OUT COME THE FREAKS
From all accounts, Detroit expatriates Was (Not Was) delivered one helluva show in Los Angeles last Thursday night, February 14th. It was the first show “the Was brothers,” Don and David, have performed in the city of Angels in quite a few years, this one to kick off the hype for their brand-new album Boo!,…
eMUSIC A&R TARGETS A2 BAND
eMusic, the world’s largest retailer of independent music (at least according to their latest press release!), has announced the creation of eMusic Selects, a highly-curated boutique music space that’ll showcase unsigned and underexposed new artists. Each month, eMusic’s staff will handpick up to two deserving artists for high-profile visibility to eMusic’s 400,000 subscribers. The acts…
“HE’S SUPPOSED TO BE THE HIP-HOP MAYOR….”
Most of us believe that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is bad news…but local Detroit hip-hop artist The Virus firmly believes the Mayor was involved in the highly-publicized murder of the stripper named Strawberry…and that Kwame’s administration covered the whole mess up. Hopefully, the truth will eventually come out in the wash (to use an old cliche),…
Screwed
Midnight Blue Collection Vol. 1-5 Blue Underground Ah, the early days of cable TV. Some of us were kids back in the ’70s, waiting impatiently for cable to hit our neighborhood. When it arrived, we got what the basic networks couldn’t give us — a promise delivered — “unedited” adult programming. Hey, Cinemax wasn’t dubbed…
First-person bisexuality
My first gal-experience came at the age of 18. The night involved a bottle of Belvedere vodka and a guy who giddily joined us. My next experience was the following year: this time with a lesbian couple and no booze in the afternoon. More moments came later, some with sexy strangers at parties, some with…
Toys for twits
Dildo etiquette and sticking it to a ‘journalist.’
Into you like a train
In keeping with the “Lust” theme of this issue, we thought it’d be interesting (or “hot,” as Ms. Hilton would say) to ask a few local female musicians of note what their favorite libidinous songs are. In other words, what songs are good for putting one “in the mood”? We decided to not ask men…
Zane gets her freak on
“OK, here’s the question,” Zane writes in a chapter called “Cheaters” from her newest release, a sex and relationships advice book called Dear G Spot: Straight Talk about Sex and Love. She’s responding to a reader who’s spilling the beans about going on a cruise with her mom and fucking the “extremely endowed” bartender as…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
All that jazz
It’s a jazz-lover’s paradise in town this week.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Where Lavern and Jackie banter back and forth.
Lost cause
The most liberal of the so-called top-tier Democrats — those anointed early on as having a legitimate shot — Edwards appeared to be well-positioned. Having settled for being John Kerry’s running mate in 2004, the former senator offered a populist platform and a strong record of attempting to help the working class and the poor.…
The message
Local rapper Bravemonk slowly places his left foot over the right, flings his arms outward, spins, kicks backward, jumps and then comes down in a b-boy stance. Fifteen students attempt to duplicate his actions, falling and asking questions along the way. Onstage behind them, DJ Man-O-Wax is demonstrating cutting and scratching on two turntables, as…
Motor City Rides
A peek inside Jerry Vile’s PT Cruiser.
Hearts and flowers
The wearisome, three-month-old Writers Guild of America strike against Hollywood possibly, hopefully, may be settled by the time you read this. (As any Detroiter who belongs to a union knows, there’s many a squeal ‘twixt the talks and the deal.) When the picket signs finally are laid to rest and those script wizards return to…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Words of Our Own
A snowbound tale in which stories grow larger than life.
Stealing Obama’s votes
State Dem Party bosses and the deal they want to broker.
Outing the mayor
In a time of turmoil, another look at Ken Cockrel Jr.
Letters to the Editor
Bigoted sentiments Pradeep Srivastava’s letter in the Feb. 6 issue of the Metro Times (Letters to the editor) left me very unsettled. It starts off logically enough, and seems to offer suggestions to help solve the issues around illegal immigration — until this: “It is appalling that an uneducated Mexican guy, even with a criminal…
Controlled silence
It takes a high level of physical control to operate, and emote, in stillness. The spinning jetés of ballerinas might dazzle, the “fallap-ball-change” of tappers delight, but the detached, otherworldly movements seen in Nina Materialize Sacrifice are unsettling, mesmerizing and powerful. Like unadorned mannequins, the female dancers of Japanese dance company Noism08 are manipulated at…
Lost and found
In another development that has Freeman’s defense team more optimistic than they’ve been in years, authorities say they’re “willing to listen” if the team makes a good argument for re-examining the case. “If they would present something that the chief of police and the prosecutor decided was worth reopening, we certainly would,” says Port Huron…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 13 The Bravery AN HONEST MISTAKE This puppy-dog punk quintet dominated all-age stages and won the black-shirt-and-dirty-Converse set as a bona fide 2005 band du jour. Though its work isn’t exactly, um, genre-defining (they sound eerily like the Killers … odd …), the singsong melodies of frontman Sam Endicott certainly get kids crowing,…
Jazz’s best friend
The first beer ever served at the Dirty Dog Jazz Café was poured for its owner, Gretchen Valade, as she leaned against the bar last week with final work continuing around her. She snacked on peanut brittle — a homemade gift from the piano tuner — while directing the placement of decorative vessels above the…
Wishin’ and hopin’
Ever since her wonderful 2000 Grammy-winning breakthrough album, I Am Shelby Lynne, many critics have bent over backward to compare Ms. Lynne to the incredible Dusty Springfield. “Killin’ Kind,” the single from her follow-up Love, Shelby album was exactly the kind of pure POP! gem that Springfield used to make her mark in the ’60s.…
Fly Paper
This Downriver-based Detroit quartet has explored many facets of original rock during its career, especially after augmenting a traditional guitar-centric lineup with various acoustic stringed instruments, including banjo, mandolin and violin. The group — which is comprised of guitarist Chris Herin, vocalist Paul Rarick, bassist Mark Evan and drummer Jeff Whittle — has also added…
Useless Trinkets
Whether you sample the greatest-hits Meet the Eels or the outtake collection Useless Trinkets, the story of the band plays out the same: First, they were popular; then they got interesting. The L.A. collective, led by frontman E, initially achieved alternative-rock notoriety with 1996’s “Novocaine for the Soul,” a grimly catchy song about music’s ability…
Whitsundays
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the Zombies open up for the Beach Boys in your basement? That’s, of course, an impossible dream — but the Whitsundays at least create a similar vibe. There’s been an avalanche of bands worshipping at the throne of Brian Wilson these past two decades, but every pop…
Nothing short of great
In recent years, the finalists have been a decidedly mixed bag. While it’s rare that something truly awful slips in, there’s been a surprising amount of mediocrity lately. 2007, however, boasts an impressive and inspired slate of contenders. Is it a coincidence that not a single one hails from the U.S.A.? Not only are four…
Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour: 30 Days & 30 Nights — Hollywood to the Heartland
Vince Vaughn is a funny guy. Just ask him. And the thin line between self-regard and auto-eroticism gets obliterated very early on in this film that documents Vaughn and his show-biz buds on a 30-day tour. To hear Vaughn tell it in a series of local media interviews — each one more fatuous then the…
Fool’s Gold
Kate Hudson scrunches up her dimpled cheeks and Matthew McConaughey flexes his shiny pecs furiously, but all their easy charisma can’t overcome a hopelessly dopey script and painfully inept direction. Minus a few references to hip hop and text messaging, this empty-headed romp could have been a vehicle for Frankie and Annette, if not Bob,…
Graphic sex
From violent, fetishistic orgies to pitiless scrutinizing of their own bodies and ids, the underground cartoonists of old were notorious for filling their comic books with weird sex. But for something really weird it’s hard to beat a one-off comic from 1974 called Sex and Affection, by Jim Himes. Apparently meant as a sort of…
A Detroit Thing
This doc covers the Detroit music scene in the mid-late ’90s. Brothers Nick and Anthony Brancaleone spent several years turning cameras on area musicians, and spent several more kicking around the festival circuit trying to get some attention for their work. Unfortunately, their scruffy, underdog film takes as its principal subject Tino of the Howling…
Break Your Arm for Evolution
Is this album a self-inflicted test to see if de-evolution can be willed into being? An admission of futility in the face of a dearth of other options? An inspired experiment? Well, as evidenced on SSM’s second proper full-length — let’s go with “all the above.” The record starts simply enough, with a quasi-conventional rough…
4 months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
A film about abortion set in 1987 Romania. Director Christian Mungiu re-creates those days with a bleak, washed-out look. The story unfolds in a 24-hour period. Two young women, college roommates, are forced through the treacherous machinery of the country’s medical underground. Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is a sunny-eyed realist, faced with arranging an illegal abortion…
Top taps
The Front is a mainstay in downtown Berkley, doubling as an American biergarten as well as a martini lounge. Patrons can choose to enjoy the Old World charm and laid-back style of the downstairs or to chill out in the ’50s-style lounge upstairs, where live music plays every weekend.
