Miles outside the funk
Two big multidisc reissues capture the constantly shifting sounds of Miles Davis, trumpeting jazz explorer.
Award winner to take helm
Welcome Metro Times’ new editor, Jeremy Voas, an award-winning veteran who’s excited about coming to Detroit.
All in the name of security
Attacks on freedom don’t from inside the beltway.…
Terror & trauma: New pain for past victims
Since Sept. 11, a community clinic attempts to help past victims deal with new pain.
Of Amos & men
From Eminem to Neil Young, Tori Amos craws inside the creative birth canals of 12 male songwriters, singing their words to make her own point.
What’s that sore?
Q: My new girlfriend has oral herpes. She got it by going down on a guy who didn’t tell her he had it. Can I contract this disease by kissing her, French or otherwise? Can I get it through vaginal or anal intercourse if she only has it in her mouth? A: More than half…
Another quart fer ya
That classic, crazy rock music journal Creem is on its way back (and boy, do we need it)!
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): People are drawn to you now because they want to be resuscitated, incited, even thunderstruck. They secretly hope you’ll be the strong, tasty medicine they’re half-afraid of. They want you to be like a time-release miracle drug that goes on working long after they’ve swallowed you whole. So what would you…
Letters to the Editor
Changing landscapes Jack Lessenberry, you wrote a great column ("The aftermath of terror," Metro Times, Sept. 19-25). They say that a sign of a man’s intelligence his how much his opinions agree with your own. You must be one very smart guy. I agree that the political landscape has changed in ways we could never…
Freep doublespeak
Free Press publishes conflicting anthrax reports….
Paradime
Few are more widely respected in Detroit’s hip-hop underground than Paradime, who has risen from the humblest of beginnings to become one of the most recognizable figures on the local scene. By his own merits, he’s easily able to step out of the tall shadows of Slim Shady and Kid Rock to enjoy a much…
Packaging princesses
Mariah Carey’s Glitter and Barbie and the Nutcracker: Two multimillion-dollar, sparkly showcases on film for two perfect girl toys.
Terror & trauma: The national quilt frays
Local Arab-Americans struggle to come to terms with fear and misplaced shame about their heritage.
Off with their heads
Someone has suggested we give Osama bin Laden a sex-change operation. Actually, there are more than a few guys who would benefit from walking a mile in someone else’s vagina.
Land of the rising son
It seems superspawn singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright can do no wrong.
Character studies: Johnny Depp
From Hell provides another weird-assed role for Johnny Depp, expatriate actor and reluctant movie star.
Character studies: The Hughes Brothers
The Hughes brothers are at it again — their new film From Hell exhibits the Detroit-born twins’ contradictory (and sometimes violent) impulses.
Bombs and bowling
Bombs were dropping on Afghanistan, and the bowling alley was rockin’ without missing a beat …. Knocking down pins is much easier to handle than the concept of blowing up people.
We’d better start asking
Despite most Americans’ approval of our President and the bombing of Afghanistan, there are a number of very important questions few of us, including most of the media, are asking.
Moshers, gothbillies & other characters
Moshing and sweating during daylight hours with Sick of It All, Dropkick Murphys and more … Deviant souls at Labyrinth … & Not-to-miss future events at the detroit contemporary and the new Cavern Club downtown.
Don’t blame Cokie
Find the White Stripes on your TV, computer and live-in-person … plus, local Halloween events to fill your calendar, including indie-rock Draculas dancing to Mr. Gold Soundz, the infamous Haunted Tube, and scads of other spookilicious sounds.
Take this news and shove it
Local Arab-Americans’ vain attempt to change negative media images….
Liberty on the rocks
Congressmen complain about fast-track legislation restricting our civil liberties….
Happy bombs
Air-dropped food packets for Afghans are a major PR ploy….
You go, Ghoul
Our favorite weirdo, the Ghoul finally returns to the airwaves in the Motor City (thanks to Metro Times?).
Crazy Taxi 2
It’s difficult to criticize a game that embraces the coin-op experience, designed to thrill players on a single-serving, quarter-based crux. But even in all its fast-paced ferocity, “Crazy Taxi 2” landed on consoles rather than in the arcade circuit. And playing in hour-long super-chunks is like juggling fire — you run the risk of multiple…
Adema
After being bounced around in a bidding war among major labels for months, Adema finally saw the smoke clear, emerging as a band with not only a contract, but also the buzz of a much-awaited debut album. Springing from Bakersfield, Calif., Marky Chavez, Mike Ransom, Tim Fluckey, Dave DeRoo and Kris Kohls have put together…
New Problems
Quenching anticipation after her two-song appetizer on a scrumptious split EP with Low this summer, k. (aka Karla Schickele of Ida and Beekeeper) drops off a stoned soul picnic of 12 more tiny explosions with her solo full-length debut, New Problems. The 18-second opener, cutely named “*,” hints at an experimental, yet playful (perhaps even…
Earliest Worlds
In her latest major collection of poems, hefty and impressive, Eleni Sikelianos proves once and for all, if anyone is still wondering, that poetry is a shortcut to knowing the world. Like a solitary and exalted paleontologist, Sikelianos sings the faint traceries of matter, tunnels through earth’s chemical envelope, an ear to the vast rumblings…
Let It Come Down
Weeping over the belated discovery that Jason Pierce’s lyrical characters have always been storefront, recovered drug addict, make-sure-you-drop-a-fiver-into-the-church-fund preachers instead of hopelessly honest rock saints, spilling their guts on rock’s velvety altar, is as useless as it is misguided. We should instead all relish the legitimate honesty of Let It Come Down’s message: Rock, devotion…
Inside Out
This is pianist Jarrett’s famous “standards” trio, with Gary Peacock, bass and Jack DeJohnette, drums, recorded live in 2000 and, for the most part, eschewing golden-age pop songs for long, free-form improvisations. This might seem like a daunting prospect in other hands, but Jarrett, typically, makes it into easy and even pleasant listening. The 22-minute-plus…
Abstract Afro Lounge III
The lounge unites various voices by the drum most associated with black dance ancestries. Sizzling percussive strokes initiate foreign tongues in unison for Louie “Balo” Guzman’s line of dancers. Hot knocking kettles and repeated chants are the ingredients inside the first course of Nitegrooves’ third Afro-diasporic/disiac body tome. Bright energy reigns through each of the…
Come Clean
The true test of a band is how good it sounds live. The precision and power of the chords, the flowing rhythm of the bass, the drummer who understands there is more to playing than mezzo forte, the singer who communicates all this noise into something coherent and exciting, keeps the audience transfixed. This is…
Brought to you by …
Most Americans don’t pay much attention to foundations. We think of them as nice organizations that keep the good shows coming on public TV and radio, help the symphony and the zoo and fund the search for the cure of particularly nefarious diseases or learning disabilities. When we think foundations, we mostly have warm fuzzy…
Ain’t Gonna Wash Your Dirty Clothes
Sweet Claudette must have some of the best titles for blues songs in this city. On this, her second CD — her first was Linament and Collard Greens — Claudette has put together 10 original tunes, several of which are particularly strong and give evidence of what the lady can do when she’s at her…
Pigskin politics
Documentaries are often about underdogs and nonconformists, which is why this portrait of Ohio’s high-school football powerhouse, the Massillon Tigers, is a remarkable anomaly. Writer-director-producer Kenneth A. Carlson, a Massillon native, has fashioned a remarkably clear-eyed depiction of jock culture and societal groupthink.
Comic truths
Before the Sept. 11 attack, I wrote a review of Joseph Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, a journalistic account — in comic book form — about the war in Bosnia, a region of the former Yugoslavia. And since the world has changed, I’ve had to revise this review as well. When reading Sacco’s book — and…
Come and See
Elem Klimov’s truly great 1985 film takes place in 1943 Byelorussia when Nazi troops were engaging in systematic genocide under the guise of rooting out partisans and spies. Klimov leads us to the question of how far would we go to destroy evil, how far can we go before we ourselves are lost?
Mulholland Drive
David Lynch’s latest comes as a welcome step backward, a mostly unforced stretch of mysterioso recalling his earlier work as it incorporates some of the jokey gloom of the "Twin Peaks" series and a bit of the lugubriousness that served The Straight Story so well — though the last 20 minutes are a rush of…
Bandits
A romance of three complex neurotics — an odd couple of bank robbers and a housewife — Bandits satirizes our love affair with crime and frames its love triangle with a parody of the reality TV show "America’s Most Wanted" — with Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchett.
My First Mister
Good actors giving solid, realistic performances can often make a mediocre film better than it has any right to be. In Christine Lahti’s directorial debut, intelligent performers Leelee Sobieski and Albert Brooks embrace not the glib, melodramatic script from sitcom writer Jill Franklin but dig deep to touch the inner lives of their isolated characters.
