It's a safe bet that most everyone is familiar with the heavily made-up shock rocker Alice Cooper, who brings his latest stage project, "The Psycho-Drama Tour," to Davenport's Adler Theatre on August 23.

Perhaps less familiar is the Alice Cooper who finds the time to play golf nearly every day - even while touring - and who hosts the Alice Cooper Celebrity Golf Am, now in its 11th year.

When was the last time a Quad Cities venue featured a performance that included a jazz band with a dancer? I have lived in the Quad Cities for 30 years and have never heard of anything like that happening here.

That will change on August 19 at the River Music Experience's Redstone Room, when acclaimed 27-year-old trumpet player Corey Wilkes and his Abstrakt Pulse band will conduct a workshop at 3 p.m. and a matinée performance at 6 p.m.

In his biography, Bettendorf native Tim Stopulos lists influences that range from Beethoven to Maroon 5, a bit of youthful overreaching that you might expect from a 23-year-old.

Yet there's a quote in the bio that strikes a chord, and puts Beethoven and Maroon 5 in a context that makes sense in light of his second album, The Long Drive Home. Music, Stopulos says, "definitely became an emotional outlet for me, but I also fell in love with the mathematical and logical side of the music as well."

Don Vappie knows about boring music.

In the late 1970s, boring music prompted him to sell most of his instruments and give up playing. And while some people consider traditional jazz dull, Vappie begs to differ.

"I got really bored when disco came out," the New Orleans native said last week, talking about his time in a Top 40 group. "I always remember when I quit the band - I was playing bass - I said, 'You could teach a chimpanzee to do this,' because it was so repetitious.