To paraphrase Grand Funk Railroad, Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian band—and a family band. It features siblings Margo Timmins on vocals, Michael Timmins on guitar, Peter Timmins on drums and longtime friend and collaborator Alan Anton on bass. Their quiet, hypnotic sound (imagine the Velvet Underground backing Patsy Cline) was cemented on their breakthrough 1988 album…
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Posted inArts & Entertainment
Screenshot: The art and politics of Grand Theft Auto
The highly (and happily) controversial series Grand Theft Auto (GTA) just expanded on Sept. 17 with GTA V for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3. The number V, as with the nominal before the decimal in a software program, is meant to indicate some essential changes in the way the game functions. For gamers with […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Prairie Pop: A guide to the satirical hits inspired by A Modest Proposal
Few works of literature have loomed larger over popular culture than Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. This classic 1729 essay created the template for…
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa City’s extensive network of beer caves, ice caves, tunnels and more
Few people know about the old caves and tunnels beneath Iowa City, and why should they? Buried beneath streets, buildings and houses all around the older parts…
Posted inArts & Entertainment
N.S.F.W: 12 songs to make Tipper Gore gasp
When I was young I sought out music that had any hint of eroticism. I remember Merril Bainbridge’s “Mouth” giving me shivers: “When I kiss your mouth, I want to taste it.” I was entranced. Could lips be salty? I wondered. With neither an internet connection, the money for audio cassettes nor the ability to […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Screenshot: The rules of the game
September rolling around again means not only the return of professional football, but also of professional football’s most popular simulacrum, the Madden video game franchise. EA Sports has been releasing a Madden game every year since 1990, though the first game was published in 1988, making this year its 25th; yet, because Madden is typically […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Prairie Pop: Mobb Deep’s past, present and future
“I got you stuck off the realness / we be the infamous”—Prodigy rapped in the opening verse of “Shook Ones, Part II,” Mobb Deep’s classic 1995 single—“you heard of us / official Queensbridge murderers / the Mobb comes equipped with warfare, beware.” Grimy, blood-soaked and unrelentingly bleak, Mobb Deep’s albums were filled with first-person tales delivered over menacing beats and minor key samples. Prodigy and his partner-in-musical-crime Havoc sounded like they had roamed the mean streets of New York since they were old enough to lift a banana clip. The reality, however, was a little more mundane.
Posted inCommunity/News
The history and evolution of beer zombies in Iowa City
Iowa City is about to receive its annual plague of beer zombies. Between students coming back, the ruckus of football weekends and party-town binge drinking, the number of these late-night drunks staggering the streets will increase exponentially. For all residents that find beer zombies lost in their neighborhood, flailing in their yard or evacuating their […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Art City: The Iowa State Fair as tribute to the boundless hunger of the individual
If you’re going to lose yourself in Iowa like I have for the last four years, you need to obey the gravity of our place and time and go to the Iowa State Fair. This year’s…
Posted inFood & Drink
Cornography: Land of the golden phallus
If we are what we eat, we have almost no choice but to be corn. It’s an ingredient in so much of what we consume, knowingly or not, but here in Iowa City, it’s a constant summer reminder of who we are and what we can do with what the oft-generous earth gives us. CORN […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Prairie Pop: A guide to the Bob Mould oeuvre
On Thursday, Aug. 15, the Bob Mould Band will totally rock the roof off the Englert in support of the singer-guitarist’s superb 2012 release, Silver Age. This is reason enough to be super-psyched, but wait, there’s more! Mould has been mining his deep back catalog—performing songs by Hüsker Dü and Sugar, his two previous bands, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Screenshot: The cutscene effect
Let’s be honest: Video game cutscenes—those moments when control is taken from the user so that story information can be conveyed through a cinema-style sequence—almost always disappoint. Dialogue is often stilted and the voice acting is subpar; character expressions are muted at best and immobile at worst, sticking them firmly in the “uncanny valley” of […]
