Photo: Joshua Ford • JoshuaFordPhotography.

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River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010 Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

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First Steps for Branstad and the Iowa Statehouse
A
n Iowa Worth Fighting for was created to
serve as a future firewall against entrenched
status-quo power following the November
2010 elections. On August 17, 2009, the content of
this comprehensive review and recommendations
debuted on the Jan Mickelson radio show in Des
Moines.
It spoke to some basic principles, and addressed
core governing concerns – like government is best
that governs least.
But it offered more than platitudes. It offered
specifics that included strategies to reorganize,
reduce, and re-prioritize state government; to
create accountable, efficient local government;
to rebuild our economy based on tax reform and
citizen – not government – stimulus; to reform our
education system; to promote a healthy Iowa the
effective way – not through government mandate;
to affirm core rights, such as the right to property;
to protect Iowa’s citizens; to interdict Iowa’s severe
drug crisis; to reform illegal immigration; and to
advance real leadership principles.
On November 2, 2010, the political pendulum
reversed course. Republicans again control
statehouse politics. It was not even a decade ago
they controlled both the House and Senate in Iowa.
Which is to say: It was not a decade ago that they
fought education reform, welfare reform, and the
introduction of sound fiscal and management
practices. When Terry Branstad left office, he had
a Republican House and Senate. He did not fix
welfare, education, our prisons, our courts, taxes,
or our economy. While he managed the status quo
much better than Governor Chet Culver – thanks
to dozens of tax hikes and data manipulations
– Branstad and the GOP did not repair, restore, or
rebuild Iowa.
Now that he and Republicans have returned
to power, simply invoking a term such as
“conservative” isn’t good enough. This group of
statehouse leaders must lead, but to lead they must
first have a plan. This means not just an agenda, but
a specific vision of how we fix Iowa.
At this point, every fiber of my being wants to
lay out a detailed, point-by-point analysis of the
severity of Iowa’s crisis. When my gubernatorial-
election campaign released our detailed plans
to fix education and the economy in Iowa, the
solutions alone consisted of 25 pages. Data analysis
and problem identification would consume many
more. So, I will simply say government in Iowa is
broken, our education system is broken, and our
economy is broken. The mountains of empirical
data confirm this and can be shared readily with
anyone who seeks more evidence.
Statehouse leaders from both parties, advocacy
groups, unions, business and professional
associations, business leaders, and the media
ignore mostly, but cover up at times, the severity
of the condition Iowa faces. The budget hole is
real, property-tax hikes were real, the loss of yet
another Congressional seat is real. One hundred
percent of the high schools and 95 percent of the
middle schools in our 10 largest cities are officially
failing. The media won’t report that fact, statehouse
politicians and edu-crats deny it, business leaders
refuse to believe it, activists apologize for it. Yet
this failure is a fact reported by state employees,
in a report paid for by tax dollars, on a Web site
published by state employees and paid for by tax
dollars.
So what are the first steps the Branstad
administration and the new GOP leadership ought
to take to fix Iowa?
(1) Institute a four-year flexible freeze, capping
spending at the current level, and refusing to
increase the budget one dollar more than current
levels.
(2) Resist simple and irresponsible remedies
such as not filling current vacancies. While Culver’s
across-the-board cuts were reckless, simply not
filling the positions he cut is equally reckless.
Instead a department-by-department, division-by-
division, bureau-by-bureau, program-by-program
examination of state government must take place.
The fat needs to go, but the Culver-sliced lean
needs to be restored. For example, we are about
100 troopers short. Leaving those positions vacant
serves no one, other than the administration that
wants to look like it’s doing something.
by Jonathan Narcisse
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
(3) End the practice of spending 99 percent
of estimated revenues and move to zero-based
budgeting. Fund what we are supposed to do –
keep courts open, public safety, etc. at 100 percent
and veto every nonessential expenditure from
Planned Parenthood to church projects. Private
– not public – dollars should fund such things.
(4) Institute a Bounty program, rewarding state
workers that help us save money by giving them a
bonus – 5 or 10 percent of what they save us. This
works in the private sector and the military, and
would mobilize those best aware of waste to help us
reduce, if not eliminate, it.
(5) Reorganize state government, reducing it to
fewer than 10 bureaucracies within the governor’s
line of authority. For example Regents, College
Student Aid, K-12, and Cultural Affairs should
all be under one roof sharing one administrative
team. They might retain their unique autonomy in
the delivery of services, but the vast bureaucracy
supporting each must go. This should apply to
public safety, economic development, etc. Iowans
cannot afford wasteful and duplicative government
anymore.
(6) End the circumvention of reporting
created through the employment of a permanent
consultant class. For far too long, started during the
Branstad years, agencies such as DHS have used
Continued On Page 21
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

 Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

Celebration of Christmas 2010

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River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

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 1

House Republicans in an
Goodbye Unenviable Position
ordinary jobs.
W
ithout a doubt, the worst place to be
Hello cutting right now in Illinois politics is the
state’s House Republican caucus.
edge. Their leader Tom Cross went “all in” this year
against House Speaker Michael Madigan and
came up way short.
There were the innumerable planted
newspaper stories about Madigan, including,
for instance, how he apparently picked his own
Republican challenger. The Republicans then
staged a downtown Chicago “fundraiser” for
Madigan’s invisible opponent. Then there were
the billboards along the Tollway ridiculing
Customer Service Madigan, which ginned up even more
Representative unflattering media coverage. Of course, there
were also the countless mailers and TV ads
claiming that Madigan was the real problem in
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benefits, and a real career on the cutting edge.
Cross boldly predicted
he would win the It’s no secret that Speaker
Connect today at: www.att.jobs/QuadCities majority and finally put
Madigan in his place. Madigan is not the forgive-
Madigan detested Cross
before the election. It’s and-forget type. But even
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gone way beyond that
if some House Republicans
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and the AT&T logo are trademarks of AT&T Intellectual Property.
now.
Maybe Leader
Cross truly believed
he could take Madigan
bow down to His Royal
out. More likely, the
boasting was a ruse
Highness in exchange for
to raise money from
gullible, rich Republican
redistricting-map crumbs,
businessmen.
Maybe Cross figured they have another, perhaps
that even if he didn’t
win, Bill Brady would even more serious problem
surely beat Governor
Pat Quinn, and then to ponder.
Cross would have
someone to protect him
and his members from Madigan’s retribution.
A Brady win would also have meant that
Cross would have a chance at drawing the new
legislative-district map next year.
And maybe Cross concluded that even
NOW’S THE TIME if he didn’t win and Brady lost, then at least
Democratic Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom
Kilbride would lose his retention battle because
TO PAY THE FINE.
out-of-state business groups were spending
cash hand-over-fist against him. With Kilbride
out, the court would at least temporarily lose its
Democratic majority and might be frightened
into going along with any Republican lawsuit
against a Democratic district map.
More than four years late paying Well, not only is Cross still in the minority, but
an Iowa fine or court fee? You could he won’t have a Republican governor to backstop
pay only half of what you owe. him. And Chief Justice Kilbride won. Big.
Most of Cross’ members are loyal, but they
have to be worried about their future. Legislators,
like most humans, are mainly concerned with
self-preservation. But the Quinn/Kilbride wins
888-9-PAY-FINE PayTheFineIowa.gov mean that Speaker Madigan will draw the new
district map. And the power of the map means
Program expires November 30, 2010. that some of those Republicans won’t be coming
back in two years. One time-tested map trick is to
draw two or more enemies into the same district.
In other words, the Republicans need to hope
by Rich Miller
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
that the housing market improves soon, because
some of them will have to find new digs to avoid
running against another incumbent.
The remap always hovers above everything
in Springfield. During the last redistricting
process in 2001, several state senators were in the
secure computer room on September 11. Planes
were crashing, buildings were falling, but they
were checking on their boundaries. That’s how
important this is to them.
It’s no secret that Madigan is not the forgive-
and-forget type. And he’s not above using
something as important as the map to “urge”
compliance with his wishes. There are a whole
lot of crucial votes coming up during the
next several months as the General Assembly
attempts to dig the state out of this massive hole.
The Republicans
have spent the past
three years in open,
hostile opposition to
Madigan, with the
situation degrading
sharply over the past
year or so. Many of
those members are
trying to figure out
how they can best
navigate the next
couple of years and
preserve themselves
in the process.
It’s not that simple,
though. Even if some
of Cross’ members
bow down to His
Royal Highness in
exchange for map
crumbs, they have
another, perhaps even
more serious problem
to ponder.
Several House Republicans have state
facilities in their districts, so they are naturally
more amenable to “revenue enhancements.”
Others, particularly in the suburbs, have long
been allies of the teachers’ unions. But many of
those same members are surely worried what
could happen to them if they vote with the
Democrats. Forget Cross; I’m talking about the
tea-partiers.
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
Just look at what the tea partiers did to
established Republicans in primaries all over
the country this year. In Delaware, they beat the
most respected Republican in the state with a
bizarre candidate who eventually had to run TV
ads assuring voters she wasn’t a witch. No way
does Harry Reid go back to the U.S. Senate if
Nevada Republicans had nominated their sane
primary candidate.
Illinois’ next primary will be held in a little
more than 17 months. Whatever the Republicans
do next year will still be fresh in angry voters’
minds.
I just wouldn’t want to be in their shoes right
now.
Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax (a daily
political newsletter) and TheCapitolFaxBlog.com. 

Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
GOP Chair Credits Focus
on Independent Voters
R
epublican Party of Iowa Chair Matt
Strawn attributed last week’s big
Republican wins at the statewide,
legislative, and county levels to the party’s
focusing on independent voters – just like
President Barack Obama did with his win
in 2008 – and a clear, consistent message.
“We did it with unprecedented
coordination, and we did it by targeting
independent voters,” Strawn said two days
after the election in which Republicans
wrested control of the governor’s office
and the Iowa House from Democrats.
“One thing that we had learned in the past
is Republicans spend a lot of time talking
to Republican voters, but they hadn’t
reached out to independent voters in this
state.”
Strawn said that’s what the Obama
campaign did very effectively in 2008.
So Republicans began identifying and
targeting those independent voters in fall
2009, finding out what issues they cared
about.
“And overwhelmingly it was jobs, it was
the economy, it was the overspending,
and it was the debt that they saw here in
Des Moines,” Strawn said. “And over the
course of the year, we continued to talk
to those voters, and going into the final
weekend of the election we had actually
identified 100,000 Iowans – independent
voting Iowans – who had identified with
the Republican ticket and were part of our
turnout operation.”
Republicans’ voter program showed
that a successful statewide candidate
would have to net 100,000 to 120,000
new votes. Former Governor Terry
Branstad won the gubernatorial election
Tuesday by just under 125,000 votes. In
addition, House Republican candidates
received 200,000 more votes than House
Democratic candidates – roughly 606,000
for Republicans to less than 400,000 for
Democrats.
Republicans this year increased their
major-donor revenue about 30 percent
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
compared to last election cycle and saw
a “volunteer surge” at the end of the
campaign that allowed them to shift
volunteers’ focus in the last 48 hours
of the campaign to targeted legislative
races. Republicans put volunteers to work
contacting voters in those key races,
and ended up winning in five out of six
targeted Senate districts and eight out of
10 targeted House districts.
Strawn also attributed Republicans’
success this year to its candidates using a
consistent message since January 2009.
“Republicans had a clear, unified
message about what one-party Democrat
rule was doing in Des Moines,” Strawn
 said. “So you had all the Republican
by Lynn Campbell, IowaPolitics.com
leaders in Des Moines speaking with a
clear, consistent message, and it clearly
penetrated with the voters all the way
down to those local legislative levels.”
Appointment of Three
New Justices Key Issue in
Transition of Governors
Iowa’s rejection of three Iowa Supreme
Court justices last week is a first since the
state adopted its merit-selection system for
judges in 1962, and the job of appointing
three new justices to the state’s highest
court is expected to become a hot political
issue in the transition between current
Governor Chet Culver and Branstad.
Branstad said it would be a mistake for
Culver to rush to appoint three new Iowa
Supreme Court justices before his term
ends.
“The Judicial Nominating Commission
is not balanced. You have 12 Democrats
and only one Republican on it, so I think to
really restore credibility to the court system
it’s important they not rush to judgment to
get a nominee to a lame-duck governor,”
he said. “It should be I think done in the
normal deliberative process.”
Branstad said the Judicial Nominating
Commission could be changed by
legislation, and he sees that as the solution
to politicizing the court.
“Looking to the future, I know there
are many people concerned about it
becoming a very political situation, and I
think the best way to avoid that is have a
more balanced system so you don’t have
one party dominating and controlling
the process of who will be considered for
appointment in the future,” he said.
The 15-member commission has 10 days
after an opening on the Supreme Court
to call a meeting of the commissioners.
Within 60 days, the commission must
interview applicants and forward a list of
three nominees to the governor for each
vacancy. The governor then has 30 days to
appoint one of those three individuals to
serve on the Supreme Court.
Culver said November 3 that he was
reviewing the process for appointing new
Iowa Supreme Court justices following the
vote against retention of Justices Marsha
Ternus, Michael Streit, and David Baker.
For an expanded version of this article, visit
RiverCitiesReader.com.
This weekly summary comes from
IowaPolitics.com, an online government
and politics news service. Reporter Andrew
Duffelmeyer and other correspondents
contributed to this report.

“Whoa. What Is This?!”
Todd Green Plays Dozens of Unusual Musical Instruments as Quad City Arts’ Latest Visiting Artist
T
odd Green, the latest guest in Quad City
Arts’ Visiting Artist series, began his
professional career as a guitarist. Yet the
musician knows that whenever he performs
at one of his many school engagements, the
guitar is perhaps the last instrument the kids
will be interested in.
“I have a berimbau,” says Green during
a recent phone interview, “which is a very
unusual, bow-and-arrow-looking thing that you
play percussion on. They really like that. And
then, you know, there’s silly stuff. Like, I have
animal toenails, I call them. It’s actually goat
hooves that are all hooked together and make a
percussion sound.
“Usually it’s the weirdest ones, you know?”
says Green with a laugh. “Especially with the
really young kids. You can read their faces
– their mouths are open and their eyes are all
big – and you can just see them going, ‘Whoa.
What is this?!’”
To be sure, the sight of someone making
music with goat hooves would make many
of us exclaim, “What is this?!” But Green’s
examples here are just three among dozens of
instruments that the touring musician performs
in concert, and that seem almost designed to
make your spell-check explode. The Bolivian
zampoña. The Arabic doumbek. The South
American walaycho. The Slavic dvoyanka. The
Chinese erhu. The Turkish yali tambur.
Some of these – and some two dozen other
instruments from around the globe – will be
heard when Green, on November 13, presents
a public concert at Bettendorf ’s Redeemer
Lutheran Church. And while he’s brought
with him an intimidating number of musical
instruments from his home near Lake Tahoe,
Green has not brought along an intimidating
number of musicians. Using digital samplers to
record himself and create layers of sound, he’ll
first discuss and demonstrate the instruments,
and then perform as a literal one-man band
– or, in this case, a literal one-man world-fusion
ensemble.
“It’s fun,” says Green in succinctly describing
his unique career. “It’s different, that’s for sure.”
Freelancing on Everything
Green, who grew up in New York, says his
interest in music began “when I was probably
eight or nine. I initially wanted to play drums.
But my mother, I guess, decided she didn’t
want a kid whacking on a snare drum, so she
said, ‘I don’t think so.’ And so I said, ‘Well,
then, I want to play guitar.’ So guitar is what
it was.”
He began taking lessons and, before long,
stopped lessons – “Even at that young age,” says
Green with a laugh, “I had a sense that this
teacher I had didn’t know what he was doing”
– and spent his youth teaching himself to
play chords and songs. In the late 1970s, after
graduating from high school, Green enrolled
in the Berklee College of Music, and he
studied privately with noted musicians Mick
Goodrich, George Benson, and Grammy
Award-winning guitarist Pat Metheny. “I
was hardcore jazz ... ,” he says. “And it was all
guitar at that point.”
Following his graduation from Berklee,
Green moved to New York City and embarked
on a career as a professional guitarist. “I was
basically playing jazz,” he says, “but kind of
freelancing on everything,” and his talents led
to session work, music for TV commercials,
and tours (with several different bands)
throughout the United States, Canada, and
Europe. (“It’s not something I’m proud of,”
says Green, “but in the early ’80s, I was also
on some of the first rap records. Which wasn’t
even called ‘rap’ then. It was really only a local
phenomenon, and I was going to these studios
in Brooklyn and doing these recordings.”)
Green says, “I eventually got tired of
the whole jazz scene in New York. The
whole scene period in New York.” His
disenchantment with the city, though, was also
dovetailing with his burgeoning fascination
with instruments beyond the guitar.
“New York was where I got more of an
interest in Indian music,” says Green, who
took a class on the subject at Berklee. “I started
studying the tablas, which are Indian hand
drums, and the bansuri flute, which is the
bamboo flute. But I didn’t do anything with
them. I just studied them and was still just a
guitar player. It was when I moved out of New
York and moved to Montana, of all places, that
I really started exploring them.”
Calling Montana “the happy medium”
between prospective homes in Colorado
(“I thought it had gotten too built up”) and
Canada (“I didn’t want to live in another
country”), Green settled in the city of
Bozeman in 1988, and says that given his
growing interest in instruments from other
countries, “I tried to put a group together
– a kind of jazz/world-music type of thing.
And obviously, there’s a limited number of
good musicians in Montana compared to
New York. But I did find a good bass player, a
good percussionist, and a good drummer, so
we put a group together, and did a number of
concerts all around the region.”
Eventually, Green says, the ensemble in
which he played guitar “kind of fell apart.
But at the same time, these looping digital
samplers were starting to come on the market.
They were very expensive and they didn’t work
very well, initially, but I started experimenting
with them.” He began sampling guitar, flutes,
and percussion – getting “a guitar synthesizer
to make up for the lack of other instruments”
– and finally performed his first one-man-
band set at an outdoor concert in Billings,
Montana.
by Mike Schulz
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
mike@rcreader.com
“I guess it went all right,” says Green,
“because I had a lot of people say, ‘Man, I’ve
never seen anybody do that before!’ And so
going in that direction really intrigued me.
There were a limited amount of musicians to
work with anyway, so I said, ‘Well, I might as
well do it all myself.’
“So I started exploring more and more
instruments,” he continues, “and since I was
starting to make connections in the [Lake
Tahoe] bay area, I eventually moved to the
Tahoe area. Just like New York, the bay area
has these huge Chinese, Middle Eastern,
Indian, and South American communities.
And, oddly enough, some of the best
musicians in the world – who play instruments
from these countries I was interested in – live
part-time or full-time in the United States. So
I’d basically play with the best players in the
world on a lot of these instruments, studying
with them and playing gigs with them.
“And,” he adds, “it’s worked out real nice.”
Priority Instruments
Green says that, currently, “I probably play
somewhere in the vicinity of 50 different
instruments,” all of which he owns, though not
all of them travel with him from gig to gig. “In
the school programs,” he says, “I present about
20-something to the kids, and my [public]
concerts have maybe 30-something. That’s
about all I can carry, and really, that’s all I have
time for in a two-hour concert anyway.”
Yet even as the owner of such unique
instruments as the African ashiko drums and
the stringed, Afghan rabab, Green says it’s still
easy to pick a favorite.
“Of the 50-ish that I play, if I had to give
them all up but one, I’d keep the one I started
with – the guitar. That’s the one I know the
most on. And really, along with the Western
violin, guitars are probably the most universal
instruments. They’re pretty much played in
every culture, though they may be played
in unusual ways in some cultures. Like in
Morocco, they play the Western violin, but
they play it in their laps, vertically – not on
their neck like we do. And the guitar is played,
in some cultures, without the metal frets on it.”
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
Despite his prowess on the guitar, the violin,
and all manner of other instruments, Green
understands the importance of continual
practice.
“I have priority instruments that I work on
every day,” says Green, “and the guitar is one
of them – the variety of guitars, I should say.
The pipa, which is the Chinese plucked lute,
is one I work on every day. And the bamboo
flutes, mainly the bansuri that I started with.
But also some of the Middle Eastern neys,
they’re called – they’re end-blown flutes. A few
different percussion instruments: the tablas
from India, the tonbak from Iran, and the
riq, which is a Middle Eastern tambourine.
Continued On Page 17 

Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
Anything but Simple
Monte Montgomery, November 17 at the Redstone Room
M
onte
Montgomery’s
guitar-
playing is so distinctive,
dexterous, and
seemingly ingrained that
it sounds like he might
have had the instrument
in his cradle. So it’s
surprising that he could
have just as easily played
the trumpet.
His first instruments
were trumpet and piano,
and he said he only
took the guitar seriously
“when I no longer had
a piano or a trumpet
at my disposal, and
my Mom had an extra
guitar. That’s what I
had. I often joke about,
‘Mom, what would have happened if we
hadn’t lost that trumpet?’ ... I think fate had
other things in store for me.”
He’s similarly matter-of-fact about his
decision to abandon electric guitar for
an acoustic. “I could do a lot of things on
acoustic I was relying on electric for,” he
said in a phone interview earlier this week.
“So why not leave the extra guitar at home
and the additional two heavy amps I was
carrying around for my electric, and just
play acoustic? It really was kind of just that
simple.”
The playing by Montgomery, who will
be performing at the Redstone Room on
November 17, is anything but simple. In
2004, Guitar Player magazine named him
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
one of the 50 greatest guitar players of
all time, and he’s been called the acoustic
Hendrix.
I’d cast him more as the child of Hendrix
and Michael Hedges, a union evident with
the unmistakable echoes “Voodoo Chile
(Slight Return)” on the blistering “Can’t
Fool Everyone” from his most recent
album, 2008’s self-titled disc. Like both
of those pioneers, Montgomery employs
techniques and effects to transcend the
normal uses of guitar – combining sounds
clearly originating from an acoustic with a
rock player’s aggression and bag of tricks,
leading to a palette and range scarcely
imagined by most guitarists.

The 44-year-old, Texas-based
Montgomery – who came to national
attention with a 1999 set on Austin City
Limits – said that style developed over time
and somewhat by accident: “I suddenly had
the ability to make my acoustic sound like
electric, with distortion and all that. I didn’t
initially set out for that. I just didn’t want to
lug around a bunch of gear.”
On his 2008 record, Montgomery does
all sorts of wicked things to his instrument,
and the Jimi comparison feels right from
the outset – and not just because of a 10-
minute version of “Little Wing.” In the
instrumental section that is the second
half of opener “River,” Montgomery’s work
is undoubtedly nimble and technically
impressive, but it’s also an outgrowth of the
song, with masterful control of tone, and
his bandmates aren’t merely wallpaper to
the main show.
The album was largely recorded live,
with few overdubs, and its polish in that
context is almost frightening. “I like to
take songs and take them out on the road
and work them and find out what works
well musically ... ,” Montgomery said. “You
get to a certain point where you’re just so
comfortable, the song is concise, it’s ready
to go.”
He also credits his longtime relationship
with drummer Phil Bass: “When I hint at
something, he’s there. We have this weird
kind of kinetic relationship. I don’t have
by Jeff Ignatius
jeff@rcreader.com
look at him or cue him; he
knows what I’m doing.”
Perhaps the
best summation of
Montgomery’s talents is
the propulsive second track
“Let’s Go,” in which the
guitarist is judicious with
his talent. Where “The
River” feels instrumentally
boastful, the fireworks
explode within the chorus
of “Let’s Go,” with the
guitar matching the
song’s feverish escalation
and squall fragments
of distortion echoing
Montgomery’s barely
controlled vocals.
The song demonstrates
that Montgomery is more
than a guitar wiz. While his
lyrics tend toward the banal – particularly
when they’re front-and-center, as on “Love’s
Last Holiday” – his vocals are soulful and
expressive. Despite a too-direct chorus,
Montgomery’s singing and the tune unearth
poignance on “Midlife Matinee.”
And his compositions are solid and
often exciting, not mere frameworks for
noodling. From the abundant funk of
“Moonlight Tango” (with digressions
ranging from delicate to muscular) to
heartfelt ballads, Montgomery rarely
engages in guitar heroics at the expense of
the song.
“I have an ear for melody, and I know a
good song when I hear one,” Montgomery
said.
As for balancing performance joy with
the needs of a song, he said, “I like to make
it interesting for me first. ... I like to find
different little things to do to songs that put
my little stamp on it.”
Monte Montgomery will perform on
Wednesday, November 17, at the Redstone
Room (129 Main Street in Davenport). The
show starts at 8:30 p.m., and the bill also
includes Lojo Russo. Tickets ($12 in advance,
$15 the day of the show) are available from
RedstoneRoom.com.
For more information on Monte
Montgomery, visit MonteMontgomery.net.
Vol. 18, No. 765
November 11 - 23, 2010
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Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
10
Past, Present, and Posters
Hatch Show Prints, Through November 19 at the Catich Gallery
I
n the Hatch Show Prints exhibit in St.
Ambrose University’s Catich Gallery, the
past and present intermingle through
design. Art, design, and culture don’t move
forward in a linear way; instead, they diverge,
change, and return as new but still familiar
styles. Typefaces from almost a century ago
manage to look fresh in the hands of a modern
designer, and a poster from the 1950s can
seem almost prophetic in its similarity to
today’s graphics. By presenting designs of the
past alongside new designs with a retro bent,
Hatch Show Prints reveals the connections
between history, culture, and design, and their
relationships to music and performance.
This show, in the Galvin Fine Arts Center, is
a powerful assemblage of 58 letterpress block
prints, all made by the Hatch Show Prints print
shop in Nashville, Tennessee. The shop opened
in 1879 and has created promotional posters
for performers of all sorts, and this exhibit
includes fresh prints made from eight decades
of archived blocks. In recent years,
shop manager Jim Sherraden has
also made monotypes by combining
the old blocks in new ways, and a
selection of his original works is also
on display.
The show samples widely the
Hatch collection, although the
majority of the posters are for
modern music acts including B.B.
King, Carrie Underwood, Johnny
Cash, the Pixies, and Dashboard
Confessional. The posters range in
size from about the size of a sheet of
legal paper to 26-by-40-inch designs
and were all printed in the past
eight years. The exhibit was a clever
choice for a university audience,
highlighting printmaking techniques
and design history coupled with
popular music.
The exhibit creates the atmosphere
of a county fair, or a busy city street
plastered with signs. Text in an
image always begs to be read, and standing
among so many visually bold words is like
trying to pick out a single voice in a crowd; this
exciting and bewildering effect is heightened
by the use of bright colors, bold shapes, and
diverse typefaces. The prints are left unframed,
making it feel like the posters are in their
natural environment, but they’re hung in
precisely aligned clusters and grids on white
walls, which brings about a sense of order. The
Catich achieves a pleasant balance between
art gallery and poster wall, which allows the
viewer to contemplate the works without being
overwhelmed, while still feeling their original
intent.
It’s striking how well the Hatch designers
visually capture the sounds and personae of
the artists. The color scheme of the Taylor Swift
poster is pastel green and pink – two currently
popular colors for young girls – and the text is
framed in cherry blossoms. The visible grain
of the woodblock creates a down-home feel
perfect for a country artist.
A different use of the letterpress method can
be seen in the poster for the heavy-rock group
Korn. The poster includes a vintage block print
of a boxer that has been made even tougher
by layering new prints of blood splatter on the
gloves and a tattoo of a skull on the fighter’s
shoulder. Even though the typeface and boxer
image are clearly from a design era of the
past, these modern updates make clear the
alternative edge of the band.
The woodcut medium was embraced and
emphasized by the designers for some of the
pieces. The Arcade Fire concert poster, for
example, has an inked surface that appears
faded, smudged, and cracked from gouges in
the wood used to create the image. The edges
of the typeface are fuzzy, but at the top of the
poster we see a sharp vintage photograph of a
woman, standing by a car, holding a baby. The
use of the old photograph with an intentionally
flawed printing method for a contemporary
band is a visual potpourri. However, the
designer’s use of symmetrical organization, a
solid dark-blue background, and a limited color
palette hold the work together. And again, the
visual choices reference the musical style of the
performers. The Arcade Fire’s sound draws on
the past through the use of folk and romantic
by Michelle Garrison
michelle_m_garrison@hotmail.com
musical motifs, which mesh well with the
aged appearance of the poster.
Other designs seem so clean and precise
that the viewer might at first mistake
them for digital or screen prints. A poster
for singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge
features an open, ecru background, with
simplified slender trees in the foreground.
The clean edges and solid color of the
shapes, as well as the contemporary
aesthetic with which this was created, look
much more like a work of digital vector
art than a woodcut. This combination of
a modern aesthetic within a traditional
mode of production draws on Etheridge’s
musical style of gruff vocals with slick
pop production. Though this print
communicates successful, its avoidance
of the imperfect nature of the letterpress
method robs it of some character; the
most compelling prints in this show could
not have been created through another
medium.
While the juxtaposition of old
materials and a modern sensibility
is a persistent motif in the show, Jim
Sherraden’s monotypes combine
them in the context of fine art
rather than design. His monotypes
were made by running the paper
through the press several times over
different arrangements of blocks,
with ink expressively hand-applied.
The result is a hybrid of painterly
textures with flat, graphic type and
pictures. Sherraden’s disciplined
fusion of seemingly unrelated prints
– with disparate images, letters,
and textures – results in a beautiful
interplay.
In one print, Sherraden has
placed a large donkey in the
center of the composition. The
background is a patchwork of
light yellows and blues, with a
faint red sun running off the
right side. Overlapping all this are blotchy
black rectangles, with the ink lightly applied
so that the background remains faintly visible
beneath. These were printed from blocks, but
the ink is too sparse or smudged to make out
what the block originally depicted, creating a
mysterious texture. All of this is contained in a
checkerboard border, suggesting a race victory
flag, chess, or a clothing pattern. The sun and
the use of warm colors bring to mind summer.
The donkey can be associated with many things
– the Southwest, farming, carrying loads, or
even the Democratic party. Like the posters,
this print seems to be a memory – an elusive
scrap of the past viewed through the aesthetic
of the present.
Michelle Garrison is a mixed-media artist who
teaches art and design at Geneseo Middle School
and J.D. Darnell High School.
 Movie Reviews

Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

by Mike Schulz • mike@rcreader.com

Brains, Heart, Courage,

and the Wizards of Odd
MEGAMIND that so frequently during Waiting for
“Superman” that the movie was practically
Since Universal Pictures’ fizzy, funny
a lower-ab workout. Director Davis
animated hit Despicable Me was released
Guggenheim’s expansive, informative,
a mere four months ago, it’s hardly
incensed-yet-
possible that
level-headed
DreamWorks’
documentary
new
– a rallying
Megamind
cry for
could be
public-
considered an
education
intentional
reform in
ripoff, despite
America
a plot that
– examines
also finds an
how our
über-villain
school
gradually
systems are
morphing
Megamind collectively
into an über-
failing
hero. And
our children, and given its admittedly
despite the film’s haughty, antagonistic
one-sided perspective and the blame
protagonist performing his evil deeds
laid on our country’s teachers’ unions,
alongside a goofy, tag-along minion. And
it’s sure to piss off many viewers. (Not
despite this blobby little homunculus
all teachers, though, are likely to find
being named Minion. (Seriously, are there
the movie offensive. Just the bad ones.)
no fresh ideas in Hollywood?)
But in its conversations with lauded
So what say we chalk this up to
educator Geoffrey Canada, recently
coincidence and enjoy director Tom
resigned public-school chancellor
McGrath’s Megamind for what it is: a
Michelle Rhee, and others who’ve
clever, quick-witted, and unexpectedly and
found surprising success in helping fix
awfully smart outing with marvelously
a seemingly unfixable system, Waiting
vivid visuals and reams of hysterical
for “Superman” is at least as inspiring
dialogue. (“Good luck on your date!”
as it is heartbreaking. And buoyed
shouts David Cross’ peeved Minion to
by touching interviews with five kids
Will Ferrell’s nefarious title character.
whose futures depend on their names
“I will!” is the senseless reply.) Given
being drawn in charter-school lotteries,
the movie’s predictable over-reliance on
the film is a smashingly entertaining
tired pop tunes for comic effect, it’s still
real-life tear-jerker, even if some of
a bit DreamWorks-y for my tastes. But
its most amusing bits are also its most
the vocal cast, which includes Tina Fey,
infuriating. “Research,” says an on-
Jonah Hill, Brad Pitt, and J.K. Simmons,
screen figure, “shows that childrens do
provides spirited fun, and for every gag
learn.” Considering the person giving
that sputters, three more pop just right.
the grammatically incorrect quote is

River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

The climactic group dance-along to
President George W. Bush, you don’t
Michael Jackson’s “Bad”? Pretty lame.
know whether to laugh or scream.
Ferrell’s Megamind disguising himself as
Superman’s Jor-El and telling his cape-
wearing rival, with hilarious Marlon FOR COLORED GIRLS
Brando inflections, “I am your fathuh, and Based on Ntozake Shange’s theatrical
you are my thun”? Pritheleth. tone poem For Colored Girls Who Have
Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow
WAITING FOR “SUPERMAN” Is Enuf, the simply titled For Colored
Girls finds a group of interconnected
You know that sensation you sometimes
black women dealing with, and giving
feel at a particularly moving film, when
lengthy monologues on, such topics as
you find yourself tightening your stomach
adultery, rape, incest, STDs, spousal
muscles to avoid sobbing out loud? I did
Continued On Page 19

Listen to Mike every Friday at 9am on ROCK 104-9 FM with Dave & Darren 11
 What’s Happenin’
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
Theatre
Pericles
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church
Friday, November 12, through Sunday, November 21
W hat’s that? How are rehearsals going
for the Curtainbox Theatre Company’s
forthcoming presentation of Henrik Ibsen’s
Hedda Gabler? Quite well! Thank you for
asking! I’d provide details, but since this
production – which runs November 16
through 30 at the Village of East Davenport’s
Village Theatre – features me in the cast, it
would be tacky to even mention it here.
I’ll tell you what bothers me, though: Given
the show’s rehearsal and performance schedule,
I might, for the first time in more than five years, have to miss out
on seeing a new stage work by our area’s classical-theatre troupe,
The Prenzie Players. In this case, it’s William Shakespeare’s Pericles,
running November 12 through 21. And lemme tell you, it’s not a
production I’m happy about possibly missing.
To begin with, this infrequently produced title by Shakespeare
(or, as has been frequently suggested, by Shakespeare and a possible
collaborator) is a weird, wonderful epic involving royal intrigue, heroic
deeds, perilous storms at sea, games of skill, murderous machinations,
families separated and reunited, and a brief sojourn to a neighborhood
brothel. Whether or not it’s the product of one author, Pericles, God
bless it, is Bard-ian in the extreme.
Then, of course, there’s the matter of the famously unpredictable
Prenzie Players being the ones to tackle the material. And with Prenzie
veteran Andy Koski serving as director, and a cast that boasts such
talented troupe veterans as J.C. Luxton, Maggie Woolley, Angela
Rathman, Cole McFarren, Alaina Pascarella, and Jeb Makula, the
group’s latest is bound to feature all manner of inventive, stylistic, and
performance-based treats.
But perhaps my biggest reason for not wanting to miss Pericles? The
choice of venue, as the ever-nomadic theatre company will be staging
its new show in the beautiful St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, located at
2400 Middle Road in Bettendorf.
The Prenzie Players in a church. Now who could’ve predicted that?
Pericles tickets are $10 at the door, and information is available by e-
mailing info@prenzieplayers.com or visiting PrenziePlayers.com.
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
12
Theatre
“The Fisch Schlapping Song” and “He Is Not Dead Yet” and
“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
And these photos.
Monty Python’s Sopamalot
Adler Theatre
Sunday, November 21, 7 p.m.
M onty Python’s Spamalot, based on the
film Monty Python & the Holy Grail.
Winner of three 2005 Tony Awards
including Best Musical, with a book and lyrics
by Eric Idle.
Need I say more?
King Arthur and Sir Galahad and the Lady in the Lake.
Well, maybe a little more. The Broadway touring production of
Vulgar Frenchmen and a Trojan Rabbit and cows lobbed from
Monty Python’s Spamalot plays at the Adler Theatre on November
catapults. (“Run away!!!”)
21, and tickets are available by calling (800)745-3000 or visiting
The Holy Hand Grenade and the Knights Who Say “Ni!” and a
AdlerTheatre.com.
shrubbery.
Movies
Yet in this movie that Film Threat calls “a warm reunion wit
beloved entertainer” and Film Journal International describes a
“a fascinating portrait of a worthy personality and her era,” Ber
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg groundbreaking show is but one of the many, many Berg facto
Figge Art Museum touched on. If you’d care to hazard a guess, which of the follow
not one of this largely unsung legend’s accomplishments?
Sunday, November 14, 4 p.m.
S
1) Became the first performer to win an Emmy Award for B
how of hands: How many of you know who
Actress
Gertrude Berg is?
2) Starred in a second successful sitcom titled Molly
Hmm. I’m not sensing a lot of hands raised
3) Won a Best Actress Tony Award for 1959’s A Majority of O
there. Granted, some of you may be holding
4) Was once polled as the most respected woman in Americ
the paper with both hands. And others may be
5) Was, for a time, the highest-paid guest star in television
scrolling down the Web page with one and eating
6) Wrote a bestselling cookbook
a sandwich with the other. But I’m betting the
7) Wrote a popular advice column
hand count’s still pretty low.
8) Had her own line of clothing
Well, that number is about to increase
dramatically – at least, it will if you attend the
Admission to Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is $5, and information
Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities’ presentation of the Berg
is available by calling the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities
documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Being screened at the
(309)793-1300 or visiting JFQC.org.
Figge Art Museum on November 14, this critically hailed work by
documentarian Aviva Kempner explores the life of “the most famous
woman in America you’ve never heard of,” the radio and television
, that’s not too shabby.
pioneer whose series The Goldbergs, in 1949, was television’s very
n in America. First place went to Eleanor Roosevelt. So, you
first character-driven sitcom.
er: 4. She was actually cited as the second-most respected

Music
Third Sunday Jazz featuring Maggie Brown
The Redstone Room
Sunday, November 21
“T here is a lot of great music out here,” says
performer Maggie Brown in a recent Chicago
Defender interview. “It is not popularized. It’s not
going to come to you on the radio, or on a CD. You
have to look for it.”
Well, folks, you can stop looking; great music can be
r found at Davenport’s Redstone Room on November
21. Appearing as the latest guest in Polyrhythms’ monthly Third
Sunday Jazz Series, the Chicago-based Maggie Brown will present a
3 p.m. jazz workshop and a 6 p.m. concert of bound-to-be-thrilling
solos, underscoring why the Defender describes her as “a phenomenal
artist who has loads of individual style.”
th a
Brown would likely credit her dad for that much of that style, as
as
Music
rg’s
oids
wing is
Destino
i wireless Center and First Presbyterian Church of Davenport
Best
Saturday, November 20, and Sunday, November 21
I
One f memories of my high-school foreign-
ca language classes are correct, “destino” is
Spanish for “fate.” But the vocal ensemble
Destino originated in Canada, so I’m
thinking that in that country, the word
more likely means “young, ridiculously
talented, and boasting greater professional
n accomplishments than anyone should ever amass at their ages.”
s at Remind me to look that up some time.
In our area as part of Quad City Arts’ 2010-11 Visiting Artist series,
Destino may only have been on the music scene since 2006, but they’ve
certainly wasted no time in shooting straight to the top. Composed
kno
of Joey Niceforo, Terance Reddick, and Roy Tan, the trio croons in a
wom
style oftentimes referred to as “popera” – what the Vancouver Province
Ans
calls “the romance of opera infused with pop and bumped up with
by Mike Schulz
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
mike@rcreader.com
the Columbia College graduate is the daughter of Chicago’s legendary
Oscar Brown Jr., and paid tribute to the famed musician, poet, and What Else
playwright by recording nine of his compositions in her From My
Window CD. “That has always been a goal of mine,” Brown told the
Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich, “to shed more light on the gems that
Is Happenin’
I consider to be my family treasure.” MUSIC
Yet with Chicago’s N’DIGO newspaper calling From My Window “a Thursday, November 11 – Paul
dynamite package of soul-rendering, passionate music in a jazz format,” and Barrere & Fred Tackett. Noted
Brown earning Chicago Music Award nominations for Best Jazz CD and
Best Jazz Performer, she’s clearly a gifted artist in her own right. And while
guitarists perform songs from their
Little Feat catalog. Englert Theatre (221
Redstone Room patrons will surely enjoy some outstanding jazz during East Washington Street, Iowa City). 8
her visit, they might get more variety than they anticipated, as suggested
p.m. $22. For tickets and information,
by the acclaim Brown received for Legacy: Our Wealth of Music, her genre-
call (319)688-2653 or visit Englert.org.
defying, one-woman show about African-American musical heritage. “I am
a vocalist,” she told Reich. “I do not consider myself a ‘jazz singer.’” Friday, November 12 – Duke
Let’s maybe not mention that to the folks at Polyrhythms. “Third Tumatoe & the Power Trio. Blues
Sunday Jazz/Blues/Spiritual/Hip-Hop/Rap/Performance-Art Series” musicians and frequent The Bob &
doesn’t really trip off the tongue. Tom Show guests in concert. Circa
For more information on Brown’s Davenport engagement, call ’21 Speakeasy (1818 Third Avenue,
Polyrhythms at (309)373-0790 or visit Polyrhythms.org.
Rock Island). 8 p.m. $20. For tickets
and information, call (309)786-7733
extension 2 or visit Circa21.com. For
equal parts gospel and soul” – and their exquisite harmonies on both
classical and contemporary works have amazed audiences worldwide.
a 2006 interview with Tumatoe, visit
Among Destino’s prestigious credits are performances at the 2008 RCReader.com/y/tumatoe.
Beijing Summer Olympics, the 2008 Miss America Pageant in Las Friday, November 12 – The Guess
Vegas, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and, this past April, Who. Concert with the chart-topping
New York’s Carnegie Hall. And during their area stay, Quad Cities musicians of “American Woman”
audiences will be able to enjoy Destino’s thrilling vocals in not one, but and “These Eyes” fame. Quad-Cities
two, public appearances: November 20’s annual Holiday Pops concert Waterfront Convention Center (1777
at the i wireless Center – an event that also features the Quad City Isle Parkway, Bettendorf ). 7:30 p.m.
Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Quad Cities, and the Sanctuary Choir of $20-40. For tickets and information,
the First Presbyterian Church – and November 21’s engagement at the
call (800)843-4753 or visit Bettendorf.
First Presbyterian Church of Davenport.
IsleOfCapriCasinos.com.
It probably goes without saying that Destino’s Saturday-night
Saturday, November 13
performance will find the group singing tunes from its acclaimed
– The Kenny Barron Trio. A Hancher
holiday CD Christmas with Destino. But I’m guessing it’s anything-goes
Auditorium presentation of the jazz
on Sunday, as the album Destino Live in Concert includes everything
from Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” to The Threepenny Opera’s “Mac masters in concert, with special guest
the Knife” to “O Sole Mio.” Maybe, in Canada, “destino” actually means David Sánchez. Englert Theatre (221
“phenomenally gifted in so many different musical genres that you’ll be East Washington Street, Iowa City).
torn between wanting to applaud and wanting to smack them.” 7:30 p.m. $10-39. For tickets and
For more information on Destino’s area appearances, call (309)793-
Continued On Page 18
1213, or visit QuadCityArts.com.
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
13
 Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

Dancing Towards
Death
The Richard Harris Collection
Now at the Figge
Sponsored by Riverboat Development Authority
Contributing Sponsor River Cities’ Reader

GREAT SEATS
STILL AVAILABLE!
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21 • 7PM
ADLER THEATRE – DAVENPORT
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE ADLER THEATRE BOX OFFICE,
TICKETMASTER.COM
• 800-745-3000
DISCOUNTS FOR SUBSCRIBERS AND GROUPS!
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An exhibition to die for.

Thinking about death is one thing…visualizing it is something else. In
this exhibition, Death often appears not as an animal or gruesome demon
but as a recognizable human figure, albeit one reduced to bones and
sinew. See how artists Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Max Klinger and
others portray the inevitable Dance of Death.

Thursday, November 18
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

6 pm • Ballet performance “I, Vampire” by Ballet Quad Cities

7 pm • Lecture “The Queen of Sins and ‘La mort qui danse’:
Late 19th Century Femme Fatale Imagery” with Dr. Terri Switzer

View behind the scenes of Dancing Towards Death

at www.figgeart.org/video1
Albrecht Dürer, The Coat of Arms with the Skull; 1503, engraving, private collection

Sponsored by
563.326.7804
www.figgeartmuseum.org
Davenport, Iowa
www.putnam.org/harrypotter
14
 by Bruce Walters

Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

Art in Plain Sight:
The Black Hawk Statue
(Editor’s note: This is the first in an and hotel are among the many Quad Cities
occasional series on the history of public art businesses and institutions named after
in the Quad Cities.) him. So are professional sports teams in

“Party with a Purpose”

S
the NHL and NBA (the Atlanta Hawks
tanding on a ridge overlooking the franchise played here from 1946 to 1951
Rock River, an 18-ton granite statue under theTri-Cities Blackhawks banner),
…a fundraiser to buy holiday gifts & food baskets of Black Hawk dominates the space as well as a helicopter, a motorcycle, an
for seniors in the Quad Cities. before the Watch Tower Lodge at the Black automobile, and a bewildering range of
Hawk State Historic consumer products.
Thursday, November 18, 2010 Site (1510 46th Avenue
in Rock Island). This
Iowa was nicknamed
the Hawkeye State
5:30 – 8:00 pm at CASI is near the location of in his honor. Several
the Native American naval vessels have
1035 W. Kimberly Road, Davenport village Saukenuk, the been named USS
largest settlement in Black Hawk. There is
Admission is your tax-deductible donation. Illinois when it became even a Black Hawk
a state in 1818. The voodoo cult.
Wear your favorite hat & enjoy statue’s commanding With such a legacy,
presence tells us that it’s not surprising that
Gourmet Appetizers this was a man of great the overall height of
importance.
Wine, Beer & Great Music At the age of 65,
the sculpture with its
pedestal is imposing.
Raffle Prizes Black Hawk led more
than 1,000 men,
But, remarkably,
Black Hawk is not
Cigar Bar and Hat Contest! women, and children depicted as a warrior.
in an attempt to His countenance
Go to www.HolidayHatBash.com reclaim Saukenuk, is confident, not
their former village. fierce. His gaze
for details, or call War was declared on seems directed to a
them in 1832 when distant horizon, not
563.265.1HAT(1428). they crossed the river fixed on an enemy.
from present-day In many ways, the
Can’t attend, but want to donate? Davenport. The war artist sculpted an
ended with his capture emperor or deity from
Send donation to: Holiday Hat Bash c/o CASI and the massacre of antiquity with Native
1035 W. Kimberly Road, Davenport, IA 52806 hundreds of Native American clothing
Americans trying to and headdress. Yet
cross back over the river. This was the last when looking at the figure itself, it is almost
Indian war fought east of the Mississippi. surprising that it is only life-sized (Black
Black Hawk died in 1838. Hawk was about five-foot-eight), and
In the early 1890s, Chicago sculptor the clenched left hand has a very human
David Richards (1829-1897) carved quality. One of the treasures of the Quad
the sculpture freehand and without Cities, the sculpture conveys a sense of
measurements. It stood in Spencer Square the subject’s esteem, yet still allows us to
in downtown Rock Island until 1954, when discover a real person within.
it was moved to its present site.
Over the years, Black Hawk’s name has Bruce Walters is a professor of art at Western
proliferated: A community college, bank, Illinois University.

River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

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Enter to win a FREE course
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 Continued From Page 7
“ Whoa. What Is This?!”
And then the sarangi from India and the
kemencheh from Iran. Those are the main
ones that I try to work on every day.
“And then I have other ones that, pretty
much, I only play when I perform on them,”
he continues. “You know, they’re kind of
color instruments. I can do what I want to do
on them. I don’t have complete mastery or
a big repertoire on any of them, but I know
what I’m doing on them, and they’re easy to
play, and I feel very comfortable with them.
I never really take them out of their cases
except to set them up for the performance
and play ’em.”
While, as he says, “I’m mostly known for
doing this one-man-band thing,” Green also
does get the chance to perform without the
electronic assistance of digital samplers.
“Occasionally I do strings-only concerts and
guitar concerts,” he says. “I have a variety
of different, custom-made guitars, so when
I say ‘guitar concert,’ it’s not just one guitar.
It’s maybe a half-dozen that are all unusual-
looking, with different kinds of stringing and
tuning.”
He also frequently performs purely as an
acoustic musician during the many school
residencies and assemblies at which he’s
annually booked, engagements that Green
says he always looks forward to.
“Yesterday,” he says during our October 29
conversation, “a kid came up to me in a high-
school program. He played guitar, because
he knew about some of the plucking I was
doing, and he asked me about the Chinese
pipa. He wanted to see up-close how I was
doing this technique, which is extremely
difficult to learn. And that’ll happen, just out
of the blue – somebody will come up and say,
‘What’s that instrument again? Can I see that
up close?’
“Every once in a while, I’m totally
amazed,” says Green of his school
appearances. “I did two programs yesterday
– one was [grades] K through six, and the
other was seven through 12. It was in a huge
auditorium with over 500 kids in each one.
And it was totally quiet with both groups.
They were all just locked in.”
A Pampered Life
As you might imagine, though, neither
preparing for a concert with dozens of
instruments nor traveling to a gig with dozens
of instruments is any kind of picnic for Green,
who arrives at his venues “six and a half hours
before the official concert. I actually do a live
prelude ... . A half-hour prelude, mostly with
guitar, when they first open the doors. I used
to just play a CD, but it’s what everybody does,
and I kind of like the idea of doing it live.
So I need six hours before that.” (Green is
given something of a break before his school
programs, when he only arrives two and a half
hours before performances.)
Obviously, Green’s preparation requires a
by Mike Schulz
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
mike@rcreader.com
great deal of time even before he reaches his
venues. “Yeah, packing can be insane,” admits
the musician. “There’s a lot of people who are
probably going to bed when I get up. But to
be honest with you, the packing has gotten to
the point where it’s so automatic that I almost
don’t even think about it anymore.”
But after he arrives for concerts, several
hours are needed not only for Green to
practice on the instruments, but for the
instruments themselves to respond to
environmental changes from one location to
another.
Says Green, “Especially when there are
drastic changes – and we’re going through that
period now, where it’s been humid and now
it’s getting really dry – the instruments need to
adjust. And until they adjust, it’s a lot of tuning.
“Like right now,” says Green of his
booking in Minnesota, “I’m dealing with an
extremely dry theatre and a humid motel
room, which is just the way it is a lot on the
road. So I basically carry a dehumidifier and
a humidifier with me, so I can regulate the
rooms kind of closer to what the theatres are,
and the instruments aren’t going through as
much withdrawal. And I always have to get
the van either cooled off or warmed up – I
have temperature gauges and humidity gauges
everywhere.
“I mean, I’m dealing with all the hassles of
the road, and these guys,” he says, referring,
with tongue in cheek, to his instruments,
“they got it good. It’s a pampered life on the
road here. They only go out of the building
when it’s the proper temperature in the van.
They go into a building, I try to make sure the
temperature and humidity is as good as we
can get it. They go into a rainy season, I start
making it more humid in the motel room. We
go into a drier season, I start drying out the
room.
“You know, I love sports, and I watch a
lot of ESPN, and I’m always hearing these
aging athletes who say, ‘If I could just do
the game and not do all the work around it
during the off-season, I’d keep playing. But
it’s all the other stuff that makes it hard.’ And
I understand what they’re saying, you know?
Because if I could just have a crew that would
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
do all the other stuff and I could just show up
at the gig? Man, I could do this forever.”
Green laughs. “But still. With all the crappy
weather, all the problems with tuning, all the
schleppin’ in and out ... . Once I sit down in
front of the kids, or sit down for an evening
concert – as soon as I sit down to play –
everything else kind of melts away, you know?
Todd Green will perform a public concert at
Bettendorf ’s Redeemer Lutheran Church (1107
Tanglefoot Lane) on Saturday, November 13,
at 7 p.m. Admission is free, though donations
will be accepted, and more information on
Green’s local appearances is available by calling
Quad City Arts at (309)793-1213 or visiting
QuadCityArts.com. 17
 Ask
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
Advice Goddess
the
BY AMY ALKON
It’s a Booty-full Day in the Neighborhood
My male neighbor came over to have
dinner with me and my kids. After I put
the kids to bed, we started watching a
movie and ended up in the bedroom. I’ve
taught my kids to always knock, but right
in the middle of a naked foreplay session,
my 10-year-old son walked in on us. I’m a
divorced single mother and am entitled to
a healthy sex life, but what do I say to my
kid? Should I have the sex talk with him
now? I don’t think I should apologize. I’ve
taught my son that you apologize when
you’ve done something wrong, and I don’t
want him interpreting sex as wrong.
– Caught
According to Random House, What Your
Fifth Grader Needs to Know is stuff like long
division and where Spain is on the map, not
the fact that your neighbor has a birthmark in
the shape of Lebanon – well below the equator.
(That’s in the as-of-yet unpublished What Your
Fifth Grader Doesn’t Need to Know.)
Freudian analysts, sans evidence, predicted a
laundry list of awful outcomes for children who
witness their parents getting it on – including
mania, depression, character disorders, learning
disturbances, delinquency, and even asthma. Dr.
Paul Okami actually investigated – following
200 kids for 18 years in a UCLA study – and
found that “no empirical evidence links such
experiences with subsequent psychological
harm.” Unfortunately, nobody seems to have
studied whether there’s a difference in seeing
Mommy and Daddy and seeing Mommy doing
the neighbor. If the naked people are the kid’s
parents, they can at least launch into the old
“When two people love each other very much...
Going Whole Hug
I went on four dates with this woman
– each ending in no more than a hug and a
kiss on her cheek. She seemed to have fun,
yet stopped returning my calls. This isn’t the
first time something seemingly good fizzled
on me.
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
– Flummoxed
The woman you go out with four times and
only kiss on the cheek and hug goodbye is the
woman you call Mom. There’s an epidemic
of men who need to get the message you do:
“Testicles! They’re not just for decoration
anymore!” It isn’t entirely men’s fault. Feminist
academia pushed a message that caught on
wide – that men should feel ashamed for being
Got A Problem? Ask Amy Alkon.
171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405
or e-mail AdviceAmy@aol.com (AdviceGoddess.com)
©2009, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved.
18
.” That doesn’t quite fly with “When there’s a
reasonably attractive semi-stranger next door,
and Mommy hasn’t gotten her rocks off in the
longest time... .”
Your kid’s already had his stability rocked
by divorce; the last thing he needs is to be
wondering who this guy is to you and having
any dreams of his parents getting back together
crushed in such an upsetting and even
threatening way. Sure, you’re divorced, not
dead, but first and foremost, you’re somebody’s
mommy – somebody who shouldn’t be under
the impression he’ll soon be recording a new
voicemail message: “Mommy can’t come to the
phone right now. I think she’s making a sex
tape with the UPS man.” So, yes, an apology is
in order – not for having sex, but for turning
your bedroom into a peep show for your 10-
year-old. But, wait – he should’ve knocked!
Right. How unbelievable, a 10-year-old failing
to follow directions.
Because kids mature at different rates,
child-rearing experts suggest waiting for a kid
to show he’s ready to hear about sex, which
he’ll indicate by asking questions. Monitor
your son for changes in mood or behavior
and ask if there’s anything on his mind about
what he saw. If so, be truthful – say that men
and women sometimes do stuff to make each
other feel good and that’s what you two were
doing. In the future, always use protection – a
latex condom and a day-planner (to schedule
your romps when the kids have a sleepover at
Granny’s). You’ll be doing your part to prevent
both accidental pregnancies and updated song
lyrics: “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus, but
you’ll never believe what I saw her doing to the
Easter Bunny.”
male and that male sexuality is basically rape
lite. This led some men to hold off on making
moves on a woman, thinking it was the nice,
polite thing to do. Some other men realized it’s
also a great way to spin acting wimpy as a form
of respect. Now, it’s possible this woman just
wasn’t that into you, but maybe she might’ve
been – a few dates back – but found you about
as sexually aggressive as a couch cushion. If
things are going well on a first date, state your
intentions by trying to kiss the woman. She
can say no, and you should respect that, but by
trying, you’ve told her something important:
that your interest goes beyond financing her
appletinis and sitting by your phone waiting
for her to never call you again.
Continued From Page 13
What Else Is Happenin’
information, call (319)335-1160 or visit
http://www.Hancher.UIowa.edu.
Thursday, November 18 – Wolf
Parade. Montreal-based independent
rockers in concert. Englert Theatre (221
East Washington Street, Iowa City). 8
p.m. $18. For tickets and information, call
(319)688-2653 or visit Englert.org.
Friday, November 19 – Paula
Cole. Grammy Award-winning singer-
songwriter in concert. Englert Theatre
(221 East Washington Street, Iowa City). 8
p.m. $25-35. For tickets and information,
call (319)688-2653 or visit Englert.org.
Friday, November 19, through
Sunday, November 21 – Truce of Carols.
An Opera@Augustana presentation, with
a libretto and music by Michael Taylor.
Augustana College’s Wallenberg Hall
(3520 Seventh Avenue, Rock Island). 8
p.m. $10-12. For tickets and information,
call (309)794-7306 or visit Augustana.edu.
THEATRE
Thursday, November 11, through
Saturday, November 27 – The Complete
History of America (Abridged). 600 years
of American history in 6,000 seconds, in
a comedy directed by Chris Walljasper.
Harrison Hilltop Theatre (1601 Harrison
Street, Davenport). Thursdays through
Saturdays – 8 p.m. (no performance on
Thanksgiving); Sundays and Saturday,
November 27 – 2 p.m. $18-$20. For tickets
and information, call (563)449-6371 or
visit HarrisonHilltop.com.
Friday, November 12, through
Sunday, November 21 – Treasure
Island. Family adventure based on the
book by Robert Louis Stevenson, directed
by Jennifer Kingry. Playcrafters Barn
Theatre (4950 35th Avenue, Moline).
Fridays and Saturdays 7:30 p.m.; Sundays
3 p.m. $10. For tickets and information,
call (309)762-0330 or visit Playcrafters.
com.
Tuesday, November 16, through
Tuesday, November 30 – Hedda
Gabler. Curtainbox Theatre Company
presentation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic
psychological drama, directed by David
Bonde. Village Theatre (2113 East 11th
Street, Village of East Davenport).
Tuesdays through Saturdays – 7:30 p.m.
(no performance on Thanksgiving);
Sundays – 3 p.m. $12-20. For tickets and
information, call (563)322-8504 or visit
TheCurtainbox.com.
COMEDY
Friday, November 12 – Five Card
Murder. Dinner, interactive comedy, and
a murder, in an It’s a Mystery production
written by Scott Naumann. Skellington
Manor Banquet & Event Center (420 18th
Street, Rock Island). 6:30 p.m. $35. For
tickets and information, call (563)344-
9187 or e-mail info@skellingtonmanor.
com, or visit ItsAMysteryQC.com.
Saturday, November 13 – Gabriel
Iglesias. Storytelling, parodies, sound
effects, and stand-up with the Comedy
Central veteran. Adler Theatre (136 East
Third Street, Davenport). 8 p.m. $36.50.
For tickets, call (800)745-3000 or visit
AdlerTheatre.com.
MOVIES
Tuesday, November 16 – Western
Canada. A presentation in the Putnam’s
World Adventure Series, featuring post-
film Q&A with filmmaker John Wilson.
Putnam Museum & IMAX Theatre (1717
West 12th Street, Davenport). 1, 4, and 7
p.m. $4-6. For tickets and information, call
(563)324-1933 or visit Putnam.org.
KIDS’ STUFF
Tuesday, November 23, and
Wednesday, November 24 – Sesame
Street Live: 1-2-3 Imagine! with Elmo
& Friends. A new stage adventure with
favorite PBS characters. Adler Theatre
(136 East Third Street, Davenport).
Tuesday – 7 p.m.; Wednesday – 10:30
a.m. and 3 p.m. $13-55. For tickets, call
(800)745-3000 or visit AdlerTheatre.com.
EVENTS
Friday, November 19, and Saturday
November 20 – Burlesque Le’
Moustache’s “Mask-a-Raid!” Slapstick
humor, comic skits, bawdy songs,
striptease acts, and a scantily clad female
ensemble, with prizes awarded to the
best-masked audience members. Circa
’21 Speakeasy (1818 Third Avenue,
Rock Island). 8 p.m. $15. For tickets and
information, call (309)786-7733 extension
2 or visit Circa21.com. For a 2010
interview with Burlesque Le’ Moustache
founder Danielle Colby-Cushman, visit
RCReader.com/y/burlesque.
Friday, November 19, through
Sunday, November 28 – Quad City Arts
Festival of Trees. Annual holiday event
featuring displays, miniatures, vendors,
and more. RiverCenter (136 East Third
Street, Davenport). November 20, 22-24,
and 26-27: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. November 19:
9 a.m.-noon. November 21: 10 a.m.-7
p.m. November 25: 5-9 p.m. November
28: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. $3-8. Holiday parade:
November 20 at 11 a.m. For information,
call (563)324-3378 or visit QuadCityArts.
com/festoftrees.asp.
 Continued From Page 11
Brains, Heart,
Courage, and the
Wizards of Odd
abuse, abortion, and (dual) infanticide.
I’d long presumed that the 1976 play
was unfilmable, but given that horrific
list, I suppose the material was destined
to fall into Tyler Perry’s hands. For the
record, I think the movie’s a mess. Adding
characters, narratives, and typically
clunky, prosaic dialogue, Perry, for
understandable reason, can’t sustain any
kind of satisfying rhythm; his adaptation
stumbles, lurches, and oftentimes
flails. Having said that, I also think For
Colored Girls is positively exhilarating,
a harrowing yet glorious howl of pain
and perseverance, and far and away the
auteur’s strongest screen work to date. You
can chuckle at the film’s portentousness,
but you can’t laugh at Shange’s stunningly
lyrical odes to female strength, and you
certainly can’t at Perry’s generous, big-
hearted direction of the astonishingly
raw and soulful Kimberly Elise, Loretta
Devine, Thandie Newton, Phylicia
Rashad, Kerry Washington, Anika Noni
Rose, Tessa Thompson, and – giving a
way-better-than-expected performance
– Janet Jackson. (Only Whoopi Goldberg,
channeling Piper Laurie in Carrie, is
mildly disappointing.) As is generally the
case at my screenings of Perry movies, the
packed, appreciative audience applauded
at the end. For the very first time, I felt like
joining them.
DUE DATE
A hyper-tense Robert Downey Jr. and
an oblivious Zach Galifianakis travel from
Atlanta to Los Angeles in director Todd
Phillips’ road-trip flick Due Date, and
wind up delivering something unusual
and not entirely welcome: a slapstick
drama. Sure, there are plenty of (mostly
unamusing) visual and verbal gags
sprinkled throughout. But this is one
of those rare films in which the actors’
honesty is detrimental to their movie;
Downey’s anger and irritation are so
forceful, and Galifianakis’ sadness and
childish confusion so sincere, that the
formulaic jokes involving high-speed car
crashes, misappropriated crematorium
remains, and masturbating dogs feel even
more crass, phony, and stupid than they
otherwise might’ve. Due Date isn’t terrible,
just terribly misguided, and reveals itself
as such early on by casting the expert
scene-stealer Juliette Lewis as a skanky pot
dealer and giving her absolutely nothing
funny to say or do. Talk about a buzz kill.
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
Where I live, 35 percent of all high
school students confess (or brag)
that they have engaged in binge drinking,
which is defined as imbibing five or more
alcoholic drinks in a two-hour period.
According to my reading of the omens, your
inner teenager may soon be longing to flirt
with that kind of intense and total release.
Can I talk him or her out of it? As much as
I sympathize with the younger you’s need
to escape the numbing effects of the daily
grind, I’m asking the adult you to step in
and assert your authority. Try to find a more
constructive approach to liberation.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Why
did feathered dinosaurs evolve
wings? Paleontologists in Britain
have a new theory: It added to their sexual
allure. The head researcher at the University
of Manchester speculated that “maybe they
ran around with their arms outstretched
to show off how pretty their feathers were.”
Eventually those forearms became wings that
came in handy for flying. In other words, the
power of flight did not originate from the urge
to fly but rather from the urge to be attractive.
Oddly enough, Taurus, this approach to
understanding evolution would be useful
for you to meditate on in the coming weeks.
According to my reading of the astrological
omens, you could develop some interesting
new capacities as you work to enhance your
appeal to people who matter.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): On the
subject of being divided, novelist
Iris Murdoch wrote the following:
“He led a double life. Did that make him
a liar? He did not feel a liar. He was a man
of two truths.” Whether you deserve the
generosity of that interpretation still remains
to be seen, Gemini. It is possible that your
version of doubleness will be rooted in deceit
or delusion rather than sincere and honest
duality. Of course I’m rooting for the latter.
Please do all you can to ensure that you’re
being authentic, not manipulative.
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
My friend Ariel’s six-year-old
daughter Juno doesn’t understand
why anyone would build streets that run in a
straight line. Isn’t it more fun if the highways
and byways are crooked and curvy? Shouldn’t
people want to get to where they’re going by
veering this way and that, relishing the playful
twists and turns? That’s where the best action
is, says Juno, and I agree: in the tweak, in the
twirl, in the winding way – not in the beeline
route that leaves no room for improvisation.
That’s especially true for you right now, my
fellow Cancerian.
LEO (July 23-August 22): Would
you be delighted if I arranged to get
an offshore oil-drilling rig named
after you? Probably not. Would you celebrate
if you won a prestigious all-expenses-paid
vacation to the hottest war zones in Afghanistan? I
doubt it. So don’t accept dubious honors and gifts
like those, Leo. Be clear that you’re not interested
in ego strokes that are irrelevant to your long-
term dreams. If you hope to get the prize you’re
aiming for, you will have to say a definitive no to
supposedly good things that you don’t really want.
VIRGO (August 23-September 22):
The nature of the game is changing. Do
you know which game I’m referring
to? I mean the one that everyone’s
playing but no one’s acknowledging they’re
playing. The rules of the game had held steady
for quite some time, but recently they began to
shift. Now even the game’s rewards are in the
process of metamorphosing. My advice? You don’t
necessarily need to splash a big dose of raw candor
all over the place, but I do recommend that you at
least tell yourself the truth about what’s going on.
LIBRA (September 23-October 22):
My Facebook friend Robert Goldberg
has come up with terms for you Libras that puts
a more positive spin on your reputation as a
fence-sitter. He suggests “fence dancer” or “fence
warrior.” You don’t always deserve to be bestowed
with those honorable titles, of course. Sometimes
you really do molder there in your intermediate
position, paralyzed by indecision and unable to
do what’s in the best interests of anyone, including
yourself. But on other occasions – like now – you
have the power to use your in-between status
dynamically, coordinating the opposing interests
to work as a whole that’s greater than the sum of
the parts.
SCORPIO (October 23-November
21): “I cannot seem to feel alive unless
I am alert,” wrote author Charles
Bowden, “and I cannot feel alert unless I push
past the point where I have control.” Yikes! That’s
a pretty extreme approach. But I suggest that
you consider trying it out in the coming week.
If you hope to seize even one of the multiple
opportunities that are swirling in your vicinity,
you will need both supreme focus and a loosey-
goosey willingness to respond to novelty. So don’t
tense up and blank out and try to wrestle the
mysterious flows into submission. Use your sixth
sense to find the groove, and relax into it.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22-
December 21): “Democracy is the
worst form of government except
for all those others that have been
tried,” said Winston Churchill. He was defending
his favorite political system, asserting that
its imperfections are superior to the flaws of
monarchy, plutocracy, anarchy, theocracy, and
the rest. I invite you to use a similar gauge as you
evaluate the belief system that’s at the center of
your life. Does it sometimes lead you astray, cause
you to see things that aren’t really there, and fill
you with confusion – but in ways that are more
life-enhancing than any other belief system you
know of? Or is your belief system actually kind
of toxic? Should you consider replacing it with
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
by Rob Brezsny
another set of organizing principles? If it’s
the latter, now would be a good time to begin
making a change.
CAPRICORN (December 22-
January 19): Connie Post, my
beloved former editor at the
Dayton Daily News, sent me a
haiku-like poem that I’d like you to ponder:
“November trees / which are living? / which
are dead?” I’m hoping this will put you in the
mood to mull over an even bigger question,
namely: What parts of your own life are
withering and what parts are thriving? In my
astrological opinion, it’s very important that
you know the difference, and act accordingly.
AQUARIUS (January 20-
February 18): Numerologists
say the number 10 signifies completion,
wholeness, totality. It could rightly serve as
your lucky number in the coming weeks – a
symbol of your power to draw long-term
processes to a climax on your own terms. But
you might also want to consider using 11 as
your emblem of good mojo. That number
denotes the drive to surpass the success
you’ve earned before – to transcend easy
triumphs and conventional wisdom so as to
reach for a more challenging conquest. Either
way, Aquarius, I think you’ll be flying high
for the foreseeable future, so there’s no need
to worry about which way you should go. If
you do choose 11, the risks will be somewhat
greater and the rewards more interesting.
PISCES (February 19-March 20):
In Moby Dick, Herman Melville
suggested that ideally a person
should be a “patriot to heaven.” Poet
Gary Snyder wrote, “I pledge allegiance to
the soil / one ecosystem / in diversity / under
the sun / with joyful interpenetration for all.”
Seminal environmentalist Edward Abbey
said, “My loyalties will not be bound by
national borders... or limited in the spiritual
dimension by one language or culture. I
pledge my allegiance to the damned human
race, and my everlasting love to the green
hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory
to the singing stars, to the very end of space
and time.” I recommend you experiment
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
with this perspective in the coming weeks,
Pisces. You don’t have to tone down your love
for your tribe or country. Just see if you can
expand your sense of belonging... extend the
borders of your comfort zone... and feel at
home everywhere you go.
Homework: What’s the best, most healing
trouble you could whip up right now? Go to
FreeWillAstrology.com and click “Email Rob.”
Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny's
EXPANDED WEEKLY AUDIO HOROSCOPES
& DAILY TEXT MESSAGE HOROSCOPES
The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at
1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700 19
 FREE ONLINE
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

CLASSIFIEDS
cardiology November 11, 2010
October 28 Answers: Right

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RiverCitiesReader.com/classifieds
October 28 Crossword Answers

ACROSS 88. Conditions 38. Portray

1. Like a sleepyhead 89. Lyric poem by Horace 39. Kind of circle
5. Trifolium 90. White-wine variety 40. “_ me timbers!”
11. Shank part 91. Old East German money 42. Fearless
15. The Buckeye State 93. Duck 43. Turf and Trojan
19. Huffy 95. Hankered 44. Dern or Branigan
20. Entertain 97. Koran chapter 45. Ant
21. Jelling agent 98. Blvds. 48. Warning
22. Part of YMCA 99. Kinswoman: abbr. 50. Tobacco residue
23. Perfunctory 101. Marquee sign 53. Single-celled organism
25. Gain courage: 2 wds. 102. Southeastern Indian 55. Resided
27. Prepared statement 105. Doily 57. Claims on property
28. Browbeat 107. Look with suspicion 59. Semihard cheese
30. Line of descent 111. Callous 60. Molts
31. Hgt. 113. Bravery award: 2 wds. 62. “_ _ Day’s Night”
32. Positioned 116. _ Minor 63. _ -dieu
34. Senesce 117. First Olympics site 64. Be frugal
36. Part of QED 118. Classroom need 66. Like one beatified
37. The Olympians 119. Singing group 67. Loathed
41. Actress _ Swinton 120. “_’s Anatomy” 68. Irish playwright
43. Grapple 121. Dec. 31 word 69. Stew in the Philippines
46. Take by conquest 122. Starts again 70. TV’s Banks and others
47. Red River city 123. Lather 71. Wild pansy
49. Sober 74. “_ Frome”
51. Lesser actor DOWN 75. Tonsorial event
52. Cargo carriers 1. Kind of blond 76. Classified
53. City in Lombardia 2. Wild animal 78. Plug
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

54. Grape-press residue 3. Perry’s creator 79. Do a sewing job

55. Container 4. Empties of air 80. Marshmallow treat for campers
56. Cover with buttercream 5. Devise 83. Greek hero: var.
57. Favorite things 6. Grasslands 85. Opening
58. Approaches 7. Brutish ones 86. Crowns
60. Asserted, in a way 8. Tank 88. Kind of magical card
61. Colander 9. Campaigner’s concern 90. Vaughan or Bernhardt
63. Advanced degrees 10. Change the decor 92. “Groundhog Day” star
64. Jewish month 11. Tabby 94. Belief
65. Elvis’ first No. 1 hit: 2 wds. 12. Wide open 96. Osar
69. Within reach: 2 wds. 13. Tarn 98. Copal or elemi, e.g.
72. Actor _ Neeson 14. _ Ogden Nash 100. Backslide
73. Rigorous appraisal: 2 wds. 15. Greek letters 102. Engine sound
77. Cloth workers 16. Matinee idol 103. Mister, in Munich
78. Gladden 17. Concerning: 2 wds. 104. Like a moray
80. Getz and Musial 18. Bone: prefix 106. Mimic
81. “_ kingdom come ...” 24. Spiral 108. Did in
82. Toward the mouth 26. Put on the payroll 109. Wagon
83. Garden tools 29. Bundle 110. Cleveland’s waters
84. Most tractable 33. Lab burners 112. Dir. letters
86. Man 35. Respirator: 2 wds. 114. Tried for office
20 87. Block 37. Tennis-cup name 115. Pull
 Live Music Live Music Live

Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

Email all listings to calendar@rcreader.com • Deadline 5 p.m. Thursday before publication
Thursday 11
Alan Sweet -Kilkenny’s, 300 W. 3rd St.
Davenport, IA
Benefit for Invisible Children - The Half
Hearts CD Release - The New Bodies
- The Uniphonics -Iowa City Yacht Club,
13 S Linn St Iowa City, IA
Black Hawk College Jazz Ensemble
(6:30pm) -Huckleberry’s, 223 18th St
Rock Island, IL
Buddy Olson -Figge Art Museum, 225 W 2nd
St Davenport, IA
Deluxe Republic - I Saw a Ghost Once - Dra-
ma Major - Surface Tension -River Music
Experience, 129 Main St Davenport, IA
Duke Tumatoe & the Power Trio -Clarion
Hotel and Convention Center / Penguin’s
Comedy Club, 525 33rd Ave SW Cedar
Rapids, IA
Irie Soundsystem w/ DJ THC -QC Zone,
1516 5th Ave Moline, IL
Irish Idol II Karaoke w/ DJ Cash -Molly’s
Pub, 311 3rd St. Sherrard, IL
Jam Session -The Muddy Waters, 1708
State St. Bettendorf, IA
Jason Carl -Creekside Bar and Grill, 3303
Brady St. Davenport, IA
Jazz Jam with The North Scott Jazz Combo
-Mojo’s (River Music Experience), 130 W
2nd St Davenport, IA
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Live Lunch w/ Nick Vasquez (noon) -Mojo’s
(River Music Experience), 130 W 2nd St
Davenport, IA
Open Mic Night -The Dam View Inn, 410
2nd St Davenport, IA
Paul Barrere & Fred Tackett -Englert
Theatre, 221 East Washington St. Iowa
City, IA
Rootless Experience -Uptown Neighbor-
hood Bar and Grill, 2340 Spruce Hills
Dr. Bettendorf, IA
The Chris & Wes Show -Mound Street Land- John Wasem -Kilkenny’s, 300 W. 3rd St.
ing, 1029 Mound St. Davenport, IA
The Steady Rollin’ Blues Band featuring
Pappa-Razzi -Edje Nightclub at Jumer’s
Casino and Hotel, I-280 & Hwy 92 Rock
Davenport, IA
Karaoke Night -Cheers Bar & Grill, 1814
Island, IL
Jimmie Lee Adams -Rascals Rock Mem- 7th St Moline, IL
Rootless Experience - The Aces - Emily
orabilia Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL Karaoke Night -Moe’s Pizza, 1312 Caman-
Jawoisz & Anthony -River Music Experi-
The Uniphonics -RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave. che Ave Clinton, IA
Rock Island, IL ence, 129 Main St Davenport, IA Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Rotate the DJ w/ Chronik Solutionz -M.D.
The Wiitala Brothers -Gabe’s, 330 E. Wash- Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
ington St. Iowa City, IA Green’s, 1808 2nd Ave. Rock Island, IL Keep Off The Grass -11th Street Precinct,
Russ Reyman Trio (5pm) -The Rusty Nail,
Troy Harris, Pianist (6pm) -Red Crow Grille, 2108 E 11th St Davenport, IA
2606 W Locust Davenport, IA
2504 53rd St. Bettendorf, IA Kyle Hollingsworth Band - Messy Jiver-
Smooth Groove -The Rusty Nail, 2606 W
University of Iowa Jazz Combos -The Mill, son -Iowa City Yacht Club, 13 S Linn St
Locust Davenport, IA
120 E Burlington Iowa City, IA Iowa City, IA
Southern Thunder Karaoke & DJ -Hollars
Lynn Allen -Uptown Neighborhood Bar
FRIday
2010/11/12 (Fri) 12 Bar and Grill, 4050 27th St Moline, IL
The Guess Who -Quad-Cities Waterfront
and Grill, 2340 Spruce Hills Dr. Bet-
tendorf, IA
Convention Center, 1777 Isle Parkway
56 Hope Road - Spare Parts -The Redstone Open Mic Night -Coffee Dive, 226 W. 3rd
Room, 129 Main St Davenport, IA Bettendorf, IA St. Davenport, IA
ABC Karaoke -Circle Tap, 1345 Locust St.
Davenport, IA Coyote Grace @ Gabe’s – November 13 Saturday
2010/11/13 (Sat) 13 Open Mic Night -One Library, 230 W. 3rd
Street Davenport, IA
Bee All U Can Bee Karaoke & DJ -Commo- Pappa-Razzi -Edje Nightclub at Jumer’s
Armonia -Quad City Arts Center, 1715 2nd Casino and Hotel, I-280 & Hwy 92 Rock
dore Tap, 2202 W. 3rd St. Davenport, IA
Gray Wolf Band -Martini’s on the Rock, Lee Blackmon (6pm) -Cool Beanz Coffee- Ave Rock Island, IL
Blue Collar Band -11th Street Precinct, 2108 Island, IL
4619 34th St Rock Island, IL house, 1325 30th St. Rock Island, IL Bee All U Can Bee Karaoke & DJ -Crabby’s,
E 11th St Davenport, IA Red Pepper Sage (6pm) -Toucan’s Can-
High Cotton Blues Band -Mojo’s (River Music Live Lunch w/ Ren Estrand (noon) -Mojo’s 826 W. 1st Ave. Coal Valley, IL
Blues & Boogie Woogie Piano Stomp tina / Skinny Legs BBQ, 2020 1st Street
Experience), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA (River Music Experience), 130 W 2nd St Big Bill Morganfield and Cobalt Blue
-Englert Theatre, 221 East Washington Milan, IL
Houndstooth -The Muddy Waters, 1708 Davenport, IA -The Muddy Waters, 1708 State St.
St. Iowa City, IA Richie Lee -Riverside Casino and Golf Re-
State St. Bettendorf, IA Mike Blumme Trio (6pm) -Toucan’s Can- Bettendorf, IA
Cosmic -Uptown Neighborhood Bar and sort, 3184 Highway 22 Riverside, IA
Jay Siegel & the Tokens (7 & 10pm) tina / Skinny Legs BBQ, 2020 1st Street Chester Brown -Bent River Brewing Com-
Grill, 2340 Spruce Hills Dr. Betten- Rule #1 - Tear Down the Tower - Eleven
- Richie Lee (8:15pm) -Riverside Ca- Milan, IL pany, 1413 5th Ave. Moline, IL
dorf, IA FiftyTwo -RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave. Rock
sino and Golf Resort, 3184 Highway 22 Novembeard & Beer Bluegrass Festi- Cosmic -Mound Street Landing, 1029 Mound
David Killinger & Friends -G’s Riverfront Island, IL
Riverside, IA val: The Awful Purdies (7pm) - Jon St. Davenport, IA
Cafe, 102 S Main St Port Byron, IL Salsa and Cumbia DJ Night -La Primavera,
Jazz After Five: Steve Grismore Quartet Eric (8pm) - Evergreen Brass Band Coyote Grace - River Glen - Sam Knutson
DJ Night -Uncle Harley’s Bar & Grill, 202 W. 601 15th St. Moline, IL
(5pm) - Natalie Brown CD Release (8:45pm) - Whistle Pigs (10:15pm) -Gabe’s, 330 E. Washington St. Iowa
Mayne St. Blue Grass, IA Salsa Dancing -Club Boulevard, 1801 10th
Show (9pm) -The Mill, 120 E Burlington - Mountain Sprout (midnight) -Iowa City, IA
DJ Scott Keller & Karaoke (weather per- St. Moline, IL
Iowa City, IA City Yacht Club, 13 S Linn St Iowa David Killinger & Friends -G’s Riverfront
mitting) -Greenbriar Restaurant and Smooth Groove -The Rusty Nail, 2606 W
John Wasem -Kilkenny’s, 300 W. 3rd St. City, IA Cafe, 102 S Main St Port Byron, IL
Lounge, 4506 27th St Moline, IL Locust Davenport, IA
Davenport, IA Open Mic Coffeehouse -First Lutheran DJ Night -Uncle Harley’s Bar & Grill, 202 W.
Duke Tumatoe & the Power Trio -The Songwriters in the Round (3pm) -River
Karaoke Night -Sneaky Pete’s, 207 Cody Church - Rock Island, 1600 20th St. Mayne St. Blue Grass, IA
Circa ‘21 Speakeasy, 1818 3rd Ave. Rock Music Experience, 129 Main St Daven-
Rd. N. LeClaire, IA Rock Island, IL Expo 76 -Rascals Rock Memorabilia Bar,
Island, IL port, IA
Karaoke Night -The Dam View Inn, 410 2nd Open Mic Night -McManus Pub, 1401 7th 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
Fat Dawgs Productions Karaoke & DJ Southern Thunder Karaoke & DJ -Hollars
St Davenport, IA Ave Moline, IL Fifth of Country -Orange Street Theatre,
Service -Shannon’s Bar and Grill, 252 S Bar and Grill, 4050 27th St Moline, IL
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports Orangadang - Sparks Design -RIBCO, 1815 701 Orange St Muscatine, IA
State Ave Hampton, IL
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL 2nd Ave. Rock Island, IL Hap Hazard -Route 61 Bar & Grill, 4320
Funktastic Five -Rascals Rock Memorabilia
Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
N. Brady St. Davenport, IA Continued On Page 22

Continued From Page 3 by Jonathan Narcisse

First Steps for Branstad

and the Iowa Statehouse
full-time, permanent consultants to avoid inflating
employment reporting. And at much more
expense than our regular workforce. Either they
should be made permanent employees, or they
should be terminated. I prefer the latter.
(7) Fix the board and commission structure.
Iowans in 99 counties deserve to be represented.
Also broadcast every board and commission
meeting live over the Internet.
(8) Institute real reform at DHS, beginning with
welfare reform by requiring work and personal
state resources, and communities is devastating.
Throughout the campaign, lip service was paid. Now
is the time for action to take place.
(12) Allow parents to decide who educates their
children and let the money follow.
(13) Allow real academic competition to exist by
allowing independent academies to be formed.
(14) Publish full, accurate, and complete
academic data hidden by previous administrations,
including Branstad’s.
(15) End the rampant abuse of the administrative-

River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010

responsibility.
(9) Institute real reform of our justice system
and courts, including ending the notion that
building prisons is economic development, and
restoring work details. Why should Iowans spend
$116 million, which will be much more after the
obligatory cost overruns kick in, when we have lots
of strong backs in prison that can build new jails
and prisons as needed?
(10) Begin the systematic elimination of the
12,000-plus useless bureaucratic positions in
public education, from Regents through K-12, that
drain vast taxpayer dollars, and end the practice of
funding nonexistent students.
(11) Present a bold and comprehensive agenda
to address the scourge of illegal immigration
within our borders. The impact on our economy,
rules process, fully restoring the constitutional role
of the legislative department.
(16) Introduce a comprehensive plan to phase
out corporate taxation; institute real property-tax
protection for all Iowans, not just select corporate
allies; reduce the sales tax; and phase out the
individual income tax.
There are many other reforms that ought to
take place. This is a start, however. These are things
that can be done right away by the new leadership
and would prove they are committed to true small
government with free-market principles, and not
just interested in power and control.
Jonathan Narcisse was the independent Iowa Party
candidate for governor in 2010. More information can
be found at NarcisseForIowa.com. 21
 Live Music Live Music Liv
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
Email all listings to calendar@rcreader.com • Deadline 5 p.m. Thursday before publication
Continued From Page 21
Stephanie Rearick - Olivia Rose Muzzy -The
Mill, 120 E Burlington Iowa City, IA
Tapped Out -Len Brown’s North Shore Inn, 7th
Street and the Rock River Moline, IL
The Kenny Barron Trio and David Sanchez
-Englert Theatre, 221 East Washington St.
Iowa City, IA
The Lovedogs -Hawkeye Tap, 4646 Cheyenne
Ave. Davenport, IA
The Recliners -Mojo’s (River Music Experi-
ence), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA
Third Rail -Purgatory’s Pub, 2104 State St
Bettendorf, IA
Todd Green -Redeemer Lutheran Church,
Utica Ridge and Tanglefoot Lane Bet-
tendorf, IA
Tronicity -Martini’s on the Rock, 4619 34th St
Rock Island, IL
Words Like Daggers - Bella - Amidst a
Ruined City - Haddonfield -River Music
Experience, 129 Main St Davenport, IA
2010/11/14 (Sun)
sunday 14
Breille -The Hat Eatery & Pub, 1618 W.
Locust St. Davenport, IA
Glenn Hickson (5:30pm) -O’Melia’s Sup-
per Club, 2900 Blackhawk Rd. Rock
Island, IL
Karaoke Night -The Muddy Waters, 1708 State
St. Bettendorf, IA
Polka Club of Iowa, Inc. - Eastern Chapter
Dance (1:30pm) -Walcott Coliseum, 116
E Bryant St Walcott, IA
Russ Reyman, Pianist (10am-2pm brunch
performance) -The Lodge Hotel, Spruce
Hills & Utica Ridge Bettendorf, IA
The Avey Brothers -Rascals Rock Memorabilia
Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
The Five Bridges Jazz Band (10am) -Brady
Street Chop House, Radisson QC Plaza
Hotel Davenport, IA
Harry Potter Costume Party
Wednesday, November 17 at 6:30pm
The Moline Public Library is celebrating the release of the seventh Harry Potter movie
with a Harry Potter Costume Party. Join us in your favorite Harry Potter costume or just
dress like a Muggle. We'll have food, games, activities and prizes. This free event is open
to all ages, but registration is required. Call 309 524-2470 or 309-524-2480 to register or
for more information. Sponsored by the Friends of the Moline Public Library.
Moline Public Library 3210 41st Street Moline, IL 61265 309-524-2440 www.molinelibrary.com
Ad sponsored by the Friends of the Moline Public Library
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
22
Troy Harris, Pianist (11:30am) -Bass Street
Chop House, 1601 River Dr Moline, IL
monday
2010/11/15 (Mon) 15
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports Bar,
1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Open Mic w/ J. Knight -The Mill, 120 E Burling-
ton Iowa City, IA
True Blue Mondays Lunch w/ Ellis Kell
-Mojo’s (River Music Experience), 130 W
2nd St Davenport, IA
tuesday
2010/11/16 (Tue)
16
Buddy Olson (6pm) -Greenbriar Restaurant and
Lounge, 4506 27th St Moline, IL
Dance Party USA -Iowa City Yacht Club, 13 S
Linn St Iowa City, IA
Glenn Hickson (5:30pm) -O’Melia’s Supper
Club, 2900 Blackhawk Rd. Rock Island, IL
Karaoke Night -McManus Pub, 1401 7th Ave
Moline, IL
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports Bar,
1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Live Lunch w/ Jonathan Turner (noon)
-Mojo’s (River Music Experience), 130 W
2nd St Davenport, IA
Neon Trees - New Politics - Young the Giant
-RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave. Rock Island, IL
Open Mic Night w/ Steve McFate (6:30pm)
-Cool Beanz Coffeehouse, 1325 30th St.
Rock Island, IL
Open Mic w/ Jordan Danielsen -Bier Stube
Davenport, 2228 E 11th St Davenport, IA
Open Mic w/ the Pena Brothers -Racer’s Edge,
936 15th Ave East Moline, IL
The Chris & Wes Show -Rascals Rock Memora-
bilia Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
wednesday
2010/11/17 (Wed)
17
Blackberry Bushes String Band - The New
Board of Education -The Mill, 120 E Burl-
ington Iowa City, IA
Neon Trees @ RIBCO – November 16
Hal Reed & Ellis Kell -Mojo’s (River
Music Experience), 130 W 2nd St
Davenport, IA
Jam Session -Iowa City Yacht Club, 13 S
Linn St Iowa City, IA
Jeff Miller (6pm) -G’s Riverfront Cafe, 102
S Main St Port Byron, IL
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Monte Montgomery -The Redstone Room,
129 Main St Davenport, IA
Open Mic Night -Mojo’s (River Music Experi-
ence), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA
Southern Thunder Karaoke & DJ -The
Torchlight Lounge, 1800 18th Ave East
Moline, IL
The Chris & Wes Show -Mound Street Land-
ing, 1029 Mound St. Davenport, IA
Wild Bill’s Rodeo Show featuring Billy
Peiffer -Rascals Rock Memorabilia Bar,
1414 15th St. Moline, IL
18
thursday
2010/11/18 (Thu)
Autumn Falls -Uptown Neighborhood
Bar and Grill, 2340 Spruce Hills Dr. Bet-
tendorf, IA
Black Hawk College Jazz Ensemble
(6:30pm) -Huckleberry’s, 223 18th St
Rock Island, IL
Buddy Olson -Figge Art Museum, 225 W 2nd
St Davenport, IA
Cletus Got Shot - Adobanga -Iowa City
Yacht Club, 13 S Linn St Iowa City, IA
DJ Johnny O -Greenbriar Restaurant and
Lounge, 4506 27th St Moline, IL
Fool’s Gold -Kilkenny’s, 300 W. 3rd St.
Davenport, IA
Hal Reed & Ellis Kell (6pm) -Rock Island Pub-
lic Library, 401 19th St, Rock Island, IL
Irie Soundsystem w/ DJ THC -QC Zone,
1516 5th Ave Moline, IL
Irish Idol II Karaoke w/ DJ Cash -Molly’s
Pub, 311 3rd St. Sherrard, IL
Jam Session -The Muddy Waters, 1708
State St. Bettendorf, IA
Jason Carl -Creekside Bar and Grill, 3303
Brady St. Davenport, IA
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Nikki Lunden -Mojo’s (River Music Experi-
ence), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA
Open Mic Night -The Dam View Inn, 410
2nd St Davenport, IA
Funktastic Five -Martini’s on the Rock, 4619
34th St Rock Island, IL
Shoeless Revolution CD Release Party Gray Wolf Band -Purgatory’s Pub, 2104
-RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave. Rock Island, IL
Tekno Turkey Fest; DJ Uplift - Lady Espina
State St Bettendorf, IA
Jazz After Five: Eric Thompson Trio (5pm)
- Jethro -Gabe’s, 330 E. Washington St. - Damon Dotson (9pm) -The Mill, 120 E
Iowa City, IA Burlington Iowa City, IA
The Steady Rollin’ Blues Band featuring Karaoke Night -Sneaky Pete’s, 207 Cody
Jimmie Lee Adams -Rascals Rock Mem- Rd. N. LeClaire, IA
orabilia Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
Karaoke Night -The Dam View Inn, 410 2nd
Troy Harris, Pianist (6pm) -Red Crow Grille,
St Davenport, IA
2504 53rd St. Bettendorf, IA Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
University of Iowa Latin Jazz Ensemble - Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
The Mill, 120 E Burlington Iowa City, IA
Wolf Parade -Englert Theatre, 221 East
Lee Blackmon (6:30pm) -Mojo’s (River
Music Experience), 130 W 2nd St
Washington St. Iowa City, IA Davenport, IA
Live Lunch with Tony Hoeppner (noon)
FRIDAY
2010/11/19 (Fri)
19 -Mojo’s (River Music Experience), 130 W
2nd St Davenport, IA
26th Musicians’ Benefit for the Toys for Open Mic Night -McManus Pub, 1401 7th
Tots -Bent River Brewing Company, 1413
Ave Moline, IL
5th Ave. Moline, IL
Opiate The Audio and Visual Experience
ABC Karaoke -Circle Tap, 1345 Locust St. of Tool -Gabe’s, 330 E. Washington St.
Davenport, IA Iowa City, IA
Alexander Webb & Taylor Phylan -Kilken-
ny’s, 300 W. 3rd St. Davenport, IA
Bee All U Can Bee Karaoke & DJ -Commo-
Orchestra Alto Maiz -The Redstone Room,
129 Main St Davenport, IA
Paula Cole -Englert Theatre, 221 East
dore Tap, 2202 W. 3rd St. Davenport, IA
Washington St. Iowa City, IA
Brown Bag Lunch at Noon: “Tennessee”
Rick K & the Allnighters -Riverside Ca-
Tony Cavitt - The Music of John Prine
sino and Golf Resort, 3184 Highway 22
-Bettendorf Public Library, 2950 Learn-
Riverside, IA
ing Campus Bettendorf, IA
Ron LaPuma Band -The Muddy Waters,
Burlesque Le’ Moustache: Mask-a-Raid!
1708 State St. Bettendorf, IA
-The Circa ‘21 Speakeasy, 1818 3rd Ave.
Rotate the DJ w/ Chronik Solutionz -M.D.
Rock Island, IL
Green’s, 1808 2nd Ave. Rock Island, IL
David Killinger & Friends -G’s Riverfront
Rule #1 - Tear Down the Tower -Rascals
Cafe, 102 S Main St Port Byron, IL
Rock Memorabilia Bar, 1414 15th St.
DJ Night -Uncle Harley’s Bar & Grill, 202 W.
Moline, IL
Mayne St. Blue Grass, IA Russ Reyman Trio (5pm) -The Rusty Nail,
Emily Jawoisz -Fireworks Coffeehouse,
2139 16th St. Moline, IL
2606 W Locust Davenport, IA
Smooth Groove -Jumer’s Casino & Hotel, 777
Fat Dawgs Productions Karaoke & DJ Jumer Dr. Rock Island, IL
Service -Shannon’s Bar and Grill, 252 S
State Ave Hampton, IL
ve Music Live Music
Southern Thunder Karaoke & DJ -Hollars
Bar and Grill, 4050 27th St Moline, IL
The Bucktown Revue -River Music Experi-
ence, 129 Main St Davenport, IA
The Fry Daddies (6pm) -Toucan’s Can-
tina / Skinny Legs BBQ, 2020 1st Street
Milan, IL
The Horde - Ageless -RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave.
Rock Island, IL
Toys For Tots Benefit Jam -Bent River
Brewing Company, 1413 5th Ave. Mo-
line, IL
Uniphonics - Brainchild -Iowa City Yacht
Club, 13 S Linn St Iowa City, IA
Wicked Liz & The Bellyswirls -Uptown
Neighborhood Bar and Grill, 2340
Spruce Hills Dr. Bettendorf, IA
20
Saturday
2010/11/20 (Sat)
Alexander Webb & Taylor Phylan -Kilken-
ny’s, 300 W. 3rd St. Davenport, IA
Bee All U Can Bee Karaoke & DJ -Crabby’s,
826 W. 1st Ave. Coal Valley, IL
Bumpus - Flavor Savers - Shoeless Revo-
lution -Iowa City Yacht Club, 13 S Linn
St Iowa City, IA
Burlesque Le’ Moustache: Mask-a-Raid!
-The Circa ‘21 Speakeasy, 1818 3rd Ave.
Rock Island, IL
Clayton Jones -Mojo’s (River Music Experi-
ence), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA
Cosmic -11th Street Precinct, 2108 E 11th St
Davenport, IA
Danika Holmes - Down the Line -The
Redstone Room, 129 Main St Dav-
enport, IA
David Killinger & Friends -G’s Riverfront
Cafe, 102 S Main St Port Byron, IL
DJ Night -Uncle Harley’s Bar & Grill, 202 W.
Mayne St. Blue Grass, IA
Frank Drew Live in the Westside -The
Muddy Waters, 1708 State St. Bet-
tendorf, IA
Gray Wolf Band -Chopper’s Bar & Grill,
17228 Rt. 5 & 92 East Moline, IL
Hi-Fi -Beer Belly’s - Rock Island, 1704 2nd
Ave. Rock Island, IL
Just Surrender - Phone Calls from Home
- The Scenic -Gabe’s, 330 E. Washington
St. Iowa City, IA
Justin Morrissey & Friends -Martini’s on
the Rock, 4619 34th St Rock Island, IL
Karaoke Night -Cheers Bar & Grill, 1814
7th St Moline, IL
Karaoke Night -Moe’s Pizza, 1312 Caman-
che Ave Clinton, IA
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Lethal by Default - Plagued by Saints
- Emplify - Reelfoot Rift -River Music
Experience, 129 Main St Davenport, IA
Lynn Allen -Rascals Rock Memorabilia Bar,
1414 15th St. Moline, IL
Mike Blumme Trio (6pm) -Toucan’s Can-
tina / Skinny Legs BBQ, 2020 1st Street
Milan, IL
Minus Six - Allison Scott -RIBCO, 1815 2nd
Ave. Rock Island, IL
Open Mic Night -Coffee Dive, 226 W. 3rd
St. Davenport, IA
Open Mic Night -One Library, 230 W. 3rd
Street Davenport, IA
Rick K & the Allnighters -Riverside Ca-
sino and Golf Resort, 3184 Highway 22
Riverside, IA
Salsa and Cumbia DJ Night -La Primavera,
601 15th St. Moline, IL
Salsa Dancing -Club Boulevard, 1801 10th
St. Moline, IL
Smooth Groove -Jumer’s Casino & Hotel, 777
Jumer Dr. Rock Island, IL
Southern Thunder Karaoke & DJ -Hollars
Bar and Grill, 4050 27th St Moline, IL
TPX: Tri-Polar XXXpress -Route 61 Bar &
Grill, 4320 N. Brady St. Davenport, IA
Wild Oatz -Purgatory’s Pub, 2104 State St
Bettendorf, IA
danika holmes @ The Redstone Room – November 20
SUNday
2010/11/21 (Sun) 21
Breille -The Hat Eatery & Pub, 1618 W. Locust
St. Davenport, IA
Destino (4pm) -First Presbyterian Church of
Davenport, 1702 Iowa St. Davenport, IA
Glenn Hickson (5:30pm) -O’Melia’s Sup-
per Club, 2900 Blackhawk Rd. Rock
Island, IL
Russ Reyman, Pianist (10am-2pm brunch
performance) -The Lodge Hotel, Spruce
Hills & Utica Ridge Bettendorf, IA
Shawn Pittman (6pm) - Karaoke Night
(9pm) -The Muddy Waters, 1708 State
St. Bettendorf, IA
The Avey Brothers -Rascals Rock Memora-
bilia Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
The Terry Hanson Ensemble (10am) -Brady
Street Chop House, Radisson QC Plaza
Hotel Davenport, IA
Third Sunday Jazz Series featuring Maggie
Brown (6pm) -The Redstone Room, 129
Main St Davenport, IA
Troy Harris, Pianist (11:30am) -Bass Street
Chop House, 1601 River Dr Moline, IL
monday
2010/11/22 (Mon) 22
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Open Mic w/ J. Knight -The Mill, 120 E
Burlington Iowa City, IA
True Blue Mondays Lunch w/ Ellis Kell
-Mojo’s (River Music Experience), 130 W
2nd St Davenport, IA
23
TUESDAY
2010/11/23 (Tue)
Buddy Olson (6pm) -Greenbriar Restaurant
and Lounge, 4506 27th St Moline, IL
Dance Party USA -Iowa City Yacht Club, 13
S Linn St Iowa City, IA
Glenn Hickson (5:30pm) -O’Melia’s Sup-
per Club, 2900 Blackhawk Rd. Rock
Island, IL
Illinois John Fever - Sam Knutson - Lucas
Benson -The Mill, 120 E Burlington
Iowa City, IA
Irish Idol II Karaoke w/ DJ Cash -Molly’s
Pub, 311 3rd St. Sherrard, IL
Get Your Gig or Venue
HIGHLIGHTED
Advertise in the Reader.
Call 563-324-0049
Karaoke Night -McManus Pub, 1401 7th
Ave Moline, IL
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Live Lunch w/ Mo (noon) -Mojo’s (River Music
Experience), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA
Open Mic w/ Jordan Danielsen -Bier
Stube Davenport, 2228 E 11th St
Davenport, IA
Open Mic w/ the Pena Brothers -Racer’s
Edge, 936 15th Ave East Moline, IL
The Chris & Wes Show -Rascals Rock Mem-
orabilia Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
wednesday
2010/11/24 (Wed)
24
BBI -Riverside Casino and Golf Resort, 3184
Highway 22 Riverside, IA
Cheese Pizza -RIBCO, 1815 2nd Ave. Rock
Island, IL
Dave Ellis and BackTrack (5pm) -The Mud-
dy Waters, 1708 State St. Bettendorf, IA
Drum Circle (6pm) -Teranga House of Af-
rica, 1706 3rd Ave. Rock Island, IL
Grasin’ Distrct -Martini’s on the Rock, 4619
34th St Rock Island, IL
Hi-Fi -Rieck’s Roadhouse, 916 Albany St.
Erie, IL
Jam Session -Iowa City Yacht Club, 13 S
Linn St Iowa City, IA
Jeff Miller (6pm) -G’s Riverfront Cafe, 102
S Main St Port Byron, IL
Just Chords -Kilkenny’s, 300 W. 3rd St.
Davenport, IA
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Keep Off The Grass -Blueport Junction,
6605 W River Dr Davenport, IA
Maylane - ieatmyfriends - Le Roy - Break-
up Art -River Music Experience, 129 Main
St Davenport, IA
NINE-1-1 -The Rusty Nail, 2606 W Locust
Davenport, IA
Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com
Open Mic Night -Mojo’s (River Music Experi-
ence), 130 W 2nd St Davenport, IA
Slough Buoys -Legends, 109 E Orange St
Geneseo, IL
Southern Thunder Karaoke & DJ -The
Torchlight Lounge, 1800 18th Ave East
Moline, IL
Stephen’s Green -Carriage Haus, 312 W 3rd
St Davenport, IA
The Burlington Street Bluegrass Band -
The Mill, 120 E Burlington Iowa City, IA
The Chris & Wes Show -Mound Street Land-
ing, 1029 Mound St. Davenport, IA
The Lovedogs -GB’s Sports Bar, 655 Main
St. New Liberty, IA
uneXpected -Van’s, 3333 Harrison St.
Davenport, IA
Wild Bill’s Rodeo Show featuring Billy
Peiffer -Rascals Rock Memorabilia Bar,
1414 15th St. Moline, IL
Wild Oatz -Purgatory’s Pub, 2104 State St
Bettendorf, IA
25
Thursday
2010/11/25 (Thu)
BBI -Riverside Casino and Golf Resort, 3184
Highway 22 Riverside, IA
Irie Soundsystem w/ DJ THC -QC Zone,
1516 5th Ave Moline, IL
Jason Carl -Creekside Bar and Grill, 3303
Brady St. Davenport, IA
Karaoke Night -The Old Stardust Sports
Bar, 1191 19th Street Moline, IL
Open Mic Night -The Dam View Inn, 410
2nd St Davenport, IA
Robbie Bahr -Uptown Neighborhood Bar
and Grill, 2340 Spruce Hills Dr. Bet-
tendorf, IA
The Steady Rollin’ Blues Band featuring
Jimmie Lee Adams -Rascals Rock Mem-
orabilia Bar, 1414 15th St. Moline, IL
Troy Harris, Pianist (6pm) -Red Crow Grille,
2504 53rd St. Bettendorf, IA
River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 18 No. 765 • November 11 - 23, 2010
23
 Business • Politics • Arts • Culture • Now You Know • RiverCitiesReader.com

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River Cities’ Reader • Vol. 17 No. 761 • September 16 - 29, 2010

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