Cover Story
The ballad of Kenny T
Kenny Tudrick springs up from the couch, heads to the kitchen and returns balancing carefully a platter of cut vegetables and ranch dip, which he places atop a rack of recording gear. He grins and announces awkwardly, "Check me out. Hosting, man." Down-dressed up in Y-back suspenders, white V-neck T-shirt, flared jeans with a big…
The Walking Beat (@Wiggle & Jam It)
Right, so…Wiggle and Jam It… That’s a new concert-documentary series hosted by the Lager House and its second installment is scheduled for next week: August 14th. … “Yeah, I don’t really know anything about it yet,” says Steve McCauley, singer/guitarist of The Walking Beat, one of the bands slated to perform this Tuesday. “We’ll see.…
City Slang: Matt Dmits hits Corktown
Outlaw country singer/songwriter Matt Dmits headlines a great bill at the Corktown Tavern on Saturday, August 25. The bill also includes Jeremy Porter & the Tucos and Jeff German & the Blankety Blanks (from Columbus, Ohio). “Matt Dmits is a Detroit native who has been playing music for local audiences for the past ten years.…
City Slang: PT’s Revenge at the Stick
Last Tuesday at the Magic Stick, and the place is full thanks to the visit of almost-veteran pop-punk band the Bouncing Souls, who will later inform Detroit about summer vacations and being a hopeless romantic. Things of that sort. The Souls are a great band, and they brought two adequate opening bands with them too.…
Detroit bluesman Johnnie Bassett dies at 76
Johnnie Bassett, a blues eminence and a connection for today’s Detroit musicians to the era of Fortune and early Motown, has died at age 76. The singer-guitarist-front man died Saturday night at St. John Hospital in Grosse Pointe, losing a battle with cancer that had hospitalized him about three weeks earlier. “It sounds trite,…
City Slang: Stewart Francke to play the Ark
Local singer / songwriter Stewart Francke will play the Ark in Ann Abor on Friday, August 17. A statement says that Francke will be “playing songs from all 12 of his albums plus covers fans have come to love. We aim to make it an experience money cannot buy. (But it will cost you a…
State Supreme Court orders EM question on ballot
In a ruling that is admittedly complicated, the bottom line is clear: The Michigan Supreme Court has decided that a proposed referendum on the state’s controversial emergency manager law should be placed before voters on the November ballot. It is a ruling filled with split decisions on various aspects of the case involving the size…
Weekend Hit List
Friday 3rd Crownival Crow Manor in Detroit plays host to the fourth annual Crownival Friday, which appears to be a celebration of fire-breathing and great underground music. It’s like a backyard festival, and the entertainment… [READ MORE] Taproot When nu-metal bands like Linkin Park were threatening to take over the world, Ann Arbor’s Taproot were being…
City Slang: Tap and ballet – which to choose
Fans of dance have a tough choice to make on August 18. On one hand, there’s the Stars of Russian Ballet Gala at the Power Center for Performing Arts in Ann Arbor from 7 p.m. However, on that same day and around the same time there’s the Masters of Tap at Orchestra Hall in Detroit.…
Total Recall
Total Recall| C- The 1990 Total Recall, with its parade of space mutants, exploding eyeballs, psychic conjoined twins and tri-breasted hookers, was very far from subtle, but certainly memorable. The remake, even more loosely adapted from a 1966 short story by the ubiquitous Philip K. Dick, is a visual feast and an intellectual famine, a…
Ruby Sparks
Ruby Sparks | B+ The "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," a screen archetype currently personified by Zooey Deschanel — but stretching back through Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Audrey Hepburn etc. — gets a clever tweaking as Zoe Kazan takes on as Ruby Sparks’ title character. True to genre tropes, Kazan’s whip-smart interpretation of the fire-haired charmer…
NAACP asks feds to enter fray over ballot measure
The Detroit Branch of the NAACP has sent letters to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade asking that the Justice Department assist the organization in its attempts to have a referendum on the state’s controversial emergency manager law placed on the November ballot. Intervention by the feds is justified, the letter…
City Slang: Videos from Boldy James and House Shoes
House Shoes has a new video available for the song “Castles” (featuring Jimetta Rose), from the album Let It Go, out now via Tres Records. The video can be seen here. The song is dedicated to J-1 “The Deer”. The video was directed by Greg Ponstingl. In addition, rapper Boldy James has a video available…
City Slang: Mayer Hawthorne to perform DJ set at Motors & Music Experience
Mayer Hawthorne and Detroit Lions captain Dominic Raiola will perform DJ sets at the Motor and Music Experience at the grounds of the Pontiac Silverdome on August 18. Other local artists performing include Trick Trick, The High Strung and Dutch Pink. National acts on the bill include the Stone Temple Pilots, Shiny Toy Guns, and…
Raising up this city
The Motor City Blight Busters, a nonprofit organization in the Old Redford neighborhood of Detroit, has bought seven houses it plans to demolish in order to create a community garden. Those demolitions will be the centerpiece of the group’s efforts on Saturday as neighborhood groups across the city observe Neighborhoods Day. Neighborhoods Day, the brainchild…
A day in the life
For about a year now, the Detroit Police Department has done something it’s never done before — it sends out a daily report chronicling the previous day’s major crimes — the shootings, the stabbings, the carjackings, the armed robberies. It’s an ongoing narrative of the worst behavior of the city’s worst residents. There’s not enough…
Electric Corpse’s dark shadows
Electric Corpse’s self-titled debut EP is available now and can be found on their Facebook page. Think "goth," and images of Anne Rice-era vampires (pre-Twilight) and black leather-clad bands such as Bauhaus, the Sisters of Mercy and Alien Sex Fiend will often come flooding forward. The word became a cliché in the music world long…
Font affront
At first, we here at the Hits thought a right-wing attempt to keep the proposed emergency manager referendum from being placed on the November ballot was merely a contemptible and desperate attempt to thwart the democratic process. After listening to oral arguments at the Michigan Supreme Court last week, though, it became clear to us…
Public spirit
Social Kitchen & Bar 225 E. Maple Rd., Birmingham 248-594-4200 socialkitchenandbar.com Handicap accessible Brunch: $12-$20 Dinner: $25-$50 Open 11 a.m.-midnight daily Restaurant writers generally depict numerous details of any given establishment — wine, atmosphere, music, location, service. But most would likely agree that of paramount importance is the actual food on the plate, the flavors…
Money-go-round
The watchdogs over at the Michigan Campaign Finance Network have been hard at work pumping out press releases intended to keep the rest of us abreast of what’s going on when it comes to the funding of various political campaigns. The Lansing-based nonprofit is an important resource, doing the sort of number-crunching that causes the…
SROS Lords get primal
Even if you haven’t seen the Detroit punk band SROS Lords, you might have noticed their drummer. Front and center on any given night when there happens to be some weirdo punk band playing in town, dressed in his trademark bandana, wife-beater and shorts, Jamie Cherry is usually fist-pumping and flailing his gigantic, rotund frame…
tUnE-yArDs’ jagged pop smarts
tUnE-yArDs and the Jamaican Queens perform Thursday, Aug. 2, at the Crofoot Ballroom, 1 S. Saginaw St., Pontiac, 248-858-9333 Here’s how a tUnE-yArDs show begins. A rather diverse crowd filters in. Not just earnest, true-believer hipsters, but high school kids and seniors, young married couples, some folks who look like they wandered in from a…
Food Stuff
Ann Arbor switch-up — Earlier this year, we had announced that the busy crowd at Ann Arbor’s Blue Tractor BBQ & Brewery would have more elbow room. The restaurant expanded its seating capacity by acquiring the adjoining space of Café Habana, which moved downstairs to 207 E. Washington St., becoming Habana Cellar Lounge. It turns…
The Watch
The Watch | C In this economy, even alien invasions are subject to downsizing, and in recent years we’ve seen extraterrestrials outsmarted by a runty London street gang (Attack the Block), cowpokes (Cowboys and Aliens), ’70s middle school kids (Super 8), and most ridiculously, by a drunk Mel Gibson with a baseball bat and a…
Conyers’ last stand?
Yes, he knew Martin Luther King Jr., and can show you photographs of them together, working for civil rights in Mississippi. Yes, John Conyers was the man who did more than anyone else to make MLK’s birthday a federal holiday. He came out in favor of impeaching Richard Nixon before almost anyone else did. He…
Letters to the Editor
White rapper story brings caustic response
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 29: Can’t Explain
It’s early. As usual, the only one to be awake before me is Shades. We’re in LA, and he’s run off to check on some things he’s left here. That isn’t some cover for a drug run, the man actually has stuff here. I have no idea what, but, you know, the man and his…
City Slang: Weekly music reviews
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…
Beekeepers
The Beekeepers are a band I’d rather let speak for themselves. When punks play jazz inside a carnival tent after closing, loony warbles, ritzy tophat-tweaked shuffles, hi-hats over haunting drones, irreverent lyrics of nightmarish frivolity, saxophones like heffalumps and woozles whirling up and down checkered Escher-ian stairwells, drums keeping the heart beating and the…
