Cover Story
Big Dreams for the Big Show
Over the course of five days, our fair city is throwing open for the world its doors to Midtown, inviting all to partake in one of the most ambitious multi-venue art exhibitions to be orchestrated on this grand a scale: Art X Detroit. In its second iteration, Art X is more than just a showcase…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
City Slang: Black Jake and the Carnies announce EP release shows
The third studio release from Ypsilanti’s bluegrass-influenced punks, Black Jake & the Carnies, will be called Watching, Waiting and it’s available from April 23. According to the press release, “Recorded in the winter of 2012 at Big Sky Studios in Ann Arbor, MI, just prior to the departure of long-time mandolinist Zach Pollack, “Watching, Waiting”…
City Slang: DJ Greebo at the Zombie Apocalypse
On Saturday, May 4, DJ Greebo will spin ‘80s tunes to mark the Zombie Apocalypse. Yup, you read that right. Zombies and citizens will gather at Gleaner’s Community Food Bank that day, in an effort to drive out hunger. Canned goods and donations will be collected later at the party at the Corktown Tavern. They…
City Slang: Detroit School of Rock and Pop at the Hard Rock Cafe
Students from the Detroit School of Rock & Pop will perform at the Hard Rock Café in Detroit from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday. They say, “If you’re part of the family already please come and support everyone! If you haven’t yet decided to be a part of things this is a great…
The GO at PJ’s Lager House
What’s to expect when you go see The Go? They haven’t played in Detroit for over two years, and they just stopped at SXSW to perform a set solely of Fiesta! material, their new album that came out earlier this year, produced by lead-singer and genius Bobby Harlow. What kind of band goes on stage…
Pontiac’s Erebus the Setting for ‘Ghost Stories’ Saturday
If the popular cable series My Ghost Story: Caught on Camera was to tape an episode around these parts, where do you suppose they might go? Why, the scariest place in southeast Michigan, of course! Erebus, the fabled four-story Halloween frightfest in downtown Pontiac billed as the world’s largest walk-through haunted attraction, is the site…
Film Review 42: The True Story of an American Legend
42: The True Story of an American Legend| B Baseball is a game of tradition, ritual and, most of all, numbers; from fluctuating outfield dimensions and batting averages to home run records, numbers are all important on the diamond. For eight decades, however, there was one inviolable number that did not waver: 0. That was…
Film Review: Trance
Trance| B- Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) sure can direct the hell out of a movie. The Oscar-winning filmmaker injects every minute of Trance’s plot-tangled running time with frenetic energy and style, using low and canted angles, arty edits and impossible camera glides to cleverly distract us from an implausible story that never…
Film Review: The Place Beyond the Pines
The Place Beyond the Pines| B- Director Derek Cianfrance sure likes to put Ryan Gosling in some god-awful T-shirts. As if the dollar store eagle-emblazoned crew neck he sported in the brutish Blue Valentine weren’t trashy enough, here, in The Place Beyond the Pines, his brooding Luke Glanton dons a moth-chewed Hanes that actually…
Look…The Sun Is Rising
What a week for music… Jamaican Queens are serving wormfood (new album on their own Notown records). They’re playing down at Trinosophes with a fine collection of post-techno, leftfield-hip-hop and NuWeird-electro outfits. Jamaican Queens: Caitlin on Nowness.com The Go are throwing a Fiesta tonight at the Lager House – with their friends from Burger Records (as well as the…
City Slang: New Palaces EP
The new EP from Palaces, Side Effects of Dreaming, will be released on 7” on April 30. According to a statement, “Detroit-based hypnotic rock duo PALACES began as an outlet to explore different sounds and influences but quickly transformed into a full-blown mantra of ethereal sounds and unorthodox song structures designed to put listener’s in…
EM conflict? No worries
As the Detroit City Council considers approving a contract with the Jones Day law firm — the law firm that Mayor Dave Bing and Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr want to hire to oversee the restructuring of Detroit’s debt — we find ourselves following Alice a little further down the rabbit hole. Things seem to be…
City Slang: Deadstring Brothers album out this week
The new album from alt-country locals the Deadstring Brothers, Cannery Row, has been released this week. They say, “In the spring 2012, Kurt [Marschke] and old friend and fellow Detroiter, bassist JD Mack (formerly of Whitey Morgan & the 78s), started planning new tours, seeking out other members and making a plan for the new…
Detroit Fairgrounds Debate
When members of the newly-formed Southeast Michigan Regional Transit Authority (RTA) Board meet for the first time this week, they will be greeted by activists eager to see the board play a role in helping to determine how the Michigan State Fairgrounds property is developed. Why would that board be interested in the 157-acre parcel…
Culture Makes Me Hungry
Cuisine 670 Lothrop Rd.; 313-872-5110;cuisine-detroit.com; $$$: In the shadow of the Fisher Building, Cuisine attracts a bustling theater crowd. Inside a 1920s house is a simple but elegant space. Ambitious French-American cuisine is creative, sophisticated and memorable. Harmonie Garden 4704 Third St.; 313-638-2345; SS: Low prices, huge servings, a Wayne State location, top-notch falafel,…
Film Review: The Sapphires
The Sapphires | B+ A crowd-pleasing musical comedy unashamed to wallow in its cornball pleasures, this sweet Australian import should prove an irresistibly sugary tonic to audiences hungering for an old fashioned good time at the movies. While I can confidently say this is the best movie I’ve ever seen about a ’60s Aboriginal…
Food Stuff
FOOD THOUGHT Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen Mérida Anderson’s Arsenal Pulp Press $26.95 If you’ve ever rejected the notion that you might enjoy vegan cuisine, a glance at the recipes in Mérida Anderson’s Vegan Secret Supper: Bold & Elegant Menus from a Rogue Kitchen is likely to…
Ronny Tibbs’ Peach Fuzz
The Satin Peaches, when the band was together and regularly destroying Detroit venues, looked like it could break out of the local scene, a la Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. They seemed to have it all — raw, Motor City rock ’n’ roll, soulful vocals, progressive instrumentation, and bags of sexual energy. Somewhere along the way,…
Film Review: Jurassic Park: An IMAX 3D Experience
Jurassic Park: An IMAX 3D Experience | A- Steven Spielberg’s financial windfall from the 1975 summer release of Jaws laid the foundation for what has since become known as the “summer blockbuster.” Unfortunately, a byproduct of that success was the untimely demise of a brief golden age in hip, sophisticated-yet-downbeat artistry practiced by auteurs…
Roman Village
Roman Village 9924 Dix Ave., Dearborn 313-842-2100 antoniosrestaurants.com Perhaps there’s no food as misunderstood in metro Detroit as Italian fare. Truth is, many cuisines have sprung up around that footwear-shaped peninsula, each expressing the local sensibilites of the individual kingdoms that were united into what we call “Italy” about 150 years ago. Combine that…
The Advice of a Episcopal Bishop Reverend Gene Robinson
Q: I’m a gay man who has been seeing a devout Christian gay guy for one year. We have a great relationship. We have many of the same interests and respect each other’s feelings and beliefs. However, I am a Catholic who is not that religious, and he is an Orthodox Christian. Some of his…
New Label to Focus Exclusively on Area Jazz
Mack Avenue Records has been one of music’s jazz label success stories over the last 15 years. Since its founding in 1999, it has collected Grammies and built an impressive roster of established names like Gary Burton and Christian McBride; and up-and-comers, too, like Beyonce’s No. 1 saxophonist, Tia Fuller and vocalist Sachal Vasandani. Hometown…
Using marijuana to break a narcotic dependency
Bill had six back surgeries by the time he was 31 years old. The first was during the ninth grade after he injured his back getting tackled on the football field, rupturing a disc in his lower back. The surgery followed a few months later, resulting in his missing most of that academic year. In…
Race, Media and the EM
Here’s the beauty of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion: It gets people talking across the color lines that so often divide us. The importance of that task was driven home last week, at least for those of us here at the Hits, when the good folks at the Roundtable hosted a discussion centered…
License to Kill
In the interest of fairness and balance in the gun control debate, it’s time to take a moment to honor our city, state and nation’s newest Second Amendment hero. Sadly, we haven’t been told the man’s name, though we do know he lives in the 12000 block of Asbury Park, on Detroit’s west side. On…
Film Review: Room 237
Room 237 | B- Stanley Kubrick was an obsessive filmmaker famous for his endless takes, rigorously composed images and meticulous attention to detail. But, while the subject matter of his movies varied wildly (this is the same man who made Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket), his method and style remained eerily…
We Must Fight to Save DPS
Now that Detroit Public Schools’ Emergency Manager Roy Roberts has once again assumed full control of Detroit Public Schools under Public Act 436 — the unconstitutional replacement law for the EM law the people of Michigan voted to repeal — he has lost no time issuing an executive order to fire John Telford as the…
City Slang: The Black Dahlia Murder to release Everblack
Metal Blade Records signees and proud Detroiters the Black Dahlia Murder have announced that their sixth full length studio album will be called Everblack and it will be released in June. First single “Into the Everblack” is streaming now at metalblade.com/dbm. According to a press release, “The album art for Everblack was painted by renowned…
Let My People Go and Other Fine Messes
Dear Editor: Our Constitution protects us from being stripped of our rights, including the right to government by fairly elected representatives rather than some totalitarian regime wielding unchecked power over the public. The 14th amendment prevents anyone from reducing us to the helplessness of veritable slaves. But, conversely, our governor deems it…
