WORTHY WEEKEND SHOW FOR A WORTHY CAUSE
With all the worthy shows happening around town this weekend, a very worthy one for a very worthy cause has gotten buried in the shuffle. The Friendly Foes will be headlining a benefit/fundraiser tomorrow night, April 4th, for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society at the Bullfrog in Redford. Also on the bill are Copper Thieves,…
Rodriguez headlines Rock-A-Billy’s on Record Store Day
Steal a turntable, punk: We’ve for years orated long and hard our undying support of local record stores and have looked for any excuse to hoist a cocktail in their honor. So it is that the annual national Record Store Day is nearly upon us — that’d be Saturday, April 18 — and what lovely…
JACK WHITE FORMS NEW BAND WITH RODRIGUEZ, DENNIS COFFEY…
…the members of Death and Mark Farner. God, how many bands is this guy going to be in? Never let it be said, though, that Jack doesn’t appreciate nor has he turned his back on this state’s great musical legacy. Very few details as of yet, beyond the press release we received earlier today, which…
4 Play
An idiotic guide to basketball by Michael Jackman A completely stupid guide for the ignorant! In courts divine by Bill Wylie-Kellermann My life in the game Four myths about Detroit by Metro Times staff Danger, mayhem, borders and more What to see by Metro Times staff Metro Detroit natives pick the top sightseeing contenders
Feasting flick fest
Let’s be straight here, OK? A few years ago the Ann Arbor Film Festival was less than fantastic. It had been lost in the experimental film wilderness, catering to the tastes of an old-school board and ignoring its dwindling audience. Neither metro Detroiters nor Ann Arborites considered the storied fest — which once upon a…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
An idiotic guide to basketball
Every spring, millions of Americans start obsessing over March Madness, two weeks with more than 60 different games between the very best college basketball teams. And if you know nothing about the sport at all, you may be in for culture shock this week, as the NCAA Final Four descends upon Detroit, putting metro Detroiters…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Fabulously funky
The Counts (aka the Fabulous Counts) are back! And some of you may be wondering just why that’s so important. The Detroit group racked up a pair of 1969-’70 R&B hits with the wig-poppin’ funk instrumental “Jan Jan” (later covered by jazz guitarist Grant Green) and the almost-indescribably groovalicious single “Get Down People” with the…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
If you’re lookin’ for large rocks, you’ve come to the right Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #211! Styrofoam — A Thousand Words (Nettwerk) :: Just what you always wanted: a lightweight bloopy blorp Casio-pop album with a perpetual half-life that’ll never decompose. Nash the Slash — Decomposing (Cut-Throat vinyl) :: A two-sided series (78) of electro-ambient…
Motor City Cribs
Millions of Brazilians’ Woodbridge party pad
Monster mash
The film centers on Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), who’s struck by a meteor on her wedding day and mutates into a 50-foot bridezilla. Quarantined by the government and dubbed Ginormica, she’s recruited to defend the Earth from a giant alien robot. Teamed with a quartet of monsters — a reptilian “missing link” (Will Arnett),…
Steppin’ out
Antonio’s in the Park 15117 Kercheval Grosse Pointe Park; 313-821-2433; $$: Known for traditional Italian cuisine, this eatery’s menu includes 11 veal entrées, 13 classic pastas and a variety of seafood dishes. If you don’t want to fill up on food, venture to their outdoor seating area for 25 to enjoy a glass of red…
Slice of the market
Serving brilliant thin-crust pizza with imaginative fresh ingredients — even an egg — with a delectable thin crust that’s not too chewy. They serve five red pizzas and six white, meaning no tomato sauce; almost all are made with traditional ingredients, no pineapple, no taco fixings. The red sauce is supremely simple, nothing much besides…
Hot and steamy
It’s midnight inside a dimly lit banquet room on Detroit’s east side. The place is like any low-frills dining space — cheap carpeting, plain walls and rounded booths on the room’s edges, with padded seats and small tables. But this one is different: People are having sex with each other in the booths. In full…
Everlasting Moments
This elegant but mopey melodrama tells the true story of an early 1900s working-class woman who discovers she has a gift for photography but struggles to remain loyal to her abusive husband and ever-growing family. Maid and mender, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen), who, after winning a camera in the local lottery, tries to sell it…
In courts divine
The only record of Michael Jordan’s that I’ve ever broken is the number of times I’ve come out of basketball retirement. About to turn 60, I’m yet again back at a weekly game running full court, at least till I feel a hamstring twinge and have the wisdom to step off for the night. Years…
Psychocandy lite
What exactly is it that creates a buzz in this day and age? While lesser bands like Fleet Foxes get all the recent hype and acclaim in the U.S. press, it’s Glasvegas that’s released the best debut album of the last 12 months, as far as this writer is concerned. The Scottish band thinks big…
Swing time
Some like it complicated, but not everybody
To Lose My Life
To be young is to be sad, Ryan Adams advised, and nobody does young and sad better than the British. Joy Division, the Cure, Depeche Mode — these divinely mopey souls have provided the world with endless nights of blissed-out misery so exquisite that, for generations of listeners, happiness became forever overrated. In the 21st…
What to see
From poets to PR types, from musicians to a marine engineer, we sought advice; "What would be your personal Final Four of local sites a visitor needs to see?" We tallied the recommendations, and here’s what we found. THE WINNER: DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS: One of the city’s jewels, the DIA completed a $158 million…
Universal Malcontents
Matthew Smith is one of those kids in the rock ‘n’ roll sandbox. His playmates include Brian Wilson (of course!) — but over in the corner — hey, hey — it’s the Monkees; out back is the Velvet Underground’s Maureen Tucker; and looking glum and serious somewhere in the middle of the box are the…
Final 4 countdown
With the NCAA Final Four kicking off Friday, we thought it’d be a swell time to look at how Tinseltown has approached basketball. As with any sports genre, there are more bricks than swishes: More Waterboys than Friday Night Lightses, more Sudden Deaths than Slap Shots, more Major League 3’s than Bull Durhams, and so…
The Haunting in Connecticut
Based on an allegedly “true” home invasion story from the ghost-happy 1980s, The Haunting in Connecticut is deep-fried in a double layer of supernatural hokum drenched in decades of haunted-house-movie orthodoxy. The fun starts when the middle-class Campbell family decides to rent a second home in far off Goatswood so that their sick eldest son…
Night and Day
THURSDAY • 2 LOS CAMPESINOS! DANCE YOUR CARES AWAY The tales of alienation and disaffection sung by Los Campesinos! are set to a cacophony that sounds nothing if not joyous, a contradiction that encompasses the overarching theme of the Welsh septet’s music — the world may be fucked, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have…
Revanche
What starts as a too-slow neo-noir about an ex-con named Alex (Johannes Krisch) who decides to rob a bank in order to free his Ukrainian prostitute girlfriend (Irina Potapenko) from her pimp, unexpectedly turns into a muted but poignant moral drama. Building on the kind of coincidences that would sink a mainstream flick, Revanche (which…
Why GM failed
In a nutshell, because of the industry’s narrow, insular culture
Four easy pieces
What’s the greatest lyric from a pop song circa 1995? That’s easy: Livin’ on juice/Eatin’ out tuna cans/Mobile home/With my dairy queen/Tied me a knot/She had to cut me loose/Now I’m lookin’ at you/Like lovers do … In few words, you get so much. The lines are sublime in scene-setting simplicity, and big — like…
Letters to the Editor
Patience taxed I’m baffled by a number of items from Jack Lessenberry’s column, “A better future” (March 18). Regarding fiscal mistakes from the state Legislature, he observes, “Two years ago, when they didn’t have the guts to raise the income tax enough to balance the budget …” Is there a cogent explanation why reducing spending…
Four myths about Detroit
THE MOST DANGEROUS CITY IN AMERICA You may not have heard the news that Detroit last year was again declared the most dangerous city in America. That’s because, compared to recent years, the rankings garnered a mere blip on the media radar screen. Which may be because the rankings themselves have been so thoroughly raked…
Worthy investigation
Perjury flap spurs inquiry into Detroit prosecutor
VON BONDIES FOR FREE…
Well, this might piss off anyone who just paid the big bucks to catch them last weekend at St. Andrew’s Hall…but the Von Bondies will be performing a free show this Friday night, April 3rd, at the City Theater inside Hockeytown Cafe (2301 Woodward Ave.). Also appearing will be Ante M and Lightning Love. Again,…
