Passover
Among the bands vying for MVP status at South By Southwest this past March was Austin’s own Black Angels, performing six shows over the course of four days, including one memorable gig where Brian Jonestown Massacre guru Anton Newcombe jumped onstage. Each time out, the group’s heavy-duty fuzz-drone assault proved primally thrilling, and you’ll get…
Proactive
Park it — What better way to celebrate Earth Day than running around a park? Participants in the Sierra Club’s Annual Walk or Run can chose between a four-mile jog or two-mile walk around scenic Kent Lake on Saturday, April 22. The $25 registration fee benefits environmental education programs in Oakland County. Registration starts at…
Can
Purporting to offer viewers “All things Can,” this exhaustive — and exhausting — 2-disc set culls together every bit of footage you could ever want and a bunch you may not. Can is one of those legendary bands, like the Fall after them, that all hipsters love because they broke all the rules, even if…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
So I’m sitting up in the press box at Cobo Hall, watching the mat shenanigans below, when all of a sudden I hear a familiar voice over the deafening din of Trips’ ramp music. "Shine, mistah?" I look over at Nubbin the shoeshine boy, who’s professionally eyeing my badly scuffed wingtips with withering distain. Caught,…
My Flame Burns Blue
When Rhino bundled every album of Elvis Costello’s entire catalog with a bonus disc that collected up every conceivable outtake, b-side, demo and live cut, it left even diehard fans who followed Elvis through every genre jump with the feeling that maybe they’ve heard enough Costello for one lifetime. On those first brilliant albums on…
Vernal unease
Here we go again. Like marshmallow bunnies and crocus blossoms, controversy surrounding Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s annual budget proposal has become a springtime fixture. Since first taking office in 2002, the mayor has popped up each April to declare that his budget for the coming fiscal year is, as required by law, a balanced plan.…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "When the only tool you have is a hammer," said psychologist Abraham Maslow, "you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail." Since it will be crucial for you not to regard everything as if it were a nail in the coming weeks, Aries, I suggest you make sure…
Red letter day
Upholding Detroit’s title as America’s most liberal city.
Grinding it out
Four years in the making and featuring a cast of tens of thousands of musicians, fans and freaks, Gary Bredow’s High-Tech Soul documents the rise of techno as a global cultural force. The Detroit filmmaker was turned on to the project after attending the first Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2000. He says it wasn’t…
More left turns
Bringing the ‘S word’ back into political life.
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Channeling memory lane
Milky and Soupy and Sonny, oh my! Exactly how much television nostalgia can one city stand? You may be surprised, as I was, to learn that our Detroit TV heritage is deemed so rich and fascinating as to have inspired not one, but two retrospective books on the subject. The latest, TV Land — Detroit…
Smith up, Loftus rises
We have some good news here at Metro Times. Close readers noticed some of it last week with the change of Brian Smith’s title in our masthead. Since becoming MT’s music editor, Brian has re-emphasized the sounds of this city as central to what happens here — in terms of both tragedy and triumphs, as…
I feel pretty …
If only fixing the world’s woes was as simple as getting the right haircut or mastering the art of lip gloss. Though the makers of The Beauty Academy of Kabul are not quite that naive, some of the subjects of this documentary appear to be. The story of these beauticians without borders has a few…
Rock the laughs
For years, wait a minute, decades, the comedy market has been so saturated with sitcom-aspiring white dudes with mullets and black guys with the name Wayans somewhere on their CV, that it’s easy to forget that going out for a night of stand-up comedy should be a reality-shifting experience. The unique spirits of Shelley Berman,…
Letters to the Editor
Thanks for the memories Michael Jackman’s “Back track” (Metro Times, March 29) was excellent and instructive. Even included was the anti-trust case that implicated Michigan’s largest corporation, General Motors, in the consortium that connived to destroy America’s intra-city rail transit. All Jackman left out from his history was: a) Detroit Mayor James Couzens, heavily identified…
L’Enfant
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have made a career out of chronicling the lives of people who live on the fringes of Belgian society. Their film L’Enfant is often powerful, and the grimy, desperate details of the characters’ lives do ring true; but the filmmakers have made a fatal mistake in asking the audience to be…
Will I get caught on tape?
Q: I was in a relationship in high school with a girl from the time we were 14 until we were 16. During that time we made a lot of sex tapes together. Sometimes I’d hold the camera, sometimes she would, sometimes it was on a tripod. We both enjoyed watching these videos together. We’ve…
Final moments and nagging questions
Editor’s Note: After this story went to press, Metro Times learned that 35-year-old Keith Bender Jr. died at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit. The police believe that Bender was shot by Proof. Detroit’s hip-hop community is still holding its breath. As details continue to emerge regarding the shooting outside a seedy nightclub…
Lonesome Jim
The title character (Casey Affleck) reluctantly returns to his dead-end Indiana hometown with his tail between his legs after giving up on making it as a writer in New York. His suicidal, divorced brother Tim (Kevin Corrigan), cranky dad (Seymour Cassel) and cheerfully smothering mom (Mary Kay Place) drive him nuts. Even his attempt at…
Hey, Bret …You’re goin’ down!
Remember how every two-bit singer from Lionel Richie to the Mandrell Sisters insulted John Lennon’s memory after his murder by beefing up their security as if to say, “My God, we could be next”? Made you want to sit those brow-moppers down and say, “Look, you robots will never mean to the world what a…
What do we have to prove?
Editor’s Note: After this story went to press, Metro Times learned that 35-year-old Keith Bender Jr. died at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit. The police believe that Bender was shot by Proof. One thing I know is that life is short. So listen up, homeboy. Give this a thought. The…
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
In 1943, 21-year-old college student Sophie Scholl was a member of the White Rose, a nonviolent student group that published leaflets calling for an end to Nazi crimes and oppression. She and her brother Hans were discovered distributing the group’s fliers at the University of Munich, and were turned over to the Gestapo. They were,…
Called to cater
Parlaying an interest in food into a thriving business.
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Scary Movie 4
At this point, it’s a fact of nature: As long as people keep going to see horror flicks, there will be a Scary Movie franchise. Cockroaches may survive the apocalypse, but Carmen Electra will be right there with them, serving up poorly staged pratfalls and three-minute-long poop jokes. As long as there are D-list actors…
Reaching ‘The Whole Why World’
“Make things better,” reads a sign posted on the American Beauty Iron Company building, located at Woodward and Burroughs in Detroit. Just what kind of sneaky advertising is this, and what exactly is it selling? Well, nothing. You may have seen the simple black-on-white hand-painted signs downtown on buildings in dozens of locations. It’s not…
After the Revolution
Peter Williams embodies the city by Nick Sousanis Where does the body end and the world begin? It’s a question of philosophy and science, and in Peter Williams’ exhibition of oil paintings and watercolors at the newly opened Paul Kotula Projects, it’s a question of portraiture as well. This show is the perfect inaugural for…
The Wild
Disney’s latest CGI feature is a horrible, half-baked carbon copy of Dreamworks’ furry feel-good hit from last year, Madagascar. In The Wild, New York City zoo animals head off to the wilds of Africa on a rescue mission after one of their buddies, a young lion, is accidentally shipped off to the continent. Though not…
Art Bar
A circus is an assemblage of illusions, and here Jo McDougall, a Kansas poet, shows us a couple of performers, drab and weary in their ordinary lives, away from the lights at the center of the ring. What We Need It is just as well we do not see, in the shadows behind the…
Trash talk
It’s a long way from Santa Cruz, Calif., to the Briggs neighborhood, now known as North Corktown, near Tiger Stadium, a mile from downtown Detroit. In the early 1990s, John Hartigan Jr. was living near the stadium, conducting field research as he worked toward a doctorate in anthropology. Hartigan wasn’t a tourist; he knew Detroit.…
Head Cheese
Scott Wexton is obsessed with spirits both corporeal and brown. As the Voodoo Organist, he turns his howling instrument loose on boogie rhythms and revival tent rave-ups, confronting horned evildoers and two-faced whiskey hustlers with equal fervor. On the new Serpent Dance, Wexton’s a thrill-seeker and smart aleck, a busker in the red-light district, a…
Champ walks the talk
“That’s the one thing you niggas gotta get right,” Champtown declares on “So What You Say.” “You catch cases, I catch flights.” He’s describing his life as “an insane CEO.” Apparently it’s difficult being the east side’s kingshit emcee and the coordinator for a roster full of releases — you get the impression Racial Profilin…
Easter basket of idiocy
If you think that the collapse of Michigan’s auto industry and manufacturing economy were the major issues facing us today, you really don’t have a clue. Poverty? Disintegration of Detroit? Child sexual abuse? How out of it can you be? No one really cares about those things. The major dilemma facing us all, as we…
Reverse
A couple of years ago in this very space, yours truly genuflected before L.A.-based girl-guy act the Dagons, citing third album Teeth For Pearls’ psychedelic brand of garage and Bad Seeds-esque noir-pop as evidence that this was more than just another post-White Stripes guitar ‘n’ drum act. True, the Dagons have been likened in some…
Night & Day
Wednesday • 19 Detroit Blues Legends MUSIC Taking your kids to a boozy blues bar is considered bad form, but where else is a kid going to learn about mojo hands, wang-dang doodles and going down to the crossroads? Here’s a suggestion: Bring Junior to the Southfield Public Library for Detroit Blues Legends, a showcase…
Who Knows? Live in Concert: 2000-2004
‘Round about 2002-3, Andrew WK made a noble attempt to rescue the word “party” from thick-necked mooks in much the same way gays rescued “queer” from bigots. And in many ways he pulled it off, spearheading an unironic embrace of good old-fashioned Chuck E. Cheese-meets-Harpo’s Fun (capitalization emphasized). This DVD offers evidence of the open-armed,…
Swing revisited
In the 1920s, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers epitomized swing. In the 1970s, the New McKinney’s Cotton Pickers played Carnegie Hall and, recalls Dave Hutson, one of that band’s founders, whooped the headlining Tommy Dorsey band of the time. And Sunday, the New McKinney’s Cotton Pickers reunite to celebrate the serendipity that carries music across eras. Originally…
