Cover Story
Underwater
Let’s call it the "B" word. The word that dare not be uttered. Detroit’s ongoing financial crisis has created a vocabulary of decline. There are the widespread layoffs of workers, with severe pay cuts and increased health care costs for those who remain. Meanwhile, residents are forced to endure the consequences of deteriorating city…
City Slang: Katie Grace at Smalls
On Sunday evening, there was perhaps 20 people inside Smalls in Hamtramck to see Arizona band Tramps & Thieves, and some of those people seemed to be the band’s family. Still, that band put on a sound if slightly dull show later in the evening. Far better was our own Katie Grace who, armed with…
Waffles Spreads Wings Over Detroit
Days blurring by now, summer fading, fast as those hairy-shouldered shufflers I pass-by on bike, slaloming through suburban shoppers, whizzing and winding my way across bumpy, beer-stained sidewalk slabs one day to one day to the other day and before I could know it, it’s time again for that revolting circus of smog-burping chrome, deep-fried…
City Slang: Native Signal at the New Way
Native Signal played the New Way in Ferndale Saturday night, on a SummerFest bill with the likes of the awesome Electric Corpse and Cobra Frank. While watching, I learned a couple of things: 1. Matt from Electric Corpse is pretty good at pool, but he and his brother were still beaten by myself and my…
City Slang: The Curmudgeons to play Sinbads
The Curmudgeons, the super-group featuring Jackson Smith, Vinnie Dombroski, Chef Chris, James Cloyd Jr., Erich Goebel and Dylan Dunbar, will perform together for one night only at Sinbad’s in Detroit on August 25. Cover is $10. “This will truly be an exciting and fun night of music,” explains The Curmudgeons’ Jackson Smith. “We’ll be trading…
City Slang: Ethan Daniel Davidson’s Silvertooth coming in September
Local singer/songwriter Ethan Daniel Davidson has a new album, Silvertooth coming out on September 11. The record is co-produced by Warren Defever and Gretchen Gonzalez Davidson. Not only that, but Ethan will be giving the album away for free at his shows on CD, LP and cassette formats, or it can be downloaded for free…
Weekend Hit List
Friday 10th AK, SA the Abolitionist It’s a hip-hop double bill as Ann Arbor locals AK and S.A. the Abolitionist team up to bring the tight rhymes and booming beats, not to mention their initials, to the double-A. S.A. is a particularly… [READ MORE] The Strange Interesting little bill, this. Brent McKay’s the Strange is an…
The Bourne Legacy
The Bourne Legacy| B- You don’t leave nearly a billion dollars on the table, even if Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy, Bourne Ultimatum) refuse to return for another installment of your highly lucrative action trilogy. The Bourne Legacy is less a reboot and more a sequel to the original franchise, putting the…
The Campaign
The Campaign| B Director: Jay Roach. Screenplay: Chris Henchy, Shawn Harwell. Starring: Will Ferrell, Zach Galifinakis, Jason Sudekais. Rated: R. Running time: 85 minutes. The Campaign might just be the movie we deserve in this dire election cycle: It’s cynical, vulgar, mean-spirited, weirdly familiar and yet often hysterical. It is ostensibly just a big, dumb…
City Slang: Rogue Satellites presents Daytripper series
This Saturday, Corktown Studios along with resident band, electro-popsters the Rogue Satellites, will present the first in a new monthly series of daytime shows. Along with the Rogues, the Philter will be performing. The music will start at 3 p.m. And end around 5 p.m. “The Philter is an indie surf trio (sometimes duo) with…
Frütstock 2012
Legendary 60’s band The Früt are whipping out their instruments once again for one more yearly reunion show. The obscure rock legends opened for countless bands at the Grande Ballroom (You remember that, right?) and also set the stage for the Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968. Back in the day, the rockers covered old rock…
Colin Hubbell Ride this Saturday — and more cycling events ahead
The annual Collin Hubbell ride is held in honor of the late Detroit advocate, known as a lover of all things Motown. To continue the work Hubbell did for the city, funds from the ride benefit the Colin Hubbell Fund, which provides grants to projects and businesses that contribute to the physical infrastructure and community…
City Slang: Battlecross with new video
Detroit power metallers Battlecross have unveiled a new video for the single “Kaleb” on Bloody-Disgusting.com. See the video here. “Kaleb” is the one song on the album that I’m the most proud of because I wrote it about my son,” states vocalist Kyle “Gumby” Gunther. “To have this be the track that Ryan used is…
Why Hollywood should stop Philip K. Dicking around
It’s official: Hollywood needs to give the Philip K. Dick adaptations a rest. Really. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourselves. The Total Recall remake starring Colin Farrell (from the short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”) got a batarang, right in its face — audiences either chose to see The Dark Knight Rises for a…
Free associating with Sixto Rodriguez
The vast rock ‘n’ roll graveyard is stacked high with the dusty bones of worthy artists who’ve been overlooked, exploited, rejected, mistreated, embraced then forgotten — or just outright ripped off. Few of those artists, though, have a story to match that of Sixto Rodriguez, now on screens across the country in the movie Searching…
Food Stuff
Local hero When most people hear of a James Beard Award, it conjures images of four-star cuisine and toque-wearing chefs. Which is why we were surprised to hear that Malik Yakini, executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, has received a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award. Instead of highfalutin cuisine, this honor…
Searching for Sugar Man
Searching for Sugar Man| B+ The setting is a post-riot, Nixon-era Detroit churning through the early stages of urban erosion, where a thoughtful young folk rocker named Sixto Rodriguez slugs it out playing gigs in flea-bitten dive bars. He manages to land a deal with a record label, and crafts a pair of lyrically edgy,…
We’ve been there
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Al-Ameer 12710 W. Warren Ave., Dearborn; 313-582-8185; 27346 Ford Rd., Dearborn Heights; 313-565-9600; $: As at many Middle Eastern restaurants, there are far too many choices at Al-Ameer for any but the most faithful visitor to do justice to. Besides 20 "main entrées," there are 20 "house favorites" and 15 "special…
Joel Landy’s Detroit
The first time I saw Joel Landy I wondered if he had any trouble getting admitted to the restaurant he was sitting in. This was at Atlas, a swanky bistro on Woodward Avenue, where booming Midtown meets the Cass Corridor. Landy was Corridor, to the max. His hair was rumpled. His eyes were bleary. He…
Letters to the Editor
Agreed about Allen It was so refreshing to read Jeff Meyers’s review of To Rome with Love (July 11). I strongly agree that Woody Allen has become a critically unassailable filmmaker whose best works are, in many instances, behind him. To me he’s no longer particularly funny or a sharp social critic, and in his…
On the (rock ‘n’ roll) road
The Sights’ homecoming and Left Over Right album release party with the Hard Lessons and Katie Grace is 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 11, at the Magic Stick, 4120 Woodward Ave., Detroit. It’s a high time for the Sights. Eddie Baranek and his current companions — Jarrod Champion (piano), Skip Denome (drums), Kyle Schanta (bass), Dean…
Collective corrective
Wiggle & Jam It Series (Part II) with the Walking Beat, the Hounds Below, and Mick Bassett is Tuesday, Aug. 14, at PJ’s Lager House, 1254 Michigan Ave., Detroit; 313-961-4668; pjslagerhouse.com Just a week before his birthday Jesse Shepherd-Bates was getting disillusioned. Some friends joked that the characteristically enthusiastic Woodbridge-based singer-songwriter-bassist-guitarist was "retiring" from…
Beyond St. Patrick’s Day
Bill Grogan’s Goat plays Small’s on Saturday, Aug. 11, with the Streetwalking Cheetahs and Coven 13, at 10339 Conant, Hamtramck; 313-873-1117. The Second Wind album is out now via Beagletone Records. The problem that faces most Irish- and Celtic-themed bands outside of, well, Ireland and Scotland (and Boston) is that, outside of the one week…
Eastern comfort
Ellie’s Grill 2033 Coolidge Hwy., Berkley 248-691-4441 Handicap accessible Entrées $9.95-$12.75 Ellie’s was first recommended to me by former MT reviewer Elissa Karg, more than four years ago. She called it a "hole in the wall," according to my notes, which is not really accurate: It’s a small neighborhood establishment but it’s cheerful and spanking-clean.…
Putting DEA on the defensive
This might be the big one for medical marijuana and marijuana legalization advocates. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has agreed to hear Americans for Safe Access vs. Drug Enforcement Administration, which challenges the federal classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug. The Schedule I classification is one of the biggest…
Hope Springs
Hope Springs| C- A top-notch cast can polish even the ugliest turd into something appealing, and though Hope Springs isn’t quite as awful as all that, it does demonstrate just how much Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell can do with a predictable, cliché-ridden script. Married for 31 years, Kay (Streep) and Arnold…
Johnnie Bassett (1935-2012)
Detroit’s music scene lost another connection to its past on Saturday with death of Johnnie Bassett, a blues eminence rooted in the era of Fortune Records and such legendary spots as the Frolic Showbar. The singer-guitarist-frontman died at St. John Hospital in Grosse Pointe, losing a battle with cancer that had hospitalized him about three…
Daily questions
Dear readers: I’m on vacation for the next two weeks. This week’s column features three recent Savage Love Letters of the Day. (The SLLOTD goes out to folks who have the Savage Love app for iPhone and Android.) I hope everyone is having a great summer, and I’ll see you in two weeks. —Dan …
Left Over Right – 8.11.12
Eddie Baranek always gets asked to look-back on all the album’s he’s made whenever a new one (or, just, the next one) comes out. He calls albums “bookmarks” and shrugs off the otherwise remarkable appraisal that The Sights, the songs he’s written for/with the band, the albums they’ve recorded, the more-than-a-dozen-collaborators he’s encountered and the…
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…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 31: Europa!
We’re somewhere in the state of Washington. It’s not important exactly where; no, the important thing is that Jerry Sprinter is heading east: home. With Jerry tilted in this direction many thoughts come over me. But first, Jarrod and I witnessed one of the most beautiful interactions between men. Shades was driving and asked Skip,…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 30: Blood Spills in Vegas
We’ve just loaded into the East End in Portland and the group has scattered. Shades mentioned getting lost with a friend of his, and I am not sure on the other’s whereabouts (nor do I really care). With almost three weeks into this leg, quiet time is a priority. After the great Red Rocks gig…
