LOCAL MUSIC TIDBITS
*It’s kinda old news at this point since both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork took the ball and ran with it. That’s what we get for sitting on it. Yeah, we got the “official” word on August 6th that James Williamson was joining Iggy Pop, Scott Asheton and Mike Watt (filling in for the late, great…
Remembering Dudley Randall this Sunday
MT columnist Larry Gabriel recently wrote about the poetry and legacy of the late Detroit poet laureate Dudley Randall (“Gift of a poet: Clarity”). It’s a cliché to call someone a “major force” in their realm of activity, but Randall was instrumental in creating a publishing house for black poets just as a burgeoning new…
Backbone is connected to … our health care: The return of Obama the fighter
Backbone is connected to … our health care: The return of Obama the fighter Back three weeks ago, we ran a News Blawg item with the heading: “Speaking of health care, can someone check Obama’s backbone?” Well, the president apparently found and steeled his spine before confronting last night’s joint session of Congress. After standing…
Snap, crackle, pop!
Get yer old-skool 3-D glasses out … now! Most astute observers have no doubt seen local artist Chris Dean’s work somewhere around the city, whether it’s on those 1800 Tequila billboards or on the walls of the now-defunct CPOP Gallery. And if you’re a regular clubgoer, you’ve probably seen Dean himself at rock shows. He’s…
Couch Trip
Kaidan Lionsgate Welcome to Asian horror 101. And here’re all the things you’ll need to make your very own J-horror film (or at least peruse for greater understanding of the genre). Invent an inescapable curse for your protagonists. Preferably one that involves the murder of a cheating spouse! The protagonist must be haunted by pale-faced…
Cheat Code
Wolfenstein Activision Xbox 360, PS3 Chances are if you’re a fan of classic games, you’re familiar with the Wolfenstein series. Way back in the early ’90s, Wolfenstein 3D changed the face of what a computer game would be. Keeping the protagonist off camera with only his/her guns in view, you effectively became the only one…
Between our buns
Hunter House Hamburgers 35075 Woodward Ave., Birmingham; 248-646-7121; $ What makes this place attention-worthy is that it’s probably the last holdout of the old Woodward Avenue in chi-chi Birmingham. Instead of the upscale shops and eateries along pedestrian-oriented Old Woodward, this place was meant for car traffic, with unmetered parking in the lot, and seems…
Sharing ‘the’ Gloria Jones
Here’s serendipity for you: It was her son Rolan Bolan’s fervent desire to see his mom’s 36-year-old album Share My Love back in print that led to him to, well, share the album with friends and then see that love returned many times over. The album found the ears of Paul Williams at Reel Records,…
Night and Day
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 10 Coping with the Unknown DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL In Coping with the Unknown, artists Adrian Hatfield and Joe Meiser explore ways in which humanity attempts to understand its existence through science and religion. The works question the ability of either to provide answers, suggesting that any attempt at understanding may be futile…
Upside down in Pontiac
For a quarter-century, Carol Zimmerman has lived in her ranch house on Blaine Avenue on Pontiac’s north side. The General Motors retiree used to know her neighbors. They were people like her. They owned their homes and took care of them, she says. Now the property on the northeast side of Zimmerman’s is a vacant…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Lauching Leno
When Jay Leno played the Palace last April, his stated purpose was to provide a "comedy stimulus plan" for unemployed Detroiters by appearing in concert for free, and no doubt his motives were sincere. But he was also here to rehearse for next week. The Hardest Working Man in Show Business has been tweaking his…
Food Stuff
Perry hotter — The local cider scene is heating up, with the Second Annual Great Lakes Cider & Perry Festival north of Lansing, at Uncle John’s Cider Mill. Expect pear- and apple-based quaffs from nearby states and provinces, as well as nature walks and a kids’ playground. Runs 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 12-13;…
Kinder and gentler Posse?
So why wouldn’t Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope return to the Dark Carnival during this Summer of Hate, filled as it is with town-hall shouters, abortion doctor killers, corporate shills shooting down national health care and Bible-thumping yahoos practically advocating shooting the president from the pulpit? Next to that torrent of intolerance, Insane Clown…
Brand spanking new
Q: As a 43-year-old single gay guy, I recently had my first spanking experience and am now feeling extreme guilt and self-loathing. I was in a very long-term vanilla relationship for most of my adult life and never got to experience anything remotely kinky, but I’ve had an interest in it. Long story short, I…
Chance for real change
Don’t look now, but Michigan government has, literally, suffered a nervous breakdown and is in a semi-paralyzed, near-catatonic state. That might not be so bad if things otherwise were humming along perfectly, but they aren’t. We are headed for the edge of a cliff, and we know exactly when we will all be dragged over:…
Detroit vs. NOLA
I often live in a New Orleans state of mind. It’s not that I have an endless Mardi Gras party bubbling in my brain, but my family hails from there and the cultural connections still reverberate through my life. A series of coincidences made those vibrations rumble louder as we neared the fourth anniversary of…
Bridge company’s fear factor
Working hard not to jump up and start screaming, News Hits sat in Detroit’s 36th District Court last week, growing more and more disturbed every time lawyers for the Detroit International Bridge Co. raised the specter of terrorism, and how it’s fallen upon the company to protect this vital economic asset known as the Ambassador…
“We wanna hear Polish music!”
While most Americans spend each week fulfilling the prophecies of a Loverboy song, on Labor Day weekend, the gainfully employed are rewarded for their amazing work ethic via a whole extra day off. And lovely Hamtramck annually celebrates the holiday with a four-day fest of live music, carnival rides, pierogi and opportunities to win cheaply…
Motor City Cribs
Bobby Emmett is your basic pop-obsessed jazz musician who earns a living playing country music. His debut solo album, Learning Love, drops soon. (And it’s one the best Detroit records this year, though it sounds straight outta of ’74.) Most of you know Emmett as the former Hammond B3 organ player for the classic-rocking Sights.…
Renée, Bacon on the side
Wait a second. Did they really make a George Hamilton biopic? Yup, they did, and it seems that decades before he became a cheesy, bronzed-out ’70s matinee idol, young Georgie (Logan Lerman) was a pasty, hyper-smart teen with literary aspirations, and a knack for acerbic commentary on the chaos around him. Most of said chaos…
Letters to the Editor
Teddy & W. Re: Jack Lessenberry’s column "Last word on Teddy Kennedy" (Sept. 2): Touché, Jack. It took some time after Chappaquiddick for me to come around and decide Teddy Kennedy deserved redemption. But who was I? It was never any of my business. My judgments of others’ wrongdoing bind me to my resentments and…
World’s Greatest Dad
Just in time for the lionization of Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Farrah Fawcett comes Bobcat Goldthwait’s savagely dark comedy World’s Greatest Dad, a vicious rebuttal to the self-serving and revisionist nature of memory. Wedged uncomfortably between touching drama and scathing satire, Goldthwait’s third feature (Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs Lie) gets off to an awkward…
All About Steve
Oh Sandra Bullock, you were doing so well. A few weeks ago you were glowing in a career restart from the surprisingly pleasant rom-com The Proposal. But now, in the rump end of summer you drop this travesty, like a flaming turd, on America’s doorstep. Reversing the leering Woody Allen model, the latest trend sees…
Abbey Road
They fed the world the fairytale notion that love could save us all. But to skew the words of one of their buddies: we were so much younger then, we’re older than that now. No, especially after eight years of a Bible-thumping, Beatle-bashing (it’s true; Blender once asked all the presidential candidates their favorite Fab…
Far
Although this writer has had an unrequited crush on elfish Russian songstress Regina Spektor for years, I recently came to the sad realization that while I imagined the two of us growing together — Spektor perhaps one day recording an album filled with lusty covers of Radiohead lullabies just for me — it was time…
Here comes the Judge
Perhaps no one in Hollywood has had more success and less fame than Mike Judge. Though he has quietly built a comedy empire, dude’s more camera-shy than animation attention whores such as Seth MacFarlane or Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Casual observers wouldn’t notice him appearing as a strike agitator halfway through his latest film…
Squeeze play
It takes a bit of courage in these times to open a locally owned panini shop — considering the number of national sandwich chains in the immediate area that have been serving those trendy toasted, pressed sandwiches for quite a while. But Linda Skoczek, who has been working in the catering and restaurant field for…
Bridge Bluster: A Video Debunking
After listening once again to lawyers for the Detroit International Bridge Company claim in court last week that the fence their client erected on public land in Riverside Park is needed to thwart terrorism, and after being told by bridge company President Dan Stamper that — contrary to what this rag had previously reported —…
JAZZ FEST WRAP UP
During a video montage that was shown Friday night at the Detroit International Jazz Festival, trombonist Steve Turre commented that many festivals around the world call themselves “jazz festivals,” but the Detroit jazz fest is the real deal. The man should be lauded for not being apprehensive about speaking the truth. And this weekend, the…
WAYNE’S WORLD
Last year, I attended saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s concert at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. It was a weird evening. Shorter, pianist Danilo Perez, drummer Brian Blade and bassist John Patitucci played for nearly two hours straight. Shorter never introduced the band or the music they performed during that show. And they walked off the stage…
