Multi-award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner has amassed a wide-ranging body of work about people she calls “impossible visionaries.” Her documentary subjects tend to stray from social convention and take the path less traveled, which can sometimes put hers in impossible situations. I imagine that nothing was more difficult than making Last Flight Home, a 2022 film […]
Prairie Pop
Posted inArts & Entertainment
From basements to grand stages, Mission Creek Festival has nourished Iowa City culture for two decades. This year marks the end of an era.
Mission Creek Festival’s namesake is a ghost river in San Francisco. It once connected the center of the city to Mission Bay, though during the past two centuries it has largely been filled in and redirected through subterranean channels. Over the years, parts of the land that Mission Creek ran through have experienced soil liquefaction, […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
A debut album by 14? Singer-songwriter Bridget Bell is a star on the rise with a little help from Girls Rock! Des Moines
How did a junior high student in rural Iowa come to record one of the best releases I’ve heard this decade? For that matter, how does someone from that background acquire the tools to pull off such a thing? If you ask Bridget Bell — who just released her debut EP, forgive and forget — […]
Posted inPrairie Pop
A new graffiti magazine out of Des Moines immortalizes the work of anonymous artists
With a command of the four foundation elements of hip hop, Des Moines artist ASPHATE is harnessing them for a noble pursuit: making a magazine.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Growing up in Normal, USA with Pharrell Williams
After entering my 25th year in Iowa City — longer than anywhere I’ve ever resided, including my hometown — I’ve been thinking about how places can shape our lives. Those thoughts came into sharper focus while watching a compelling new documentary about musician Pharrell Williams, who grew up down the street from me. “I’m from […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa dad Jeremy Pfaff is skateboarding across the state for a great cause, with a soundtrack made by his friends
Imagine doing RAGBRAI — riding the entire length of Iowa — on a skateboard. Jeremy Pfaff plans to do just that as he departs on Oct. 5 to head west across the state. If the street skating gods are on his side, he’ll finish his journey in Sioux City around mid-Oct. Pfaff first discovered skateboarding […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The belt-buckled Bronco are an enduring staple of Tejano pop music, with dancing fans the world over — including Iowa
When Bronco takes the stage at the Val Air Ballroom on Aug. 4, the iconic Mexican group will weave into their live show a tapestry of musical influences imbued with layers of cultural history. Originally hailing from Apodaca in the northeast state of Nuevo León, this five-piece grupero ensemble has been around since the mid-’70s, […]
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The Flaming Lips, coming to Cedar Rapids June 25, have embodied alt-pop absurdity since Valerie Malone first introduced them on ‘90210’
“Hey man,” Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne asked me with a hippie-punk inflection, “are you a cop?” Back in 2006, I was interviewing him backstage after a show in St. Louis with co-headliners Sonic Youth, where Coyne was winding down after an explosive performance filled with confetti, balloons and a psychedelic light show. One of […]
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Monkee Micky Dolenz plans to play the hits ‘exactly as people remember them’ — and then some — at the Surf Ballroom on Sept. 13
Editor’s note: Dolenz’s May 24, 2024 performance and meet-and-greet at the Surf was rescheduled for Friday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. The headline of this article has been updated with the new date. When Micky Dolenz sets foot on the stage of Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom, the last living member of the Monkees knows that […]
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KRUI student radio celebrates 40 years fighting dead air and adult control on the University of Iowa campus
This is a scrappy story of young folks bum-rushing the airwaves through sheer force of will. With humble origins that can be traced back to a University of Iowa dormitory broom closet, KRUI is now celebrating 40 years of FM radio broadcasting thanks to the passion of students and other community members. In the beginning […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Legendary pro skater, punk rocker and Des Moines local Mike Vallely is living his teenage dream
Growing up in New Jersey in the 1970s and ’80s, Mike Vallely was, of course, aware of skateboarding. But it didn’t seem approachable. Popular culture presented it as something made for Californians with nice tans and well-built bodies who wanted to show off and do handstands on their boards. So Vallely didn’t pay it much […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘As long as our music touches people, we’re gonna keep on singing’: The Blind Boys of Alabama are coming to Iowa for two shows
The Blind Boys of Alabama’s decades-spanning career speaks to both the universal human condition — we are all just passing through this world, searching for connection — and the very specific experience of being Black and disabled in America. This venerable gospel group endured brutal Jim Crow racism, embraced the defiant optimism of the Civil […]
