POWERFUL STUFF
Patti onstage at the Michigan Theater, with son Jackson in background on bass. (MT photo: Doug Coombe) Patti Smith show at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater last Thursday night was pretty impressive. She’s been on a roll the last few times I’ve seen her. The only review I’ve read of the show thus far accused her…
FRUT LOOPS
In a week full of reunion band shows — the Stooges also reconvene onstage at Meadowbrook on Tuesday — another noteworthy Michigan band Frut is getting back together for two shows on Friday and Saturday nights (Oct. 10th and 11th) at the Rec Bowl in their native Mount Clemens. Not only were they regulars at…
SECOND COMING, IN A WORD?
Speaking of Kid Rock, he had this to say about his new album, Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus, which hits on October 9th: “If you just had to play one American rock ‘n’ roll album for somebody, this would be it.” I’m sure I’ll be junking my entire Grand Funk collection on October 10th, then. And…
SILLIES BUSINESS
Another reunion show hits this week, as the Sillies celebrate their 30th anniversary on Friday, Aug. 10th at the Ritz in Warren. Only leader-singer-guitarist Ben Waugh and guitarist Tommy Kilowatt remain from the original unit that was sorta Bookies’ “house band” three decades ago (Waugh — ne Scott Campbell — was co-founder of the legendary…
JAZZ ON A SUMMER NIGHT
The Jazz Cafe Discovery Series is currently booking its fall season and is looking for bands to perform live. All styles are welcome. Debut performances occur most Tuesday nights on the Absopure Stage of the Jazz Cafe, in the lower level of the Music Hall, in downtown Detroit. Bands invited back for an encore performance are…
AND, FINALLY…
IMPEACHMENT NOW! Q: What does George W. Bush think of Roe vs. Wade? A: The president doesn’t care how people got out of New Orleans. Anyone catch Dick (such an appropriate first name) Cheney on Larry King this week? Man, this is one of the few times in history where a person’s inner ugliness is…
“THANK YOU, THANK YOU VERY MUCH”
White Stripes leader Jack White is going Hollywood again, this time playing the King of rock ‘n’ roll in a new music bio flick spoof by the maker of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and this summer’s hit Knocked Up. White portrays Elvis Presley in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which is being described as a…
NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING DETROITER?
As far as we know, only one band includes members that have been nominated for both a Nobel Peace Prize and a Grammy Award. The band, of course, is U2. That could change, however, if former Detroiter/current Denver resident Mark Norton (aka Ivan Suvanjieff) and his wife Dawn Engle get nominated for an award this…
A Glimpse of Detroit Jazz
James Carter Quintet Detroit Institute of Arts Friday July, 27 2007 If James Carter was a pugilist instead of, pound for pound, one of the most talented saxophonists of his generation, he would be the kind of fighter celebrated for his power punches. And Friday night (July 29th), at the DIA, Carter came out swinging.…
I GET MAIL!
Following are some of the best e-mails I received in response to my first Metro Times piece. (Leah Warshaw, who wrote one of the very best, is the only writer who gave me permission to use her name because she’s the only one I’ve spoken to thus far. But if anyone else wants their name…
PROVE IT. JUST THE FACTS…
My introduction column seems to have induced a few fun online fireworks and flaming, with posters believing that I’ll be incapable of doing this job. There were some especially interesting ones here at Webvomit.com, the blog of some anonymous but seemingly knowledgeable dude who’s dubbed himself Jasper. This one, after I got involved, seemed to…
Colors in motion
Ernest Fackler is a propeller … he’s one who propels. As a painter and as a musician (guitarist and singer for local band Heroes & Villains), not only does he himself propel, but all his creations tend to be studies in propulsion as well. Even the movement between the paintings faithfully represents Fackler’s formal and…
Save it
‘Abstinence education’ hasn’t helped.
Art Bar
A poetic look at male pattern baldness.
All the Young Dudes
“People don’t want to talk about sex, drugs and alcohol anymore,” sighs Jeremy Lublin, singer for Toledo’s glam-punk upstarts, We Are the Fury. “We were playing on the Warped tour and I said something about drinking and drugs, and it was like taboo. Kids were booing. Now, granted, we were in Salt Lake City, but…
Fatal indifference
Silence on Sudan is deafening.
Free music now!
When it comes to getting the biggest bang out of your Detroit electronic music dollar, you can’t get much better than free. Yes, artists need to be paid for their labor — but whenever possible, why not take their payment out of concessions made at the liquor bar (or from the kitchen, or coffee and…
Killing our future
Education is key to Michigan’s future.
Earache in my eye
Ivan’s Childhood Criterion Collection Ivan’s Childhood may be one of the lesser works in the titanic oeuvre of Andrei Tarkovsky, only because we know the genius he would aspire to later in his short life. For most other directors, this humanist anti-war parable would be the zenith of their careers. Fans of Tarkovsky masterworks like…
Letters to the Editor
Cure the system Thank you for your article about Sicko and the movement for HR 676 (“Sicko’s reel change,” Metro Times, July 25). We have been working since 2003 to build union support for Conyers’ national single-payer bill. We believe that for a national health care bill to pass it must be big, and bold,…
Food stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Pop’s punctilious punster praises and pans platters.
Struck out
Council: Time to demolish Tiger Stadium.
I Know Who Killed Me
America’s reigning Little Miss Fuck-Up, Lindsay Lohan, has now appeared in a movie that’s so bad that pop-culture ironists will have a field day with it for years. From the moment blood starts dripping down the stripper’s pole in the opening sequence, you get the feeling we’ve come full-circle: I Know is basically The Parent…
Pudd’nhead Hoekstra
Michigan representative on Ashcroft’s Jell-O.
A bistro in disguise
Bill Roberts, proprietor of the successful Beverly Hills Grill and Streetside Seafood, opened this neighborhood tavern in June 2007 on Fourth Street in Royal Oak. With mohair booths and bentwood chairs, noted restaurant designer Ron Rea has created an ersatz 1930s tavern updated to a 2007 bistro. Grazers can easily make a hearty meal of…
Reasonable doubt: Part I
Leaving his Upper Peninsula house on Nov. 9, 1986, a cold Sunday night, Frederick Freeman drove down to metro Detroit through Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. He needed to limit his time on Michigan’s roadways. He was a wanted man in this state. Stopping at roadside pay phones, he checked in frequently with his pregnant girlfriend,…
Book ends
The protagonist of David Markson’s latest novel, The Last Novel (Shoemaker & Hoard, $15, 190 pp.), is known simply as the Novelist. He’s a character who, we are told over and over again, is “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. All of which obviously means that this is the last book Novelist is going to write.” Most of…
Eyewitness to what?
Taking a hard look at witness identification.
No Reservations
In case you hadn’t noticed, foodie-ism in America has hit an alarming all-time high. Never one to let a zeitgeist go unexploited, Hollywood has answered the call with the gauzy romantic comedy No Reservations. Funny that the one featuring animated rats would have more depth and insight. Based on the 2002 German import Mostly Martha,…
89X Bash goes burbs
Past 89X Birthday Bashes downtown have been everything a Midwest summer concert should be — featuring half-naked teens, plenty of hip shakin’ and those oversized plastic cups brimming with frosty brew while a number of run-of-the-mill, Top 40-ish “new rock” bands (along with some local elites) paid homage to the Detroit Skyline and two Detroit…
Black Sheep
What is it about New Zealanders? Watching Jonathan King’s mutant flesh-eating sheep movie, one wonders whether Peter Jackson’s early gross-out films (Dead Alive, Meet the Feebles, Bad Taste) were the chicken or the egg. Few directors can take characters we care about and dunk them into a depraved stew of visceral horror, gore-filled comedy, and…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 1 Urban Garden Tour ISSUES AND LEARNING Like weeds that somehow spring through asphalt, nature-minded folks have turned vacant, rubble-strewn Detroit lots into lush farmland. The 10th annual Urban Garden Tour will provide a view of the fresh, organic food system in Detroit. It includes stops in Woodbridge gardens and barnyards, Earth Works…
Rescue Dawn
This Vietnam era P.O.W. tale has all the elements of a big-budget action yarn, expect that it’s all true. Protagonist Dieter was a weird dude, a German immigrant inspired to become a flier by the Americans he saw bomb his town as a small boy. This indefatigable passion for flight is what sustains him, after…
Great Scots
The Highland Games are just a stone’s throw away.
Space burn
A sort of snooty, college-educated British cousin to the testosterone-soaked action of Armageddon, Sunshine hits many of the same beats as its Hollywood predecessor, but cloaks its basic narrative in a haze of trippy images. Where Bruce Willis once led a ragtag team of pilots into space to drill apart a Earth-shattering meteoroid, now the…
Vicarious enjoyment
A: Come on, Dan! Your response to You Gonna Eat That? was off the mark. I’m 100 percent gay and I occasionally watch hetero cunnilingus in porn, especially if the man is attractive. Another gay friend of mine feels the same way. Assuming my buddy isn’t YGET, that’s three of us right there. So there…
The Simpsons Movie
After 18 years and 400 episodes, the Simpson family makes its multiplex debut. Though the short (86 minutes) and breezy film is predictably clever, occasionally brilliant and unfailingly entertaining it still feels very much like an elongated episode. Which is the best way to sum up the picture; consider its three acts as separate episodes…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Suspiria
Young American ballerina “Suzy,” played appealingly by Jessica Harper, travels to a fancy German ballet school only to discover that it’s a confusing, murderous, maggot-infested mess. Between her neurotic roommate, a cruel ballet teacher and a supremely metrosexual love interest — Suzy’s got her cute ’70s hands full. Throw in a coven of witches and…
Motor City Cribs
Invincible roosts on Detroit’s Grand Boulevard.
Who’s Your Caddy?
Who’s your Caddy isn’t just a wretched exercise in formulaic hack writing, lazy acting and appalling stereotyping — it’s also just sort of icky. It’s the kind of picture that makes you want to take a shower afterward, as seedy in its own way as a mid-’70s soft-core porn. When multi-Platinum-selling rapper Chris “C-Note” Hawkins…
