MT TAKES 6 AWARDS AT SPJ
The Metro Times has received six awards — including top honors in two categories — in an annual contest held by the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Competing against the city’s two major daily papers, MT Arts & Culture Editor Travis R. Wright won first place in the criticism category for his…
GARY GRIMSHAW BENEFIT AT THE BOHO HOME THIS SATURDAY; VRANICH ALSO HONORED…
Sadly, there have been so many tragic stories in the Detroit arts community as of late. As we mentioned in this space awhile back, Gary Grimshaw — not just one of the greatest rock poster artists from Detroit…but quite simply, one of THE greatest rock poster artists ever, period (and also a genuinely good guy)…
EMINEM’S NEXT DISC; STOOGES FIRST N.A. DATE…
Eminem’s Recovery, the Detroit star’s follow-up to Relapse, will be officially released on June 22. The new album will feature the rapper’s work with a host of first-time collaborators, including DJ Khalil, Just Blaze, Jim Jonsin and Boi-1da, among others. “I had originally planned for Relapse 2 to come out last year,” he said in…
The hard luck café
The smell inside the Canticle Café is unmistakable. It’s an odor that clings to the homeless, one of long days spent out in the weather, of dried sweat and unwashed dirt. It gets them kicked out of most places, keeps people at a distance and relegates them to a handful of spots like shelters, soup…
Shame Shame
Expectations change as you get older. So while the Philadelphia quintet Dr. Dog may have made a modest move up the label rungs from Park the Van to Epitaph imprint Anti-, they’ve probably shed any illusions of broad-based success now that they’re six albums into their recording career. Their tuneful blend of staple indie pop…
Motor City Cribs
It’s legendary Detroit DJ Dick Purtan’s second-to-last day on the radio and he’s a half hour late. Purtan is known for many things in Detroit — his great comedic skits, his charity fundraising, having the best mustache in Motown, and his 45-year run as one of the most successful DJs in Detroit, ever. He’s as…
Revolutionary redux
Each season of the critically acclaimed HBO original series The Wire opened with a rendition of Tom Waits’ harrowing blues song, "Way Down in the Hole" — a cut that impeccably set the tone for the gritty hour of drama that followed. Both the Blind Boys of Alabama and Waits himself delivered individual distressing, powerful…
Cookies ‘n’ cream
Ashby’s Sterling Ice Cream Parlor 46540 Van Dyke, Shelby Twp.; 586-268-6222: This old-fashioned ice cream parlor serves 44 flavors of premium, hand-dipped ice cream. No shortcuts here: Ashby’s starts off with the creamiest 14 percent butterfat ice cream mix and adds your favorite ingredients. In addition to ice cream, choose from shakes, malts, floats and…
Mother
Constructed like a warped retelling of Stella Dallas, the film follows a poor, overprotective mother (Kim Hye-ja) who becomes an implacable and bumbling force of nature when her mentally challenged son is arrested for killing a teenage girl. She doggedly investigates the murder, convinced that he has been railroaded. Confronting her son’s thuggish best friend,…
Potluck utopia
Kathy Leisen is browsing through a box of cassette tapes that sits on a small table in her sparse art studio. Less artistic types might’ve used this space as a living room if they lived in the Corktown house that Leisen shares with her boyfriend. The many cassettes here chronicle the Glass Rock singer’s various…
Kinky but still squicked
Q: I am a mostly straight, 22-year-old woman. I am a pretty GGG kind of gal. I am generally not put off easily, even if I am told things that don’t quite do it for me. So I just started seeing this guy. I haven’t known him for long — no serious sexual activity other…
Dateline Detroit
Whenever the network news crews roll into Detroit to do yet another raw-nerve exposé on our besieged city, we all want to know the same things, don’t we? Did they do a hatchet job on us? Were they balanced? Fair? Did they at least show some of the hints of hope around here? In this…
Twins facing up
One day before their [number redacted] birthday, the Wonder Twins got a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll with Langhorne Slim and Drive-By Truckers at St. Andrew’s Hall. Laura: I was looking forward to seeing Drive-By Truckers, since they’re known for their live shows and put out a really great live…
Tea Bag truth
Late last week, hundreds of ignorant Tea Party morons were as ecstatic as pigs in a Dumpster full of stale doughnuts. Bart Stupak, the Michigan congressman who cast a difficult vote to make health care reform reality, was stepping down! "That’ll show ’em!" the know-nothings cried. How dare Stupak vote to provide all Americans a…
Drive-in theater!
Nail Gun Massacre is the Holy Grail of bad-but-awesome slasher flicks. It’s a masterpiece so profoundly inept that it defies comparison — even to 1978’s The Toolbox Murders! Writer-director Terry Lofton most likely thought the same back in ’85, because he made NGM with love, blind ambition and nary a lick of innate cinematic skill.…
Metro Retro
25 years ago in Metro Times: Red Amenable posits a few solutions to make hockey more entertaining as the Red Wings sneak into the playoffs after a long "Dead Wings" era. Among Amenable’s solutions: Use the phrase "Hockey Hockey" and allow "pot smoking and the discharge of firearms inside Joe Louis Arena." Amenable says of…
Food Stuff
French treat — Josephine Crêperie & Bistro is hosting one of their end-of-the-month dinners, and this time the theme is "April in Paris." It’s five sumptuous courses for $30 per (plus tax, tips, drinks). At 241 W. Nine Mile Rd., Ferndale; call 248-399-1366 for reservations. Niki’s 2.0 — Anybody who’s spent time in downtown Detroit…
Can I get a witness?
Can I get a Witness Bootsey X through the eyes of others The first time I saw Bootsey X & the Lovemasters play was in the summer of ’85 at Paycheck’s. I was completely blown away, to say the least. I remember trying to describe them to my friends at the time: "They’re kind of…
Sweet ‘n’ hard for the loins
Bazooka Jones takes an ear-bending approach to the classic Detroit sound, merging delicious-but-raw garage rock with jangly and melodic power pop. The Allen Park-based quartet impressed with their musical proficiency and chops at Detroit’s first International Pop Overthrow (IPO) festival three years ago, leading to the belief that there are lot of terrific bands in…
Ballad of Mr. X
The saga of Bob Mulrooney — aka Bootsey X, aka the Pusherman of Love and Genius from the Waist Down — might bring to mind the words of two renowned writers: the first, an unlikely rabbi; the other, a rock critic. For the past decade, the title of Rabbi Harold S. Kushner’s When Bad Things…
Backwash
Bill Withers +’Justments (Reel Music/Columbia) It’s hard to underestimate the grace and power of Bill Withers, a guy whose head-spinner confessionals are so rich in empathy ("Better Off Dead," "Grandma’s Hands," etc.) that they can get you easily at the knees. His melancholic mojo wasn’t easy to sustain, but this 1974 album — aided by…
Letters to the Editor
Remembering Mick Vranich After being badly injured in an accident, Mick Vranich had lots of people pulling for him. Four or five benefits for his medical expenses brought out a great outpouring of love and support. Now, with word of his passing, another great hole exists within the Detroit arts community. These are some my…
Date Night
Steve Carrell and Tina Fey are Phil and Claire Foster, a suburban couple caught in a quotidian time-loop of paperwork, school lunches, soccer practices and tedious book clubs with neighbors. To shake it up, Phil plans a night out at a hip Manhattan eatery, and then poaches a reservation when the wait at the bar…
Man the barricades!
Last week, lawyers for the city of Detroit and the Detroit International Bridge Co. were again in court, this time arguing over who has legal control of a section of 23rd Street the bridge company has fenced off and paved over as part of the controversial Gateway Project. It seems like a lot of taxpayer…
It’s complicated
Disgraced after losing a libel trial, middle-aged muckraker Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) teams up with bisexual Goth hacker Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) to solve the disappearance and possible murder of 16-year-old Harriet Vanger some 40 years earlier. Working from a cottage on the Vangers’ island enclave, the two slowly uncover unsavory skeletons in the wealthy…
Fishing for truth
During his 30 years in the Arkansas fish industry, Mike Freeze has watched federal and state government agencies change from being cheerleaders to exterminators when it comes to Asian carp. Freeze is a former Arkansas Game and Fish commissioner who worked for the agency in the late 1970s. He knew the fish farmers who were…
Street life
What a kick to discover you can get Indian street food in Michigan! There’s no street, of course — this is Michigan, and we try not to populate our streets unless we’re in our vehicles. Neehee’s is, in fact, selling street food in a strip mall, an irony that seems to bother the multitude of…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY-SATURDAY APRIL 14-17 Jason Marsalis BROTHERLY GROOVSTER It’s not entirely fair that Wynton and Branford are so often referred to as the Marsalis Brothers and Delfeayo and Jason are the other brothers. But such are the vagaries of birth orders and fame. That said, the percussionist Jason Marsalis is one of those drummers who knows…
American Gong
Quasi has always been a most appropriate name for the keyboards-guitar-drums project of Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss. Both participants were involved with other, higher profile outfits near its mid-’90s inception — Heatmiser and Sleater-Kinney, respectively — so Quasi was originally relegated to "side project" status. The intervening decade has seen both of those bands’…
