Sometimes the world coughs up a few Christmas-themed gems for the freaks out there – the ones looking for a not-so-Silent Night among the thorns of the wreath, the ones for whom the heralding angels have no fanfares. Let’s take a look at some Christmas tunes fit for those who can’t stand the institution of Christmas music.

With the holidays looming and entertainment options limited, a Quad Cities music promoter has put together a special, free streaming event featuring 11 acts and 11 businesses. With the intention of "celebrating the beautiful originality and talent of the Quad Cities music scene," The Festivus Show is a "two-day holiday extravaganza," set to run on December 26 and 27 and billed as “a fun and immersive journey.”

It feels gauche to compile a year-end list of music in 2020, a year in which the daily conditions of the music industry suffered a pandemic-borne cataclysm and the future of live music was subsumed into a haze of drive-in concerts and illicit plague raves. Time dilation made sure that this year felt like five years in one, and any music released before March must, by necessity, slot into some other temporal category entirely.

Sorrow struck the Quad Cities and the metal world on November 21 with the news of the passing of John Hopkins. A native of Oquawka, Illinois, a small town about an hour from the QC, Hopkins rose from the soundboard at Gabe's in Iowa City to become a highly sought-after sound engineer, front-of-house man, and tour manager for such doom metal and heavy rock giants as Sleep, the Melvins, Corrosion of Conformity, Neurosis, Weedeater, Boris, and Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats.