New Friends
Hello reader and welcome to On The Beat, a monthly column that will explore and comment on the local music scene as well as highlight some solid shows coming up during the month, exactly like The Haps previously. From what I see in this month’s shows, 2012 is coming out the gate strong. On the...
The Haps: Will Rock for Food
In February 1852, John Sullivan Dwight, a transcendentalist and graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to start a music magazine. In a pamphlet outlining his ideas, he wrote that his journal would cover the developments of “the Musical Movement in our country, of the growing love of deep and genuine music, of the growing consciousness...
The Haps: Counting Down
Seemingly no one hates Counting Crows more than Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard. An oft-cited gem from his 2005 stage-banter album, Relaxation of the Asshole, goes something like this: “I wanna know how the guy from the Counting Crows used to fuck everybody from Friends? How the fuck’d he do it? He’s an ugly...
The Haps: Summer Earcation
In his 1992 book A Sound Education, Canadian composer and theorist Murray Schafer made this observation about contemporary life and listening: “As people have moved to cities over the past century they have developed a preference for close-up sounds..."
The Haps: F’n A, It’s May!
On May 1, 1965, at an annual celebration in Prague, Allen Ginsberg was crowned the King of May. The tradition of May Day and its royalty was founded back in who-knows-when for reasons of who-knows-what (pagans or something), but on this particular May Day, ’60s counterculture and communist oppression met head-on. After Ginsberg was paraded...
The Haps: It's Raining Shows
In Langston Hughes' 1921 poem “April Rain Song,” the thing that everyone hates about April--its big problem--is instead turned into a point of celebration, ending with the lines, “The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night / And I love the rain.” This point was totally lost on Billie Myers, who...
The Haps: Great Things, Small Packages
Architecture in Helsinki’s brilliant 2003 debut album, Fingers Crossed, kicks off with a short, Casio and drum machine instrumental called “One Heavy February.” Unlike so many ultimately forgettable album intros (noise pulses, voice mails, carnival barking, string quartets, what have you), the song is a deliciously melodic twee dance number, and at just under a...
The Haps: January 2011
In 1953, a guy named Pat Best wrote a song for his band The Four Tunes, called “I Understand (Just How You Feel)” a Pop/R&B crossover that broke into the top 10 on both charts. The original recording is fine, if a bit basic, but soon the song was covered by a slew of...
The Haps: Hometown Sound
In Everything But The Girl’s “25th December” (one of those great non-Christmas Christmas songs that end up on “indie xmas” mix tapes), Ben Watt sings about the quintessential winter feeling: regret. “I’m thirty and I don’t know nothing no more,” he whines in the way that only British people can whine, thinking about old friends,...
The Haps: October’s Bag of Tricks
Best known for Halloween, its costume-and-trickery grand finale, October leaves almost everything to the imagination. The theme of surprise and disguise has also been a trend this year in local music promotion. With the rapidly changing venue scene, including new owners/bookers/venues, a bunch of shows popped up that had people...
The Haps: To New Beginnings
August is harvest season, and I don’t mean corn: It’s the annual time of year when we welcome the bountiful student population back to our small city. Whether or not you’ve been away, it’s worth noting that summer vacation has brought a few changes in the music landscape.
Pick Out the Jams
It’s October, and there are a ton of shows to talk about, so insert funny Halloween joke here, followed by an apology about how I just didn’t write this column last month (how, I ask, did you know what shows to go to??), and then get on with the getting’ on. Jack-O-Lantern, fools! This month...
The Haps: Beyond Jazz Fest
Over the last few years, it seemed like the exponential spread of the summer mega-festival was never going to stop, as little Bonnaroos and Coachellas started showing up from Maine to Oregon and everywhere in-between, including our own state. Like anything, this trend has been slowed by the economic situation—the Langerado Music Festival in Florida...
The Haps: Showered in Shows
As we all know, thanks to T.S. Eliot, “April is the cruelest month,” but for music lovers in Iowa City, the pain and suffering that April causes may be in the form of cubicle and classroom hangovers, not an actual musical wasteland. In fact, April showers bring May flowers, and when it rains it pours,...
Spring Breakdown
March in the actual world might be known for St. Patrick’s Day or warmer weather (hopefully), or a certain kind of basketball madness, but in the music world, it’s all about one thing: the SXSW music festival and conference in Austin, Texas. Perhaps the biggest and most indulgent exercise in industry self-love ever to be...
The Haps: Prepare to be Judged
January is the month of perpetual hangovers, and if December was any indication, the whole damn town might be frozen over. So I’m going to partake in the long tradition of using the New Year to pass judgment and make changes—though, not on myself (fine, more vegetables), but on the local venues (Mill: more vegetables!)....
Breaking In the New Year
I want to have a commemorative plate destruction party. I was thinking about some Christmastime introduction to this column, and all I could think about was some single woman carefully setting up commemorative plates around her living room, in their little stands, and getting the lighting just right, and it was making me insane with...
Spirited Shows
Welcome to the War on Xmas, pt. II. If it were up to me, starting every Oct. 1st, every department store–and one random radio station–would start playing Halloween music all damn day and night. From the classics (Boris Pickett’s “Monster Mash”) to unheralded gems (Bob Marley’s “Dracula”) to the downright stupid (Zacherley’s “Dinner with Drac”),...
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