I am proud to say that I am from Ames. Everywhere we go on tour, people ask where we are from and it is a pleasure to tell them about our small but vibrant underground music scene in Ames. A touring band is a group of traveling ambassadors who leave behind an impression of their [...]

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We played three shows in the great state of Texas and each had its unique charms. The first show was in Houston. We played in a big open bar called Walter’s on Washington, which appears to be primarily a venue for metal shows and which had far and away the worst-smelling men’s bathrooms of the [...]

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Birmingham gave us our second opportunity to see a television studio. Leslie and the Ly’s were booked to play live on the noon news at the local Fox affiliate and they invited us to attend the filming. When we arrived, the ladies were already backstage putting on their gold and silver spandex costumes and prepping [...]

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D.C. gave us some of our best moments and also one of our only bad moments. But the good parts were very good. When we arrived in the city we met up with our friend Tushar, a longtime friend and Ames Progressive collaborator, who recently moved to D.C. to work as an assistant producer for [...]

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We played at the Mercury Lounge in New York City last Friday night and it was the first sold out show of the tour. Knowing that the show was sold out made us jittery all day. The excitement was enhanced by the general WOW of arriving in New York, which is a raw shot of [...]

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One of the best parts of touring is the people you meet. There is no way to predict or anticipate who you may encounter. The five of us in Christopher the Conquered have been sleeping on the floors of generous local folks every night. We only get small, one-night glimpses of the cities we play [...]

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We played in Columbus, Ohio on Valentines Day at a bar called The Summit. The venue is attached to - and owned by the same people as - a hot dog restaurant called Extreme Wieners, which amused us more than it should, considering that we are adults. I had my picture taken in front of [...]

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The first night of the tour took us to The Subterranean, a nice club in Chicago. The venue is has three levels and the top level has a big, balconied opening in the middle so that people can look down on the stage, which is on the second level. The show’s promoter, Darren, told us [...]

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Yesterday in Council Bluffs, the Board of Pharmacy examiners held their final of four hearings on the medical value of marijuana. A final decision for the Statehouse is expected by the time the legislature reconvenes in January. According to Susan Frey, the board’s vice chair, via Radio Iowa:
“We have received copious amounts of information and [...]

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Illustration: Sean Delonas/New York Post

In today’s New York Post, a tabloid rag owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the above-pictured cartoon ran. Naturally, this sparked allegations of racist intent (Obama as the chimp) and condemnation by Al Sharpton, who told the AP the image is “troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans [...]

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