From the Vault Music Series

Before the hit reality TV show American Pickers brought fame to the region, the Quad Cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois were best known as the hometown of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, football great Roger Craig, as well as the radio broadcast beginnings of future president Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. American Pickers brought fame to the region, the Quad Cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois were best known as the hometown of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, football great Roger Craig, as well as the radio broadcast beginnings of future president Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. American Pickers brought fame to the region, the Quad Cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois were best known as the hometown of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, football great Roger Craig, as well as the radio broadcast beginnings of future president Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. American Pickers brought fame to the region, the Quad Cities of Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island in Illinois were best known as the hometown of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke, football great Roger Craig, as well as the radio broadcast beginnings of future president Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. Writer Chad V. Holtkamp began his own career with an entertainment column focused on the happenings of the local music scene. Between 1999 – 2005, his "Quad Cities Underground" column appeared monthly in The Dispatch and Rock Island Argus newspapers. The Dispatch and Rock Island Argus newspapers. The Dispatch and Rock Island Argus newspapers. The Dispatch and Rock Island Argus newspapers. As Y2K fizzled and the millennium safely turned, the local music scene in the Quad Cities proved fertile ground for a wide variety of musical styles. Everything from hardcore punk, country, rock and pop, to improvisational jazz and fusion was featured in the "Underground." Dive deep into the days when bands released physical CDs burned at home on Pentium-based Dells and candy-colored iMacs, back before the creation of YouTube and the iPhone, and even MySpace and Facebook. With feature stories on bands like Wicked Liz and the Bellyswirls, Intensity!, Bruised, Mommy's Little Monster, Dani Lynn Howe, Provoke, and The Angsted, relive the golden era of Napster and GeoCities homepages in Quad Cities Underground. Quad Cities Underground.Quad Cities Underground. Quad Cities Underground.Quad Cities Underground. Quad Cities Underground.Quad Cities Underground.Quad Cities Underground.

1994 was a magical year. From the highs of Woodstock '94 and the beginnings of the modern web to the lows of the death of Kurt Cobain and O.J. Simpson's freeway chase. Music was no different with the rise of Green Day, Oasis, and Korn. Writer Chad V. Holtkamp spent the Fall of 1994 as a music reviewer for The Northern Iowan, the college newspaper at the University of Northern Iowa. Spotlighting the famous—Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails, the not so famous—Tripmaster Monkey and Compulsion, to those in between—James, Soup Dragons, and Mojo Nixon, Chad scoured the underground for new releases to feature in a weekly music column, back in the day before the web made finding new music as easy as clicking a button. Check out the second release in the From the Vault Music Series with 1994.

When he was five years old, Chad V. Holtkamp declared he wanted to be a songwriter like John Denver. Like many things a child says, it was quickly replaced by some other occupation, like being a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. At seventeen, Chad wrote his first song. Over the course of the next dozen years, he went on to write many more sets of lyrics, along with a litany of poems and other ideas. From the yearning sadness of "Life is Precious" and "Someday" to the silly fun of "Summer Day" and "The Party," to the sweet seduction of "Blue Dress" and "Desire," Chad's writing explored relateable themes of love and loss, and sometimes, pure happiness. Check out Lyrics, Poems & Other Odd Bits, the third and final volume of the From the Vault Music Series, his collected works all in one place.