* The Faint’s lead singer Todd Fink provided MTV’s Hive website with a short list of five of his favorite current Nebraska bands. The piece ran Monday, November 5th on MTVHive.com, as part of its daily Hive Five feature. Fink’s five picks were accompanied by descriptions and videos of each band. Fink’s five: Icky Blossoms, […]
Posted inCulture, Visual Arts
Terry Rosenberg
Artist Terry Rosenberg investigates primary forces in an art career focused on capturing the tension of opposites one moment at a time. From the early figurative abstractions to the more recent word based digital paintings Colors of War (2007 – 2008), paradox prevails. I was gratified to see a preview of his new series of […]
Posted inCulture
Pick: Jackson Browne
November 12 Jackson Browne w/ Sara Watkins Orpheum Theater, 409 South 16th St. 7:30 p.m., $49 to $170, ticketomaha.com Billed as an acoustic tour, Jackson Browne will present a career-spanning selection of his songs with all-new set lists nightly. Browne rose up in the New York music scene in the late 60s, gaining major notice […]
Posted inCulture
Pick: Small Houses
November 8th Small Houses w/ Field Club, Great American Desert The Slowdown, 729 North 14th St. 9 p.m., $7, theslowdown.com Jeremy Quentin plays country-leaning indie folk songs under the name Small Houses. The Michigan-based Quention packs his low-key songs with intimate details and delivers then with a delicate, sweet singing voice. Quentin gently rollicking instrumentals […]
Posted inMusic
From Reading To Bleeding
Bleeding Rainbow’s evolution in name, noise and attitude was as simple as the Philadelphia act’s decision to chuck their old band moniker in the rubbish bin and embrace the growing extremity in their post-shoegaze sound. Guitarist Rob Garcia says the band had been thinking of ditching their previous name, Reading Rainbow, for a long time […]
Posted inCulture
Pick: “Monster”/ Will Anderson, Dan Crane, Leslie Diuguid
Nov. 9 “Monster”/ Will Anderson, Dan Crane, Leslie Diuguid RNG Gallery, 157 W. Broadway, Council Bluffs Reception 7-10 pm; exhibit thru Dec. 9 Dixiequicks.com, 712.256.4140 Welcome to a world where pubescent, tipsy leviathans ride heavy, wooden, rectangular surfboards on waves of not your Grandma’s fabric; where bags of bones burn rubber and put ice in […]
Posted inCulture
Art of Deception
“My five year old could have done that!” The above isn’t an uncommon public response to modern art that artists have had to endure for decades. Worse, it’s understandable. In an age when many viewers leave the imaginative world of visual art behind in the fifth grade or earlier, painting and sculpture of merit, not […]
Posted inTheater
Tish, age 13 and 6-1, no Raggedy Ann
Here’s one of my favorite bits of Omaha Community Playhouse trivia and it involves that great native Omahan who died last week at age 86, Letitia “Tish” Baldridge. If you read Mike Kelly’s column, you know about her connection to Jackie Kennedy and her fame as an author and etiquette columnist. More than a half […]
Posted inMovies
Metal Lurching
To walk in to The Man with the Iron Fists by choice is to give up your right to bitch about story and character. This is a movie written and directed by The RZA, a member of the powerhouse rap group The Wu-Tang Clan; produced by Eli Roth, the guy who made Hostel, and overseen […]
Posted inMovies
8-Bit-O-Honey
For a generation weaned on more Mario than Mother Goose, Wreck-It Ralph has been a long time coming. An 8-bit fairy tale with a burly bruiser in the role of the misunderstood princess, it skews a tad more prepubescent than Pixar but shares similar DNA. Writers Jennifer Lee and Phil Johnston won’t be unlocking any […]