Update: Roots of Occupy: Madagascar? Kevin Bacon? The Muppets?
Update No. 3: Wait, wait, wait. Blame those commie Muppets: “How ‘The Muppets’ made Occupy Wall Street”; “Fox Host Says Muppets Are Brainwashing Children.” Update No. 2: Here’s a take on the roots of the movement from this week’s issue of The New Yorker, with no mention of Kevin Bacon or the Kremlin. Coverup? The…
Remembering Lyman Woodard, celebrating with Doug Halladay
In our recent Holiday Gift Guide we tried to pull your coattails to the live Lyman Woodard Organization Orchestra (Uuquipleu), which captured the band’s exuberant March 3, 2010, concert. Now the group is reconvening to perform live again in celebration of the live recording. (That’s the kind of circular thinking we can get behind). The…
City Slang: The Orbitsuns get their bingo wings
Cow-punks the Orbitsuns, in association with On the Rocks Detroit, will be bringing “Drunken Bingo” to the New Way in Ferndale from Friday, December 30. The BB Owens Experience will also perform, and cover is $5. According to a statement, “Once a month, On the Rocks Detroit hosts pub style Bingo with The Orbitsuns at…
City Slang: ICP show their Big Ballas
The Insane Clown Posse will be damned before they waste an opportunity for some good old fashioned lewd wordplay. In that spirit, they are preparing for their Big Ballas X-Mas Party. The event takes place at St. Andrew’s Hall on December 17 from 8 p.m. with a $15 cover. ICP, Twiztid, ABK, Blaze Ya Dead…
LEAPing into trouble: When cops challenge pot laws
One of the most read MT articles of recent months has been Larry Gabriel’s Nov. 2 Higher Ground column: “Top cop changes his mind: ‘Ike’ McKinnon says it’s time to take a public stance.” The column details former Detroit police chief Isaiah “Ike” McKinnon’s growing doubts about the criminalization of marijuana smokers — and his…
City Slang: Whitey Morgan at the Bag
Outlaw country boys Whitey Morgan & the 78’s will be playing at the Magic Bag in Ferndale on New Year’s Eve. That’s a hell of a way to welcome in 2012. According to the release, “Since the release of their first album Honky Tonks and Cheap Motels, Whitey and the band have revived a forgotten…
City Slang: Mayaeni at the Front
Local singer / songwriter Mayaeni will be performing at the Berkley Front on December 22. However, it won’t be an ordinary show. According to the main lady herself, “The show is December 22nd at the Berkley Front 9pm. It’s called HEART |Hear Art| a night combining live music and art. Pato Margetic is also on…
TLC’s ‘All-American Muslim,’ Shot in Dearborn, Getting Attacked on Multiple Fronts
Only halfway into its inaugural eight-episode season, the set-in-Dearborn national reality series All-American Muslim on The Learning Channel (TLC) already is stirring up its own unique jihad. On Wednesday, Nov. 30, a Los Angeles production company called Visionaire Media filed a lawsuit against TLC, alleging the network stole the idea it pitched them for an…
City Slang: Detroit’s youngest rocker
City Slang has always been and will always be about Detroit music, but please forgive me a moment of self-indulgence. On November 23 at 2:21 p.m., my son, Dylan Edward Callwood, was born. Both Dylan and my wife, Toni, are healthy, well and strong. He is, quite frankly, perfect. I know all parents say that,…
Phat Kat’s New Album Teaser
Metro Times pot issue cover star Phat Kat is gearing up to release a new record in the coming months. In order to drum up support, he promises to release music and videos on a consistent basis to make sure that his brand of grounded yet Detroit flashy style of hip-hop stays on people’s minds.…
City Slang: “Steal This Record” revisited
Steal This Record gets a bad rap amongst Suicide Machines fans. Apparently, hardcore (no pun intended) followers believe that, by this point in the band’s career (2001), the Machines had been polluted by Vans Warped Tours, and record label pressure, abandoning the original hardcore punk / ska sound in favor of something more pop-punk. All…
Hive mind
The Beehive Recording Company About 200 folks, dressed to the nines in classic finery, gathered in the rental hall wing of the Irish-American club, the Gaelic League, a couple weeks ago to dance, drink, gab and otherwise make merry with an all-star revue of Detroit’s independent music scene’s finest. These weren’t Williamsburg-style, trust-funded…
Sisyphus & the incinerator
Following last week’s decision by the Detroit City Council to give $4.1 million in state brownfield tax credits to the owners of Detroit’s waste-to-energy incinerator, we here at the Hits decided that an image of Sisyphus — condemned by the Greek gods to forever roll a boulder uphill only to have it roll back down…
Week points
Whatever happened to the made-for-TV movie? In the days when Archie Bunker and Marcus Welby ruled the air, the original, one-off production starring slightly faded "household name" actors was as much a television essential as today’s infomercial. Every major network had a "Movie of the Week" franchise — some more than one — in the…
Letters to the Editor
Low blow? Even though I sometimes disagree with Jack Lessenberry’s views, I always turn to his column first when I pick up the Metro Times because it’s consistently clear, informative and thought-provoking. However, when I got to the last paragraph of "More of Matty’s Lies" (Nov. 9), I was surprised and dismayed to read the…
Stuffed for the holidays
Q: I’m 26, straight and male. I consider myself a socially progressive person, have been a vocal supporter of LGBT issues since high school, and was president of my college Gay-Straight Alliance. Here’s my issue: I fully support the trans community. I have numerous friends in varying states of transition and I’m 100 percent behind…
Food Stuff
Prohibition is over! For 13 years, from 1920 to 1933, the United States forbade the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcoholic beverages. And Detroiters reacted to the ban the same way they had to similar legislative bans in the 19th century: They cheerfully flouted it. Detroit newspaper editor Malcolm Bingay once wrote of Detroit in…
7 Inches Of Pleasure
Johnny Ill Band In the Wintertime X! Records Local atonal pop-punks quash the superficial cheer of winter wonderland, but offset any cabin fever blues with subtle xylophone chimes and buzzy organs. It’s a refreshing sip of bitter tea. Go to x-recs.com. Belle Ghoul Neighborhood FiveThreeDialTone Records The songs of the two members…
Bloodrock 2 (1970)
Despite being a pretty good rawk band from Fort Worth, the only reason anyone would plunk down blood money on a thrift-store counter for this album today is "D.O.A." For those of you who said, "Cool, Death of Auto-Tune,’" please leave the room now. For the uninitiated, this isn’t a song about vocoder overload but…
Northern Lights’ stylish weekday dining
Northern Lights Lounge 660 W. Baltimore St., Detroit 313-873-1739 Handicap accessible Prices: $6.50-$10.95 Though many MT readers may be familiar with New Center’s Northern Lights Lounge as a stylish bar and performance venue, for several years the nightspot has kept its kitchen open Monday through Friday in a bid for Detroit’s weekday lunch and…
Help wanted
She was desperate. She had no job, and her boyfriend’s small paycheck was barely enough to pay for everything. They’d sold the TV, and the couch they were sitting on was probably next to go. One night, the couple was going over their bills, projecting a budget through the rest of the year, and after…
Anatomy of a smear
What do you have in common with the rat I saw the other day, running under a trash bin behind a grocery store? Well, my guess is that you like to eat, are capable of fear and at some point in your life have wanted sex. Think about that, and you understand the mentality of…
Country strong
I have never liked polished, mainstream country music. Outlaw country, the whiskey-besotted truth-telling poured out by Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Tony Joe White and, closer to home and more recently, Whitey Morgan, the Orbitsuns and Doop, I can’t get enough of. But when the twang’s gone, when the dirty jeans and workaday beards…
Ron Paul says stop the war; Michigan debates strategy
Last week on CNN, Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said of the War on Drugs: "I think that’s another war we ought to cancel. Because it’s to nobody’s benefit. And that’s where the violence is coming from." When asked to clarify his statement, Paul said, "I think the federal War on Drugs…
Crank
Zola Jesus Conatus Sacred Bones 2 Stars Riffing: High-minded, ultra-serious third LP from Russian-Wisconsinite goth Nikia Danilova. Ponderous for long stretches, it works best when a synthpop beat is allowed, as on the fun "Seekir." Reference points: Baroque chanteuse pop — lots of disaffected oversinging — bordering on New Age, occasionally easy to mistake for…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
Danny Brown’s “Blunt After Blunt” Shows an Artistic Shift
If there’s one area that Danny Brown has artfully mastered about his own branding it’s that staying consistently bizarre works. He’s being entirely himself while borrowing the most magnetic attributes of ODB, Kool Keith, 2 Live Crew, Too $hort and even a comedian like Andrew Dice Clay as he combines humor, vulgarity and oddity to…
