With a command of the four foundation elements of hip hop, Des Moines artist ASPHATE is harnessing them for a noble pursuit: making a magazine.
Prairie Pop
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Monkee Micky Dolenz plans to play the hits ‘exactly as people remember them’ — and then some — at the Surf Ballroom on Sept. 13
Editor’s note: Dolenz’s May 24, 2024 performance and meet-and-greet at the Surf was rescheduled for Friday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. The headline of this article has been updated with the new date. When Micky Dolenz sets foot on the stage of Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom, the last living member of the Monkees knows that […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Meet Sam Locke Ward, Iowa City’s pop music MacGyver
Since the time Samuel Locke Ward grew up in relative isolation on a family farm in Iowa, he has taken the road less traveled at every turn. With a preternatural talent for crafting earworm hooks and catchy melodies, the prolific musician could very well have beaten a path to Nashville or Los Angeles and developed […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Yola has walked through fire — literally — to become a paradigm-shifting country star
Walk Through Fire isn’t just a metaphor about perseverance. The title to the 2019 debut full-length from Yola also refers to a life-changing house fire she survived. In 2014, the British singer had been handling a bioethanol burner with a faulty fuel canister that, unbeknownst to her, leaked throughout the room and eventually ignited.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Damon & Naomi, high school sweethearts turned alt-rock duo, hit the road again
Damon & Naomi’s career arc has all the makings of an indie rock jukebox musical. Think Jersey Boys meets Samuel Beckett, starring bassist Naomi Yang and drummer Damon Krukowski as post-punk New Yorkers who fall in love and become the rhythm section of a beloved band. Success for these children of immigrants turns bittersweet after […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
From Judy! to Tom Tomorrow, Iowa City’s ‘revolutionary’ zine scene flourished out of Zephyr Copies
“Sometime during the early 1980s,” intermedia artist Lloyd Dunn recalled, “a number of people in many different places suddenly understood that they could afford to become publishers, as photocopy shops began to appear in cities around the world.” In the years before the internet, artists, outsiders and other weirdos connected with each other through a […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Book excerpt: The Fugs’ Ed Sanders incites a indie media revolution with his zine ‘Fuck You’
Ed Sanders grew up in western Missouri, in the small farm town of Blue Springs. After briefly attending the University of Missouri, he hitchhiked to the East Coast in 1958 to attend New York University. “I soon was enmeshed in the culture of the Beats,” Sanders recalled in his memoir, Fug You, “as found in Greenwich Village bookstores, in the poetry readings in coffeehouses on MacDougal Street, in New York City art and jazz, and in the milieu of pot and counterculture that was rising.” He also began volunteering at the Catholic Worker, a newspaper founded by activist Dorothy Day that was dedicated to social justice.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Richard Hell’s New York City
Richard Meyers landed on New York City’s Lower East Side in late 1966. Within a few years he had reinvented himself as Richard Hell and transitioned from poetry to punk rock. This blending of art forms was not unusual among the residents of the city’s dilapidated downtown neighborhoods, a topic that he and writer, photographer and actress Lisa Jane Persky will discuss during Making a Scene: A Conversation About Downtown New York City, a free event that I will moderate at the Englert Theatre during the Witching Hour Festival.
Posted inCommunity/News
A true history of fake news: Unicorns on the moon
Part two of two. Read part one: A true history of fake news: The many identities of Benjamin Franklin The 2016 U.S. presidential election season unleashed new anxieties about “fake news” and other slippery forms of propaganda that have been enabled by our newfangled social media. However, media manipulation has a long history — one […]
Posted inPrairie Pop
A true history of fake news: The many identities of Benjamin Franklin
Before the term “fake news” gained wide circulation during the 2016 presidential election season, deception had long been part of the U.S. media landscape. When Benjamin Franklin emerged as the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, he used it to plant ironic satires, partisan potshots and other false stories.
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Revisiting the Louds, America’s first reality TV family
Forty-five years ago — on Jan. 11, 1973 — the first reality series premiered on PBS, and television would never be the same. An American Family became an immediate pop culture sensation that was discussed by newspaper columnists, debated by television pundits and even taken seriously by respected scholars like Margaret Mead.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Prairie Pop: Grey Area festival will suit local music fans, campers and circus freaks
Grey Area, a joint venture by Flat Black Studios and White Rabbit clothing store, is an unusual new festival taking place just outside of Iowa City on Aug. 18 and 19. Featuring live music and a diverse range of multimedia programming, it’s a celebration of our local musical community. The festival will span Friday afternoon to late Saturday night, and is set outdoors (on-site camping is encouraged; bring plenty of water, bug spray and other necessities, as well as blankets or chairs to sit on).
