MADIGAN FOR PREZ!
Back in the 1980s, Detroit’s Bob Madigan led a demented, noisy, drug-addled band called Slaughterhouse. Madigan’s brainchild, the band not only produced a chaotic and disturbing din, its stage shows would involve videos of slaughterhouse meat processing, seizure-inducing strobe lights, and, on one occasion even a pair of clamps with live voltage so audience members…
WALDEN: A FRIEND REMEMBERS
Marion Hayden, Donald Walden’s bassist in the Free Radicals, e-mailed these thoughts regarding her late friend”. The world of jazz in general and Detroit in particular has truly lost a giant. As a protege of Barry Harris, Donald was the link from bebop styles through post-bop styles. His style of playing was very unique and…
WALDEN REMEMBERED
“I am a tenor player in the tradition of Newk, Trane, Dexter, maybe … although I don’t sound like any of them singularly, maybe an amalgamation of them all, but more like myself than anyone else.” That was the way Donald Walden summed up his style. Walden was all about the concept of standing on…
Sweet dreams
Ken Schramm wrote the book on mead. Borrowing its title from the very first how-to book written in English, The Compleat Meadmaker has sold 14,000 copies to potential home honey-wine makers since 2003 and is now in its fourth printing. He has been crusading for this historical yet little-known beverage since 1988. What started as…
War front
50 years of government deception — all in one film.
Couch Trip
Motel Hell (Kevin Connor, 1980) MGM “Meat’s meat, a man’s gotta eat,” chirps Farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun in a wildly over-the-top performance), the proprietor of Farmer Vincent’s Fritters. It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters, none tastier than the briny tourists who happen upon Motel Hello. Taking a cue from Psycho,…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
First discs from the CBGB vaults.
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
Finally, a film that addresses political repression, religious identity and cultural assimilation in the context of an intimate coming-of-age tale, and does it without cloying sentimentality or didactic sloganeering. The story is this: What 12-year-old Mauro (Michel Joelsas) doesn’t know won’t hurt him. That’s the logic his cautious parents use as they leave him in…
Women in the kitchen
Due to a change of plans, Chef Sharon Juergens can’t do a sit-down interview. It’s a little after 1 p.m., rush hour at downtown Birmingham’s Streetside Seafood, and one of her cooks didn’t make it in. She beams in sweaty, red-faced welcome though, and says she’s happy to answer questions while she works. As Juergens…
CJ7
This low-rent, Hong Kong version of E.T. is a disappointing entry from director Stephen Chow. Little Dicky (Xu Jiao cross-dressing as a boy) comes from the slums, where his hard-working dad, Li (Chow), scrapes together every cent they have to send him to private school. Unfortunately, Dicky, in his soiled uniform and tattered shoes, is…
Oasis-building
Shopping in early spring, the only local foods that Patrick Crouch, field and greenhouse coordinator for Earth Works, can find at Eastern Market are rhubarb, local eggs, some meat and remnants of last year’s harvest that people have held over the winter — cabbage, potatoes, apples. Spring rhubarb and asparagus won’t arrive for another month,…
CJ7
Little Dicky (Xu Jiao cross-dressing as a boy) comes from the slums, where his hard-working dad, Li (Stephen Chow), scrapes together every cent they have to send him to private school. Unfortunately, Dicky, in his soiled uniform and tattered shoes, is scorned by both teachers and students. Worse, he’s getting poor grades. One night, while…
War correspondent
How Great Lakes water is managed, protected and distributed might well prove to be the North American environmental issue of the 21st century, not only for the 40 million Canadians and Americans who live in the lakes’ basin, but for other areas of the countries, where growing populations are leading to water shortages. In his…
December’s seniors
Shine is a vanity project from a band and filmmaker who have nothing left to prove and little to be vain about. It’s a warts-and-all peek at this particular performance — a charity benefit for Bill Clinton’s 60th birthday. It’s a look at Scorsese — who used 12 Stones songs in four of his films,…
Year’s harvest
We didn’t get recipes. We didn’t talk to that many experts, sommeliers, gourmands, gourmets or gastronomes. Or send our photographers to take sumptuous spreads of haute cuisine. For this year’s Food Issue, we’re checking in with the serious enthusiasts and the "lifers." We visited the farmers markets, talked to kitchen staff, visited with "freegan" Dumpster…
Leatherheads
Though it clearly esteems to be a classic screwball comedy on par with the work of George Cukor, Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges, Leatherheads is really well-made mediocrity. Some of the fault lies with Clooney’s awkwardly paced direction. Some of it lies with bland-as-plain-toast co-star John Krasinski. But most of the fault falls to screenwriters…
Our disgraceful Dems
Time to give the hook to Michigan hacks.
Nim’s Island
This adaptation of Wendy Orr’s novel gives equal weight to the interior and exterior lives of Nim Rusoe (Abigail Breslin) and Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster). Eleven-year-old Nim and her marine biologist father Jack (Gerard Butler of 300 and P.S. I Love You) have made their own off-the-grid Utopia on a remote South Pacific island. They’re…
Profiles in forage
Who would have dreamed 10 years ago that food would be as political as it is today? Between genetically modified plants, rising oil costs driving prices skyward, and the glut of processed “foods,” our food sources seem more insecure than ever. For most concerned families, it’s a challenge to figure out what’s on supermarket shelves…
Fables of the reconstruction
When R.E.M. first burst on the national scene in the early ’80s with Murmur and Reckoning, their first two albums, it was like magic. Perhaps they were just in the right place at the right time — but they filled a void in a post-punk world, giving modern rock ‘n’ roll the jump it needed,…
Why Johnnny can’t play
Cat Stevens would be proud. Then again, this might be the kind of depressing realization that prompted him to become Yusuf Islam. Though his song of nearly 40 years ago is nowhere to be heard, a new locally crafted documentary suggests the same haunting musical question Stevens asked then still demands answers today: Where Do…
Attack & Release
At once old-timey but forward-thinking, the 11 songs on Attack & Release boast the intimate homegrown shagginess of the Black Keys’ previous releases, but with numerous nuanced musical and production shimmers winningly integrated by producer Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz). The Black Keys — the Akron, Ohio-based duo of guitarist-vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick…
Her world, my world
A childhood far different from mine in the ’60s.
Still
For anyone who remembers Waukesha, Wisconsin’s BoDeans as an ’80s "college rock" band, it’s not much of a shock to now see them as an "alt-country" band. And if they want to wear cowboy hats and sing with a little extra Western twang, who’s to stop them? But with No Depression magazine folding and other…
Letters to the Editor
Blowing their stacks Regarding Curt Guyette’s cover story, “The big burn,” Metro Times, April 2), we have firsthand experience with Detroit’s incinerator, living about one mile from it. Ever since moving here a few years ago, we’ve suffered miserable symptoms and the correlation is quite obvious. We’ve lived in many different cities and all of…
In Search of Mozart
Writer and director Phil Grabsky barely acknowledges the film responsible for casting Mozart as an irresponsible fop. Instead, this lengthy, didactic biographical documentary is made for music lovers, but not necessarily moviegoers. It’s informative but perfunctory, the kind of thorough and rote recitation best appreciated by the already converted. Where Grabsky excels is in the…
Brush it off
Comparisons to Pavement and Pixies don’t faze Tapes ‘n Tapes.
The Ruins
As horror films go, The Ruins pretty much gives you what you came for: Hapless teens destined for body bags in a creepy locale. Four American college students on vacation in Mexico hook up with a German tourist who tells them his archeologist brother has discovered a Mayan ruin; do they want to go check…
Who are you?
Who am I? Where do I come from? Where do I belong? These three questions are the focus of the current exhibition at the Oakland University Art Gallery. Revolutionizing Cultural Identity: Photography and the Changing Face of Immigration features photo-based works by 11 artists who reside in the United States and Canada. As much as…
Night and Day
Wednesday-Saturday • 9-12 International Pop Overthrow PURE POP FOR NOW PEOPLE Nicking its name from Chicago trio Material Issue’s winning debut album, the International Pop Overthrew fest launched in Los Angeles in ’97 before spreading to numerous other cities, from Milwaukee and Chapel Hill to Liverpool, England, home of the original and definitive power-pop band.…
Under the Same Moon
On a Sunday morning, Carlos Reyes (Adrián Alonso) and his mother Rosario (Kate del Castillo) make their way to payphones for their weekly call. It’s Carlos’ ninth birthday, and the conversation reflects their deep connection as well as growing frustration. Rosario left her young son in the care of his grandmother four years ago when…
Really cooking
I have scars on my hands and arms. Ugly, discolored scars of all shapes that dot and slash across my arms — they just won’t go away. Some are from searing metal, some from knives, others from hot grease. My scars, like those of many brave others, tell stories that would have James Bond stumbling…
The ‘P’ word
A question of perjury in Kym Worthy’s office.
Woman on the Beach
Kim Jung-Rae (Kim Seung-Woo) is a famous, burnt-out director, struggling to finish a script and in desperate need of a scenery change to stimulate the old creative flow. So he hits the road for a sleepy beach resort, dragging along his assistant (Kim Tae-Woo), who in turn invites his semi girlfriend Moon-Sook (Ko Hyun-Joung) to…
Mama’s boy
‘I wouldn’t have this space if it weren’t for her.’
Motor City Cribs
Most people know William Hafer as the man behind the huge drum sound of the Paybacks and — along with People’s Records/soul DJ supreme Brad Hales — the in-your-face rhythmic grounding to Human Eye’s musical assault. What not enough people know is that Billy’s also a brilliant painter with an MFA in painting from Wayne…
