Eugene Chadbourne is a prolific guitarist/banjo/songwriter who has produced a supremely odd, but brilliant, body of work over the last 30 years. He started out as a performer working with John Zorn, a more famous but just as brilliant an experimentalist. When Chadbourne struck out on his own, he genre-hopped with reckless abandon, from [...]

BEST FORMER ROCK & ROLLER LIVING MORE OR LESS QUIETLY IN IOWA CITY: Pete Balestrieri
Pete Balestrieri was a mainstay of the rotating assembly of musicians known as the Horns of Dilemma, who the Violent Femmes used to add a generous portion of crazy to their live shows, and he appears on several of their albums. [...]

Not to give away too much of the mystery of Little Village backstage, but the lovely and talented Melody asked me to write a post about what my ‘top ten’ or ‘best of’ list for this year, as a NOT SO SUBTLE HINT for those of you who read the blog to go vote here [...]

Since 1992, Panchero’s Mexican Grill in downtown Iowa City has been serving burritos and other south-of-the-border foods to customers ranging from homegrown Iowa City residents to drunken college kids. It’s the flagship location for a restaurant that has branched into 17 states across the country.
A year ago, a new “hombre” rolled into town—one with a [...]

Finding Wonderland: Part one of two
The first thing that happened in the morning was I couldn’t find my glasses. I stumbled towards the second stage area and a tripping guy met me. He said I believe that there was some important reason that I was supposed to meet you at this time and he handed [...]

This American Gothic
Documentary, 63 min
Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer
Hardacre: Saturday, August 2, 1:25pm; Landlocked: Friday, August 22, 5:30pm
In the director’s statement for This American Gothic—a documentary about Grant Wood’s painting and the people of Eldon, Iowa, where the austere house with the lavish window still stands—Sasha Waters Freyer says that she wants to bring attention [...]

The Pitchfork Music Festival, now into its third year, is the best event of its kind happening in America right now. In fact, it is kind of a disservice to call Pitchfork a “music festival”—given the bad connotations associated with the term (drunken idiots, mud and garbage baking in the hot summer sun, ughh). However, [...]