Tape hung like curtains in Arthur Russell’s apartment. The recording devices responsible were powered by an extension cord that ran out the window and down a few floors to Allen Ginsberg’s. Russell left behind 166 feet of tape when he died, only 40 years old, of AIDS-related illness in 1992. And if you’ll let me […]
Arthur Russell
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Album Review: Elizabeth Moen — ‘For Arthur’
For Arthur by Elizabeth Moen The teenaged Arthur Russell left Oskaloosa in 1968. He was a musical prodigy (cello and piano), a hippie vagabond and a spiritual seeker. He moved to a Buddhist commune in San Francisco, passed his high school equivalency, then became Allen Ginsberg’s accompanist and perhaps lover. Five years later, he hopped […]
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Arthur Russell — ‘Iowa Dream’
Iowa Dream by Arthur Russell It was awfully sweet what Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella said about Iowa — but nobody has made this place sound so good as Arthur Russell. Iowa is always polite, always wild, not the convenient setting of some canonical work of literature read in high school classrooms. The lines are all […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
A week of activities dedicated to Iowa expat musician Arthur Russell
Arthur Russell Week various venues — Tuesday, April 25 through Friday, April 28 When Arthur Russell was a teenager, he ran away from his home in Oskaloosa, Iowa. A pioneer in cross-genre composition during the 1970s and ’80s, Russell released just one solo album during his lifetime: World of Echo in 1986. He collaborated with […]
