“Fred Jones, Pt. 2″ is one of those Ben Folds songs that exudes the depressing, inevitable feelings that one must feel when his or her life is in decline. Sort of an About Schmidt-type song. Damn. Nobody wants to feel like that.
John McCrea from Cake, who sang on that track for the [...]

Some people wonder why I chose to go to college in central Iowa, away from most things. Occasionally, I wonder. Here’s why:

Saturday, March 5 :: Harris Concert Hall
BROTHER ALI
Treologic
Thursday, April 7 :: [bobs] Underground Cafe
CALVIN JOHNSON
Friday, April 29 :: Mac Field / Harris Concert Hall
CAKE
Gomez
Robbers on High Street
+ various other bands throughout the [...]

Dear Metallica,
Hey guys, remember me? Of course you don’t. I’ve never been to one or your shows, I’ve never been anywhere near one of your public appearances, and I’ve never wanted to contact you before. Most of the letters you get probably say either “OMG I’M YOUR BIGGEST FAN!!!” or “OMG I [...]

Here are the five best concerts I saw in 2004, since you asked:

Ted Leo (Grinnell College)
Yo La Tengo (Grinnell College)
The Last Poets (Midwest Summit of the Hip-Hop Congress)
Le Tigre (Grinnell College)
The Decemberists (Grinnell College)

Iowa is weird. In some places, there are cool things; in most places there aren’t. Tonight, a cool thing was in Iowa City (at the University of Iowa): Modest Mouse played. And, as long-time readers might have already known, I was there.
They were pretty good. They played an interesting set of [...]

Some of the more devoted readers might know that I’m a DJ on Grinnell College’s radio station, KDIC. My friend and I share a show called “These Colours Don’t Run,” which attempts to reflect good Republican values, and usually fails. On this week’s show, while we weren’t saying interesting things on the air, [...]

Let’s face it: odds are you aren’t going to get to see Modest Mouse tomorrow night. That’s just not in the cards for you. You probably don’t have the money to buy scalped tickets on eBay; you probably don’t have friends who happened to be in Iowa City on the day the tickets [...]

I have toyed with the idea of having a blog for a while now. I’ve been an Internet person since, well, almost as early as the Vice President invented it. I’ve had web sites (and, in fact, I still have web sites), but the prospect of having a blog (or an online journal, [...]