Kid Rock and that NAACP Award
Yesterday evening as planned, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) presented Metro Detroit music star Kid Rock with their “Great Expectations Award.” According to the NAACP, they chose Kid Rock (real name Robert Ritchie) for the exemplary work he’s done promoting Metro Detroit and bringing dollars to the city. When the…
Punk + Rap = Awesome: Waxgordon and Cold Men Young mash styles and melt faces
Blowout may be over and done with, but for two of the bands that played during the Thursday night line-up, it’s far from forgotten. Waxgordon – four big bald punk rockin’ dudes and Cold Men Young – four fast-as-lightning hip-hop mavens were the two stand outs for me that night, and I indicated in my…
Hoodwinked Too!: Hood vs. Evil
Hoodwinked Too!: Hood vs. Evil GRADE: D- A joyless and shabby waste of pixels that cynically slathers on ineffectual 3-D effects in order to squeeze a few extra bucks out of an audience desperate to give kiddies something to do on a rainy Saturday. Here’s some advice: Force the tots do extra math problems or…
Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)
Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires) GRADE: B Heartbeats is a bitterly funny French Canadian love triangle about people with magnificent hair. Marie (Monia Chokri) has immaculately controlled retro raven bangs, her gay BFF Francis (Xavier Dolan has an upturned mane reminiscent of Morrissey’s bed-head, and the object of their mutual affection Nicolas (Niels Schneider) has an…
Fast Five
Fast Five GRADE: B There’s check-your-brains-at-the-door and then there’s brain-dead. Fast Five, the improbable fifth sequel to The Fast and the Furious, falls somewhere between the two. Doubling down on Hollywood’s carbon footprint for the year, this high-octane exercise in stupidity and rock-’em-sock-’em car-fu officially heralds the summer blockbuster season. If slack-jawed macho posturing, sultry-eyed…
Eminem Makes History (Again)
If there’s a high-priced PR team behind Eminem right now their jobs probably don’t need to exist. The Detroit representative seems to be in the news every other day at this point for something he’s genuinely accomplished without any exaggeration or hype. After already becoming the first person to amass 30 million Facebook fans beating…
Esquire Magazine ‘Last Night In Detroit’ feature, Lightning Love in Billboard Battle of the Bands
For its annual songwriting challenge feature, Esquire Magazine gathered five musicians– Detroit’s own Brendan Benson and Ben Blackwell in addition to Dhani Harrison, Raphael Saadiq, and Dierks Bentley– in the Motor City for a fashion shoot for its May 2011 issue. Esquire also challenged the musicians to write a song inspired by the theme “Last…
New J Dilla “Geek Down” Video + Contest
The good folks at Stones Throw Records are currently running a contest encouraging people to create brand new video content for any song in their wide catalog. Everything from Jaylib to Mayer Hawthorne to MF DOOM and beyond is fair game and there’s a $1,000 cash prize going to whoever creates the best video. The…
What war has wrought
The cover story by News Editor Curt Guyette in last week’s Metro Times turned the spotlight on a particularly odious episode in the annals of the local law enforcement community, spelling out the terms of an unholy collusion between a paid narcotics informer and the Inkster Police Department, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and a…
The Real Deals – Readers’ Choice
Best Indie Women’s Clothing in Wayne County Best Indie Men’s Clothing in Wayne County Showtime 5708 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-875-9280; showtimedetroit.com Whether it’s clothes, shoes, jewelry or accessories, this Midtown mainstay provides something funky, classic, sexy, one-of-a-kind or style-making for your wardrobe. Accommodating tastes from punk to rock, funk to rap and whatever other sound…
Public Square – Staff Picks
Best Detroit Headline to Recycle "The Incredible Shrinking City" Monthly Detroit, July 1979 Some 32 years ago, writer Kirk Cheyfitz laid out the then-vexing problems of a city whose revenues and political clout mirrored a population decline "from a high of 1.85 million to less than 1.3 million today." The article reminded readers that the…
Cheat Code
Bulletstorm EPIC/EA Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows Bulletstorm was developed by EPIC games, the same team responsible for Gears of War. Knowing that, we can safely infer a few things about it: 1) it has grotesque yet lovely violence, 2) its foul language makes the characters sound even cooler, and 3) more grotesque yet…
The Real Deals – Staff Picks
Best Rocktitude Showtime Clothing’s Dan Tartarian 5708 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-875-9280 When Dan Tartarian opens his shop’s doors, he doesn’t wait long to see his first customer stroll in. Said customer’s usually a musician or is in some way tied to the city’s music community, or is a kind of sartorial strutter into a particular…
Spend the Night – Readers’ Choice
Best Club Night in Oakland County Best Bar for Under 30s Best Sexed-up Waitstaff Best Dance Club in the Suburbs Luna 1815 N. Main St., Royal Oak; 248-589-3344; lunaroyaloak.com Luna is famous for its cadre of fetching dancers, rightly priced drinks and nightly variety. Things get poppin’ mid-week with electro-pop Wednesdays, where MGMT will get…
Nutritional Value – Readers’ Choice
Best New Restaurant Cork Wine Pub 23810 Woodward Ave., Pleasant Ridge; 248-544-2675; corkwinepub.com Let wine flow freely — or at least cheaply — and people will come running. The early, explosive success of Cork Wine Pub proves as much. Opened just before Thanksgiving, the first-ever recipient of a liquor license in Pleasant Ridge has a…
The Sisters Judas
Throughout the mid-’00s, the Sisters Lucas were an anomaly of sorts in Detroit. Armed with autoharps and other acoustic instruments, Loretta and Julie Lucas would play Detroit venues alongside garage and punk rock bands and not seem out of place. Detroit has always been a city that appreciates eclecticism in its music, but with their…
Public Square – Readers’ Choice
Every year we ask: What more could there be to say? What could be new in the 25th anniversary edition of Best of Detroit, that hasn’t been said before. But then we print up the readers’ ballot and put a version online, and watch as the returns begin. Then we start free associating, opening our…
Nutritional Value – Staff Picks
Best Fine Dining Value Saltwater Inside the MGM Detroit Grand, 1777 Third St., Detroit; 313-465-1646 This up-market seafood spot offers plenty of opportunities for big winners at the casino to show off, such as caviar, Australian A-5 beef at $26 per ounce and Champagne at $1,996 by the magnum. But it offers luscious treats for…
Spend the Night – Staff Picks
Best candlelight creepy-crawly that connects Southfield to Charles Manson, Hollywood and the death of the ’60s Jay Sebring Gravesite Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, 25800 W. 10 Mile Rd., Southfield; 248-350-1900 It was America’s crime of the century, one that absolutely horrified the country, killed its innocence and any idea of peace-and-love utopia. It said: You’re not…
Playing it safe
Q: I’m a young heteroflexible guy who has been a "sugar baby" for a handful of wealthy older guys. I love it! I get money, I have fun being with them, and the guys seem to like having me around. The problem is that I just got with a new guy who is really great…
Waiting for Terry Jones
It was easy to find the Islamic Center of America when I turned off the Southfield Freeway service drive onto Ford Road at about 4:30 p.m. last Friday. Twenty or more police cars with lights flashing served as my GPS in the gray, rainy afternoon. Police cars blocked access to the area and officers directed…
Rubber
Rubber GRADE: C+ A killer tire with the ability to psychically explode its victim’s heads? Sure, why not? In for a meta-dime, in for a meta-dollar. Rubber is silly, self-reflexive, and oh-so arch. And for its first 40 minutes or so, it kind of sort of works (as much as a film about a murderous…
Times New Viking – Dancer Equired
Times New Viking – Dancer Equired Merge Merge’s announcement that Columbus fuzz-poppers Times New Viking’s fifth album would be recorded in an actual studio gave rise to nightmare visions of ugly cleanliness hampering the band’s cheery lo-fi sound. Happily, this is no tepid compromise — it’s a band discovering its gifts, slicing into gently sung,…
Motor City Five
Simple fact: There’s no shortage of ignorance in much of today’s popular rap. True fans of can argue the point all night, but we know what we hear. That’s a big part of why it’s refreshing to see 25-year-old social worker and emcee JYoung the General (born Jahshua Smith) release a series of EPs that…
Foreclosure fight
The Wayne County Board of Commissioners was supposed to hold a public hearing April 27, on Commissioner Martha Scott’s proposal seeking a moratorium on housing foreclosures in the county. But that hearing was canceled by Commission Chair Gary Woronchak, raising the ire of the group People Before Banks, according to Steve Babson, a leader of…
Dems: Gutless cowards
Throughout the state, horrified citizens are beginning to grasp what Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget cuts will really mean to them. They are going to get screwed. The poor and young and most vulnerable will be royally screwed. The rich, naturally, will be just fine. You might expect the Democrats, the party of the people, the…
Letters to the Editor
Nominal unity Robert H. Young’s letter about the American urban condition and Detroit’s in particular ("Divided We Fall," Letters to the Editor, April 13) hit the proverbial nerve. I recently entertained friends from Oxford at a tony Chinese restaurant near Grand Rapids. On the door was a bumper sticker with the usual "In God We…
Eminem, Mayer Hawthorne & Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Confirmed For Lollapalooza
After it was rumored a few months back that Eminem would grab a headlining slot at the 20th incarnation of Lollapalooza, it was made official at midnight, that Em, along with Foo Fighters, Muse, and Coldplay will headline the 3-day Chicago festival. Fellow Detroiter’s Mayer Hawthorne and The County and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. along…
