It’s a beautiful world in Iowa City. Especially when we’re all doing our part to 1) Save the environment, and 2) Keep the art alive by going out to look at it, buy it, enjoy it and dance to it. Fortunately there are plenty of opportunities to do all of that this weekend. Here’s a checklist to help you make sure you have your fair share of the fun!
Little Village
Posted inCommunity/News
LV 96: October 2010
The Future South of Burlington; p. 10 – 21, Take 2; p. 8 – Larry Baker Saves the Day; p. 12 – Perfect Season: Over. Now what?; p. 6 – Take a Joke, Iowa; p. 23 – New Diplomats: Still Solid; p. 32 – Max Weinberg Keeps Going; p. 22 – Art Scene; p. 18 – Lit Scene; p. 16 – Live Music; p. 28 – Movies; p. 26
Posted inCommunity/News
A Keg on Every Corner
Were there a facility large enough to house us all I suspect we’d have long ago been ordered by the court to attend some ambiguously-named in-patient rehab facility where our bags would be searched for mouthwash, daily urine tests would be administered and T-shirts commemorating pub crawls would be confiscated at the door.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
A One, and a Two, and a Three
Max Weinberg has led an interesting life as a musician. He recorded and toured with Bruce Springsteen and it’s his snare shots that propel Bruce’s biggest hit, “Born In The USA.” When Springsteen disbanded his E Street Band in 1989, Weinberg tried a variety of things–producing records, session work, Law School, college drum clinics, even (according to Wikipedia) motivational speaking to corporate audiences–before becoming the band leader for Conan O’Brien’s “Late Night” on NBC in 1993, a job he held for 17 years.
Now, in what Weinberg calls his “third act,” he has formed a 15-piece big band, appearing at the Englert Theatre Oct. 22. Weinberg was in Italy when I spoke to him about his current project and where it fits into his career.
Posted inCommunity/News
Men at Work
Times being what they are, I recently spent a day in a homeless shelter.
Along with a dozen other visitors, I toured Chicago’s 133-year-old Pacific Garden Mission, which recently moved into a large new building. Our guide showed us the three stark dormitories in which guests sleep, the security desk overlooking the staging area in which guests are checked for “things of the world,” the “hot box” in which guests’ clothing is decontaminated overnight.
We met no overnighters, only sharply dressed “program men,” full-time mission residents who devote themselves to a two-year course of bible study and life-skills training.
During dinner, visitors were politely but firmly encouraged to sit in the middle of the mission’s dining hall. This helped to separate female and male residents, important for practical and religious reasons..
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Talking Movies: Well Spoke’n
I’ve now seen Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece The Bicycle Thief twice in my life. I’m not sure how many more times I’ll be able to bear it. It’s too real; reality is too heartbreaking; and, as T.S. Eliot drily observes, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
Posted inArts & Entertainment
On the Beat: October’s bag of tricks
Best known for Halloween, its costume-and-trickery grand finale, October leaves almost everything to the imagination. The theme of surprise and disguise has also been a trend this year in local music promotion. With the rapidly changing venue scene, including new owners/bookers/venues, a bunch of shows popped up that had people saying, “Really? That show is happening there?.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Reviews: Paul Cary — Ghost of a Man
Paul Cary’s nasal squall of a voice–familiar to fans of his former Iowa City band The Horrors–is irresistibly rough. And on Ghost Of A Man, the vintage microphones and elderly spring reverbs turn his voice into something that exists out of time. It’s as though he was the guy who got thrown out of Sun Studios in the ‘50s for smoking up in the bathroom.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review – The Beggarmen: A Soft Day
Iowa City has a deep tradition of acoustic folk music, of which the Beggarmen are proud members. They specialize in Irish folk music, but in addition to playing traditional tunes they write their own songs in the tradition. Their musicianship on A Soft Day is impressive, all the more so for being completely relaxed.
Posted inCommunity/News
Larry’s Great Hollywood Adventure
I’m a fiction writer, but I’m not a very good creative writer. Like a lot of writers, I steal shamelessly from my own life and change the names to protect…well, probably my marriage. Thinking about how to write a bizarre but true story, I have another handicap. The really bizarre stuff happened when I was MUCH younger, and most often my consciousness then was, politely phrased, altered..
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Event Preview: Landfall Festival of World Music 9/22-25, Sponsored by Little Village!
From the mind-altering, polyphonic a capella of Corsican quartet Barbara Fortuna to the 12-piece Romanian gypsy punk of Mahala Rai Banda, and featuring Kenyan drum ensemble Kenge Kenge, dance music from Colombia’s Cimarrón and Brooklyn-based Nation Beat, Landfall is totally worth the trip up to CR this weekend.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa City Weekender: September 16-20
Where’s a holiday when you need one? This weekend started last night with Pezzettino and Mike Mangione at the Blue Moose, and it won’t stop till late-late-late on Monday night…And in between? Oh, let me tell you!
