, while Foreign Man let out a meek, “Hee-lo Pat-reese.” After creating all kinds of confusion, he broke down in tears when Patrice picked Stud #2. Foreign Man insisted that he had answered all the questions correctly, and therefore should win the contest.

After this health-food nut and non-smoker was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer at the age of thirty-five, many were sure it was another one of his pranks. “Andy, come on man,” people would say to him as he sat in his wheelchair. “This dying thing is just too much!”

Kembrew McLeod lives in Iowa City, and plans to be fighting ninjas throughout the month of May.