Music

MarchFourth!

The Redstone Room

Thursday, June 18, 7:30 p.m.

According to Iowa City's Little Village magazine, "Some mad scientist somewhere took a bunch of marching-band geeks who died in a bus crash outside his castle, reassembled their bodies, laid them out on a platform, zapped it with a lightning bolt, and brought them back to life as a monster, all the while cackling as he admired his creation."

That's author Yale Cohn's description of the high-energy, genre-defying musical powerhouses of MarchFourth!, who'll be bringing their traveling party to Davenport's Redstone Room on June 18. But your confusion is understandable if you thought that opening paragraph was actually meant for the What's Happenin' below.

ALOHA

On three separate occasions this past weekend, after mentioning that I'd seen Cameron Crowe's Aloha, I had friends or family members reply with some variant on "Ugh, how bad was it?" That's usually the response I get after telling people I just came back from the latest Happy Madison flick or Paranormal Activity: Yup, We're Still Churning These Out. But to hear that kind of pitying condolence regarding a new Crowe endeavor was troubling. Sure, the reviews were largely dreadful, and the previews leaned toward the achingly twee, and the movie's reputation in the hacked Sony e-mails ("the script is ridiculous") didn't help matters. Beyond all that, though, is the collective disappointment of Vanilla Sky, Elizabethtown, and We Bought a Zoo so pervasive and infuriating that it overwhelms the memory of Say Anything ... , Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous?

Music

Bruce Katz

The Muddy Waters

Saturday, June 6, 8:30 p.m.

Good news, gang: Summer is fast approaching! As opposed to previous summers, however, we'll have to wait a little longer for this year's Mississippi Valley Blues Festival, the traditional Fourth-of-July-weekend event that's now a Labor-Day-weekend event.

But fret not, blues fans! The Mississippi Valley Blues Society is ready to ease your impatience with a bunch of summertime concerts held at The Muddy Waters in Bettendorf, beginning with the June 6 engagement featuring Bruce Katz. A four-time Blues Music Award nominee for Pinetop Perkins Piano Player of the Year, the pianist, organist, and bass guitarist has been described by JazzTimes magazine as "a multi-directional cat with a lot of music inside him." Much like my parents' cat, but you really don't wanna know what's inside him.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

Tom Hardy plays the title character in Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller's continuation-slash-reboot of his legendary post-apocalyptic action series that began in 1979, and a movie boasting a central figure who might be the most powerful, intimidating, and deeply empathetic ass-kicker of 21st Century cinema. It's not Hardy, but he's pretty great, too.