When Giorgio Moroder appears at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival on Friday, July 18, he’ll be the oldest artist there—by a long shot. Nevertheless, this 74-year-old…
Prairie Pop
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Prairie Pop: An interview with mischievous media mogul Paul Krassner
In 1958, Paul Krassner founded The Realist, a magazine that inspired a generation of satirists and alternative-media moguls. You can draw a straight…
Posted inCommunity/News
Join the Million Robot March
In 1979, University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry had the visiting team’s locker room walls painted pink. Fry said he did it because “pink is often found in girls’ bedrooms, and because of that some consider it a sissy color.” In 2005, UI doubled down by adding pink urinals, showers, floors and lockers. Many Hawkeye fans find it funny, while others see it as a leftover from a time when coaches motivated players by calling them “homo,” “girl” and in Fry’s own words, “sissy.”
Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop
Laurie Anderson interview: An artist of her own invention
Laurie Anderson isn’t solely responsible for me turning out a little bit weird, but she still played a significant role in skewing my worldview. I stumbled across her Big Science album not long after it was released, when I was an impressionable young teenager. This 1982 record contains her unlikely hit single “O Superman (For […]
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Prairie Pop: Who’s watching big brother?
Iowa native and UI alum Cindy Cohn is the Legal Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The National Law Journal named her one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting, “if Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn.” On Saturday, March 1—at noon in Meeting Room […]
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Prairie Pop: Power Ballads 101
Last year, Little Village turned over Kembrew McLeod’s “Prairie Pop” column to Umläut Nideldick—the legendary German song doctor and rock and roll life coach. Once again, we are proud to reprint Nideldick’s latest keynote address at the Eurovision Academy of Musical Arts (EAMA). Thank you, my fellow rockers! I am here to speak about what […]
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Pee-wee’s (remastered) Christmas Adventure: An interview with Paul Reubens
This year marks the quarter century anniversary of Pee-wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special, perhaps the most mind-bending holiday special ever aired by…
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An interview with Michael Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies
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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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…
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Prairie Pop: The sound of money
Carey Mulligan has always wanted a killer line. In a 2009 interview with the New York Times, she wondered where all the good lines had gone, the ones she remembered from a youth spent watching family friendly action films like Indiana Jones. “Someone’s almost fallen off a cliff,” she said, “and then they don’t, and […]
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Prairie Pop: An interview with Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo’s brand of drone-rock is certainly hypnotic—narcotizing even—but their live shows are never boring. That has much to do with this threesome’s restless desire to switch up their act with each tour. I’ve seen them stage a variety show with comedians, perform straight-up rock shows in clubs, use a spinning wheel that lets […]
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Prairie Pop: Jump up and get down
Editor’s Note: Kembrew McLeod’s two-year-old son, Alasdair, is sitting in for our regular Prairie Pop columnist this issue. Like many adult music critics, he likes to coin genre names, and lately Alasdair has been obsessed with “Jump Music.”
