Here lies the second installation of Mission Freak’s YouTube channel. Below are two songs performed by Australia’s singer/songwriter and all around good guy Darren Hanlon and one by local band Grand Tetons.
Music
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mission Freak YouTube Channel
Mission Freak is proud to announce the debut of its very own YouTube channel! That’s right, here are the first three installations of what promises to be a great source for video of Iowa City shows and hopefully interviews with local and touring acts. These three videos are from the show last Wednesday at the Blue Moose Tap House.
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
Show Preview: Those Darlins with Turbo Fruits – The Mill 9/24
Southern through and through, Those Darlins will bring their own brand of cowpunk through Iowa City on the 24th of September. Easily blending the twangy sounds of the Appalachians with the speed of punk rock and a bit of pop sensibility, Those Darlins are fast, catchy, and write really great simple songs.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
It’s Just Another Manic Monday
Mondays are always busy. Someone decided to make it busier in an awesome way by putting on three quality shows on the same night. This is a guide to navigating the options.
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Community/News
Event Photos: Carnival Hearts & Arts Parade – 9/12
The second Carnival Hearts & Arts Parade occupied Happy Hollow park last Sunday and it was bigger and better than the first one, which was held in May. The weather could not have been better, and the turnout was a pleasing mix of artists, musicians, writers, crafters, photographers, music fiends, families, students, art lovers, babies, and dogs.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Show Preview/Ticket Giveaway: Colour Revolt at the Blue Moose 9/22/10
Not since the Constantines has a band hit so hard and so passionately that you can virtually hear their hearts bleeding all over their sleeves. Both rough-edged and sensitive, Southern rockers Colour Revolt construct angular guitar jams which focus on the failures of love, growing up, and playing in rock n’ roll bands.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Fiddler's Picnic at the Johnson County Fairgrounds 9/19/10
These Eastern Iowa pickers might not grace the cover of Rolling Stone any time soon (then again, they might), but that’s fine with us–established traditions like this one have very little to prove. For the 40th year, Eastern Iowa’s finest old-time, bluegrass, Celtic, country and folk musicians are getting together to take part in a continuous stage show that all ages are sure to enjoy.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Hubcap Holmes: Just for Funstuff
This is a free CD I picked up at a Public Space One show. Hubcap Holmes is a solo project of Kurt Austin, one of the loose cohort of early-20s musicians currently making noise in Iowa City. The live performance (with Matt Fenner on bass) showed that Hubcap Holmes has a good grasp of pop songwriting; his songs had sing-along melodies, simple without being too simple.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Be Kind to Your Neighbor: Be Kind to Your Neighbor
Be Kind To Your Neighbor is Dan Davis and Ed Bornstein (The Occasionals), and since Ed moved away, they’re no longer playing together. But they did get together at Flat Black to record this CD. As with Dan’s other band, Weather Is Happening, the organizing principle is a titanic wall of guitar noise, pummelled drums and tortured, screamed vocals.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Wax Cannon: The Ankle Hour
SWax Cannon is two guys–David Murray and Jay Miller–who have been playing together for several years. They put out the titanic Someone in Madison is Praying for You (And it’s not me) four years ago, a double CD that was a tour de force of rock ‘n’ roll songwriting, their answer to Daydream Nation or Zen Arcade.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Sarah Cram & The Derelicts: Little Secrets
Most folks who bother to go out to hear live music in Eastern Iowa know that Sarah Cram has that voice–a dark, smooth alto with a jazzy vibrato at the end of sustained notes. As good as The Diplomats of Solid Sound are when they roll stag, with Sarah and her sister Diplomettes, they’re a whole other thing–elegant, sexy, and even funkier.
