It’s the day after Christmas and singer-songwriter Lissie begins pouring a glass of Castle Rock Pinot Noir and pairing it with a variety of Harry Potter references. She’s prepping for what will be a two day acoustic session at The Magic Barn recording studio just outside of Solon. Lissie heard about the Magic Barn from […]
Here are just a few examples to illustrate a fact that cannot be denied: my town can beat up your town To walk through downtown Iowa City on a Saturday evening is to cross paths with people originating from locales as near as Osceola and as far as Nairobi. And while most of us who […]
Little Village readers following the ongoing controversy about Professor Stephen Bloom’s article about Iowa in the Atlantic may have noticed the lack of direct response from us. Thomas Dean made a glancing mention of it in his essay about the complicated feelings he has about his hometown Rockford, Illinois. Mostly, we thought that there wasn’t […]
Flip through issue 109 of Little Village magazine. […]
T’Bone is based in Chicago, but is made up of Iowa natives Leland Meiners (bass), Ed Bornstein (drums) and Pat McPartland (guitar), and their album Mount Trashmore was recorded in Iowa City at Luke Tweedy’s Flat Black Studio. Chicago, birthplace of seminal post rock bands like Tortoise and Gastr Del Sol, is an apt home for these guys, whose songs follow their own crooked paths, leaving pop song conventions far behind. […]
Questions of authenticity and the creative process have long been pressed on fans of modern music, especially electronic music. File sharing and digital manipulation change the collaborative process and force listeners to ask how important human playing, human authorship and human interaction are to creating what we call music. Is collaboration collaborative when it is […]
Brando Gassman and Andy Sinclair’s hard-hitting musical skills and unironic love of metal. Sam Locke Warde’s bloody-minded humor and migraine-inducing shrieks. Twenty songs averaging a minute in length. Result? Police Brutality. […]
The English would like you to remember, remember the 5th of November because of some Guy who tried to blow up Parliament. Why anyone would have such a beef with George Clinton is beyond me, but Iowa City’s Mill Restaurant would like you remember Saturday, November 5, 2011 for the great rock show they hosted. […]
Hello and welcome back to another edition of the Weekender. As Thanksgiving week approaches, we all aim to take a few shortcuts to getting what really matters about the holiday: eating a lot of food, spending time with people that you care about and drinking box wine. This week’s column is no different. In a […]
Fetal Pig Autopia fetalpig.bandcamp.com Jesus said “Behold the lilies of the field. They toil not, neither do they spin.” For some reason Fetal Pig reminds me of Jesus’ lilies. With a band history going back nearly 20 years, these guys do what they do not because it makes them rich and famous–because it hasn’t–but because […]
This Weekender’s got local arts, comedy events and music. It’s a little bit of something for everyone. […]
Rarely has a lowly rock critic altered the course of popular music history, but Chuck Eddy did. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but bear with me. Back in the mid-1980s he reviewed Aerosmith’s Done With Mirrors, which captured the band at the lowest point in their career. When that album was released, they […]