DEASTRO ANNOUNCES U.S. TOUR DATES
Anticipation seems to be building on a national scale for Deastro’s full-band debut LP, Moondagger, which officially arrives on June 23rd via Ghostly International. The “Vermillion Plaza” single — along with its B-side, a squelchy, lumbering remix by Ghostly Swim featured artist Mux Mool — drops next Tuesday, May 12th. Mr. Chabot and crew will…
DEATH & LOVE…
We were very saddened to hear that Amp Fiddler’s teenage son, Dorian, passed away last Friday, May 1st, due to undisclosed health issues. It’s terrible when a parent loses a child — just not the way it’s supposed to be — and we wish the great musician and his family our most heartfelt condolences and…
LOCAL FESTS: ADAPT OR DIE
What brings people to Pontiac? Well, there’s the Crofoot, Clutch Cargo’s, Erebus — which is Halloween-dependent — and the annual summer festival of food and folly known as Chrysler Arts, Beats & Eats. With the automaker announcing bankruptcy last week, it’s no big surprise the namesake festival would take a hit. The annual budget of…
FOR DEDICATED FOLLOWERS OF FAKE-IS-THE-NEW-REAL IRONY
I hate fucking hipsters; or, individuality as defined by Madison Ave. and Jim Jones. This site is inspired.
Sonny Rollins returns to Detroit!
No sooner had we printed a joke about Sonny Rollins (from the Detroit Jazz Festival press conference) than we got word that Sonny himself is returning to town: Next year, on April 6, as part of the Bank of America Paradise Jazz Series at the Max. Rollins played at Detroit’s Music Hall in 2007, and…
Fuck Cleveland! The gauntlet is thrown down.
Frank Lewis, the editor of our sister paper, The Cleveland Scene, sent us links to these two video hits on You Tube, but insisted that we had to watch them both in order, first one and then the other. And we did. And we have three thoughts. Thought No. 1: Let us not, brothers and…
New paper planned for Hamtramck
It’s been one hell of a news week in Hamtramck. American Axle, one of the city’s biggest employers and taxpayers, announced plans to shift the majority of its operations to Mexico. A member of the city council is being investigated on charges she lives outside the city, and a sworn deposition from her was scheduled…
Jazz fest stars (and ‘forgetting’ Sonny Rollins)
We went to the kick-off press conference for the Detroit International Jazz Festival on Wednesday for the news, but we also got a laugh from artist-in-residence John Clayton. We’ll get to the salient details of upcoming Labor Day weekend fest, a 30th anniversary blowout, but not just yet. John, the bassist in the Clayton Brothers…
LOCAL MUSIC TIDBITS
*If anyone’s headed to New Orleans this weekend for the Jazz Fest and/or the Ponderosa Stomp (it seems the latter event has become just as exciting, if not more so, than the Jazz Fest itself over the last several years, presenting as it does so many fairly obscure but still legendary music mavens), watch for…
No longer retarded
Reader wants Dan to stop using that word
All icing, no cake
Based on an Ellis short story collection, the film follows a large number of depraved pretty young things doing awful stuff to each other in 1983 Los Angeles, all very loosely orbiting a pair of concerts by a cultish new wave rock band called the Informers. Watching these scaly lizard people bake in the sun…
After the fall
We need to get past the hyperbole and denial if we’re going to cope
Sin Nombre
The film tracks the intersecting paths of two young South American teens doing whatever it takes to find some kind of better future, though they approach that destiny in radically different ways. Sayra (Gaitan) is a sweet-natured Venezuelan girl, northward bound on a freight train with her father and uncle, and Willy (Flores), is a…
Night and Day
THURSDAY • 30 ARE WE REALLY THE NEW BERLIN? ICH BIN EIN DETROITER A panel of planners, architects, designers and urban dwellers, including Gina Reichert of Design 99, Anirban Adhya of Lawrence Tech’s Detroit Studio and SYNCH Research Group, and MOCAD Director Luis Croquer, will discuss the new strategies for urban development being implemented in…
Earth
This dazzling tour of troubled ecosystems around the world doesn’t shy away from the daily survival struggles for myriad creatures, from the tiny to the gigantic. This cinematic menagerie includes exotic tropical birds, majestic humpback whales, playful baboons, massive herds of Caribou that stretch to the horizon, as well as those cuddly moneymakers, penguins. James…
A day in the life
Rock ‘N’ Roll I’ve thought About the many nights Of rock ‘n’ roll I’ve spent In my youth Hardcore — My grandma taught me How to rock She hummed Elvis While she sewed my pants She liked Elvis. She liked him so much That she bought me a black leather jacket With zippers and a…
The Soloist
This should’ve been an expansion of journalist Steve Lopez’s insightful populism, but director John Wright fills it with visual excess and artsy detachment. Based on a series of L.A. Times columns and an eventual book, The Soloist is an old-fashioned social drama chronicling the real life relationship that developed between reporter Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.)…
Letters to the Editor
Less than best I’d like to award Best Smear Job to Metro Times, for its piece about the Russell Bazaar in the Best of Detroit issue (April 22). I appreciated the nice words about the Russell Industrial Center; then I noticed the smear job on the Bazaar. What is unfortunate about the second half of…
Mindfuck!
Nomo, the Ann Arbor-via-everywhere outfit (or is it the other way around?), started life six years and four records ago as a savvy collective of players, led by multi-instrumentalist Elliot Bergman, playing a homegrown, jazz-influenced take on Afrobeat. They were the kind of ecstatic, loose-tight unit that could light up a club on a slow…
Bank on it
Kim Hodge wasn’t looking for a way to deal with hard economic times when she decided to start a “time bank” in Lathrup Village. It was January of 2008, months before America’s financial mess hit the crisis point, and Hodge was merely searching for a way to better connect with others in this Oakland County…
Love Me Tonight
Never judge a book by its cover goes the old cliché — and the same obviously applies to CDs. Born and bred in Boise, Idaho, John Nemeth, the astounding singer-harmonica player, may be looking all GQ on the sleeve of Love Me Tonight, but the content is anything but. Nemeth continues a direction he initiated…
Public Animal
In the spirit of last days of school (and, um, the schools actually closing in Detroit) — we’re all hopped up on the new, limited-edition reissue of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out CD. To the point: 1972’s School’s Out is the most underrated album in the Alice Cooper canon — hell, one of the most underrated…
McFreep
Low marks for newspaper’s redesign
On the other hand …
High praise for online newshounds
Last man standing
Dean Aytes is stranded on an island.His home’s an old house next to his store, Lafayette Bait and Tackle, and both are now surrounded by sheets of fresh, white concrete, part of the construction of a potential second bridge to Canada. The project has razed every structure in its path. Except for his. “I am…
Food Stuff
INSTANT CLASSIC — Anybody who’s bought those three-for-a-dollar varieties of Jiffy Mix knows how reliable their drool-proof baking mixes are. But did you know this Michigan-based business is one of the last milling operations of its kind in the state? Or that it was started by housewife Mabel Holmes, who took the family milling business…
Mr. Excitement
“When I was a kid, we moved about every three years, so it kind of prepared me for the life of a touring musician.”So says Bobby Murray, who finally settled down — at least in a sense — in Detroit more than a decade ago, although he’s not as well-known as many other prominent local…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Where the boys aren’t
In a split second the classroom air goes from composed to one thick with female solidarity. You can hear a pin drop. The women leer at the “sacrificial” male student, their eyes like heat-seeking missiles. He said that all women are “biologically engineered to nurture and mother offspring, so why would a woman ever want…
Why can’t Detroit cash in on music?
You might assume the music business is a big element in Detroit’s economy, just as it is in other cities that have made an industry out of their local music scene. Memphis has Beale Street. In Austin, it’s Sixth Street. In New Orleans and Nashville, it’s just about everywhere. All of these cities have made…
Etta James vs. Sasha Fierce: Who’s the tougher diva?
Awwww! We’re a nation of apologists all right, saying exactly what’s on our minds one minute and then furiously backpedaling the next because someone’s feelings got hurt. Foobah! Etta James still has every right to be pissed, getting passed over to perform her signature song, “At Last,” at President Obama’s inauguration. Instead, the planners picked…
Chapter and verse
The Letting Go Little by little It starts. In Siberia, I see a reflection— Myself standing still In the afternoon shadow Of ancient Russia. I know now what I have never realized Before. I am alone In darkness— a shade Of myself here On another cold Siberian sidewalk, So many miles away From Moscow, And…
New Mexican
Chef Luis Garza on why Novi’s Rojo Bistro is much more than just another Mexican joint
Couch Trip
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts Koch Lorber It’s a good thing Philip Glass didn’t take it upon himself to direct this biographical feature; had he done that, in all likelihood, each of these dozen sections would have lasted an hour and would have featured him repeating the same sentence over and over…
Unreal
TV hosts just ain’t what they used to be. If Flavor Flav, Donald Trump and Dog the Bounty Hunter can star in their own series, and Octomom Nadya Suleman is negotiating for a reality program, why can’t Monica Conyers have a show? The weekly Ask the Councilwoman exhibition, showcasing Detroit’s most polarizing pol, premiered this…
Out of the park
On the ground floor of the Belcrest, the lounge is decorated with beer paraphernalia and 14 flat-screen TVs, seating around 80 with space for 30 on a patio overlooking the Belcrest’s renowned art-deco swimming pool. Unlike full-service restaurants in sports bars, such as the Broadcast Booth and Harry’s, Lefty’s is primarily a watering hole that…
Motor City Cribs
Queen Bee’s hive: Inside Karen Neal’s ranch home
Music
"What would life be without music?" asks Robin Horlock on the opening title song to his new record. "Fairly dull" is the obvious answer. After all, without the notes and chords, Justin Timberlake would be tirelessly gyrating to nothing but his own ego. Leonard Cohen would be grumbling to himself in the corner of a…
NINE MILES SOUTH OF 8 MILE
Brian Barr: Tom (oil on canvas) Across the Detroit River (over or under, it’s your choice), just south of the Motor City, you’ll wander around ’til you get to the Art Gallery of Windsor — 401 Riverside Drive West. Worthy of a trip year round, the current exhibition will surely pique your Detroit-lovin’-artful-interest through July…
