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For a band that was originally conceived as a goof, Younger has rapidly transformed into one of Iowa City’s best rock bands — exploding with energy, intricate arrangements, barbed lyrics and catchy hooks.
“We had talked about playing together for a long time,” drummer Sarah Mannix recalled. “I don’t think that we honestly believed it was going to be an actual band. I think we just got together more as a joke.”
Andrei Codrescu: Documenting Dada/Disseminating Dada Shambaugh Auditorium — Saturday, Feb. 18 at 7 p.m. Dada was a volatile artistic, social and political movement that exploded in 1916 from the Zürich club Cabaret Voltaire, creating reverberations that can still be felt today. Its fuse was lit by refugees from World War One who decamped to Switzerland, […]
A single family’s artistic DNA can sometimes leave traces on the genetic makeup of the broader culture. Bibbe Hansen’s familial history, for example, also doubles as a survey of modern American bohemia and popular culture. It spans time and space, encompassing the 1950s Beatnik era and the present, New York and Los Angeles, Happenings and […]
Before Bart Simpson did it, though long after Faust, I sold my soul. This prank permanently cemented my status as a vaguely remembered factoid: “The guy who sold his soul on eBay.” I orchestrated the prank at the height of the late-1990s dot-com era, when eBay was the hot new auction website of the moment. […]
Rhys Chatham Gabe’s — Saturday, Nov. 5 at 10 p.m. Tickets available here Punk pioneers the Ramones stripped their music down to three chords, creating an austere wall of sound that brought rock and roll back to its basics. Composer Rhys Chatham, however, might be the only artist who was inspired to use more chords […]
John Waters — “Filthier and Dirtier” The Englert Theatre — Saturday, Oct. 1 at 7 p.m. Prepare yourself. Hide the children. John Waters — the Auteur of Ordure — is once again bringing his one-man roadshow to the Englert, on Oct. 1. “Filthier and Dirtier” is the latest iteration of his vaudevillian act, a freewheeling […]
For a man who fronted a group named Suicide, Alan Vega lived a very full life. When I spoke with him earlier this year, before his recent death at the age of 78, he was still bursting with creativity and impish irreverence. Vega — also known as Alan Suicide — was an original punk. As […]
Plenty of dicks have lived in Iowa City over the years, but only one Cockette. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lendon Sadler was part of a notorious San Francisco drag troupe named the Cockettes, which filmmaker John Waters affectionately referred to as a bunch of acid freak bearded Marxist drag queens. Since that […]
Nicholas Johnson — who is likely the only Iowa City native who ever appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, in 1971 — foreshadowed his career as a troublemaking FCC Commissioner when he was an adolescent boy in the mid-1940s. “My first experience with radio was Allied Radio in Chicago,” Johnson recently told me. “This […]
Writer, actress and photographer Lisa Jane Persky is surely the only participant in the early CBGB punk scene who also appeared in When Harry Met Sally. After moving to Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, she met several colorful characters — from Divine and Debbie Harry to Lance Loud and Yoko Ono (the latter of […]
The weekend after David Bowie’s death, the Starman’s spirit descended on Iowa City, sprinkling magical fairy dust during The Mill’s David Bowie Karaoke Party and Glam Costume Contest. A benefit for a local homeless shelter that raised $1,700, this lively event embodied what made Bowie such an enduring artist: spectacle. It’s no secret that David […]
“Fuck Rock and Roll (I’d Rather Read a Book),” Richard Hell sang in 1974, back when he played in the band Television. He also co-founded two other influential New York punk groups—The Heartbreakers and The Voidoids—something that tends to overshadow Hell’s half-century involvement in the publishing world. “I’ve always loved books,” he told me over […]
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