Matt Grimm and the Red Smear

Iowa City native Matt Grimm hates a lot of things — HMOs, corporate music and sterile suburbia, for starters. (He shares both rage and a song title, "Kill the Poor," with the Dead Kennedys.) Still, with echoes of his last band, the Hangdogs (potent but less angry roots rockers), still lingering, his protests march down dusty rural roads. Even while promoting frantic sexual activity (something he doesn't hate) as a way to get through the day, Grimm suggests consummation in abandoned picnic areas, just off the blue highways. In a death-defying feat of linguistics, Grimm's Red Smear tag winds up working as both a roadkill-possum reference and a defiant leftist banner waving in the Midwestern breeze.