Jammin’ for Donald
Sunday, at the Carhartt Amphitheatre Stage, alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett’s highly anticipated performance sucked. At the very least, it didn’t measure up to his stellar performance from 2007. Last year, the Detroit native damn near blew up the Absopure Waterfront Stage. Garrett had me so hyped up, in fact, that after his set ended, I…
But Have You Seen The Sweded Version?
So, back in February Michael Gondry’s film Be Kind Rewind landed in theaters with a thud. It’s total gross in the U.S was around $11 million. The plot, as I described it in my review was: “Mike (Mos Def) is the hard-working cashier of a dispossessed video rental shop in Passaic, N.J. Entrusted with watching…
The show stoppers
Saturday was offiicialy the first full day of music at the 29th Detroit International Jazz Festival. It was also the day I realized it was impossible for anyone to hear all the music the festival organizers had scheduled. I bet other journalists assigned to cover the four-day event felt the same way. But, hey, that’s…
HOW SWEET IT IS
You should never attend any jazz performance –especially one headlined by multi-Grammy winner vocalist Dianne Reeves and native Philadelphian bassist Christian McBride — on an empty stomach. You’ll need the fuel because chances are you’ll be dancing non-stop during both sets. With that in mind, Friday evening, after I picked up my media credentials for…
JAZZ BLAHGING…
Oh, and before I forget, MT jazz critic Charles L. Latimer will be posting reviews and commentary about the Detroit International Jazz Festival throughout the long Labor Day Weekend. Look for reports here beginning, I imagine, this coming Sunday. And have a save holiday…
HE’S SO GLAD…
Speaking of Motor City legends, former SRC lead guitarist Gary Quackenbush will be playing every Thursday night in September at PJ’s Lager House in Corktown, with the series kicking off this coming Thursday, September 4th at 10 p.m. Quackenbush was a founding member of SRC, which was signed to Capitol Records during the flurry of…
KEEPING UP WITH MR. SMITH…OR RODRIGUEZ RULES!
Got an e-mail from our pal Matthew Smith (why do my fingers always want to type “Matthew Sweet” when addressing this dude?), alerting us to another of his last minute gigs — and since it’s taken me several days to find the time to post this, the item is really “last minute” as I type…
What Hollywood celebrities bring to Michigan
So, I’m standing at the Ann Arbor Whole Foods deli counter waiting for my turn to get a sandwich and I hear this voice that sounds awfully familiar. It takes me about 12 seconds to realize it’s Juliette Lewis’ voice. Weird, I know. After all, her Hollywood star wattage isn’t exactly incandescent. But I have…
Golson’s golden era
We caught up with the hyper-busy Benny Golson as he was in the midst of rehearsing a new band for a club debut and recording session. Benny Golson’s New Jazztet recalls the group he co-led in the early ’60s and in subsequent revivals with his frequent musical partner, the late Art Farmer. But rather than…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Couch Trip
Madam O Synapse Films There’s a litany of reasons why people don’t like exploitation flicks. They’re cheap. They’re stupid. They’re violent. They degrade women. Blah, blah, blah. Tell us something we don’t know. Really, ever since movies like Child Bride (1935) and Reefer Madness (1936) first defined the genre, the arguments haven’t changed much. And…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Room with a view
In a small room on the third floor of the Purdy-Kresge Library at Wayne State University, an important part of Detroit’s literary and cultural heritage is being collected, sorted and archived. The library already holds a number of special collections, including the Arthur L. Johnson African-American History Collection, but this new project will offer something…
Poet Index
The Poets: 1. Sarah Addae, “Sunstruck.” 2. Saladin Ahmed, “Stereo Links.” 3. Ron Allen, “The Phraseology of Donald Goines.” 4. Alise Alousi “Trumbull Song.” 5. Ron Allen, “The Phraseology of Donald Goines.” 6. Caroline Maun, “Lovegrove through the Looking Glass.” 7. Mitzi Alvin, “Motoring.” 8.Olivia B. Ambrogio, “They Say God Marks.” 9. Alvin Aubert, “You’d…
Jazz aficionado highlights
The Detroit International Jazz Fest, in its current manifestation, is so laden with major attractions that it’s difficult to cull a must-see list. What seemed a reasonably big fest a few years ago has undergone a sort of big bang. So consider these just a few diverse suggestions, from major offerings to curios. Major tributes…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
No, Mister Bond! I expect you to read Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #186! Goldfinger — Hello Destiny (Side One Dummy) :: Anyone who thinks that a song called "Handjobs For Jesus" is funny should either be eviscerated by an industrial laser or decapitated by a flying derby — or both. And then have their remains…
Motor City Cribs
The somewhat mild-mannered 70-year-old Hermon Weems put the “delic” in Funkadelic. Truly. Dig this: The Cass Tech alumnus — born Herman Weinis — says he turned the young George Clinton onto the wonders of LSD back in the mid-’60s. In one small moment Weems freed Clinton’s mind and altered soul music as we know it.…
On the Download
Haunted Hearts bow Among the Crescent City diaspora that’s spread to the four corners of the continent post-Katrina is one Michael Hurtt, who’s taken up residence here in the Motor City. Hurtt was a prime mover in the iconoclastic and nattily-dressed ’90s New Orleans-based rock ‘n’ roll combo the Royal Pendeltons (and, as such, part…
Feeding growth
How Southwest Detroit is nourished by its dining scene
Daddy Plays Old-Time New Orleans Jazz
CHAPTER 1 All Gabriels know who they are and where they came from; they know Gabriel tradition and they are proud of the Gabriel name. We are teaching our children about who we are and where we came from so that they can be a part of the tradition and can keep the ball rolling.…
Sisterly love
Dee Dee Sharp is a perfect ambassador for the Jazzfest’s Detroit-Philadelphia summit theme. After all, "Mashed Potato Time," her timeless 1962 hit, mentions a Motown song ("Please Mr. Postman") right in its lyrics. "Mashed Potato Time" — which featured a stunning sax solo that taught Clarence Clemons almost everything he ever needed to know (and…
Seize the day
A pleasant 12-table lunch spot on the Corktown site formerly known as Eph McNally’s. Exceptionally friendly waitstaff, with delicious house-made quality and solid local products. The 24 sandwich selections include every good thing you can think of, including design-your-own options. Though the bread could be better, the salads are loaded but still green. You can…
Night and Day
THURSDAY-SUNDAY • 28-31 PAXAHAU 10-YEAR ANNIVERSARY 10 YEARS AND ROLLING It’s been 10 years since electronic music “moguls” Paxahau stepped onto the scene promoting and uncovering some of D-Town’s best beats. In a mere decade, Paxahau has become a premier electronic music promoter, producer of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, record label and booking agency,…
Race to the bottom
The original Death Race 2000 was a wickedly dark satire of plummeting media values, soulless politicians and the degraded public that let them get away with it. The new Death Race is a lackluster chase movie. Still, Jason Statham, with his steely gaze and Cockney Bruce Willis delivery, is compulsively watchable, even as the movie…
Ross the boss
Miami rap star Rick Ross hits Sterling Heights.
The Longshots
The impetus for Longshots was the 2003 national Pop Warner football tournament, featuring the Harvey Colts from Illinois. What made it a national news story was the appearance of 11-year-old Jasmine Plummer, the first female quarterback in the tournament’s 56-year history. What the filmmakers made of this story is both less and more: for dramatic…
Obama’s hurdles
How can bright, literate Americans still believe he’s a radical muslim?
Traitor
Traitor has so much going for it — decent story, great cast, terrific production values — it’s almost criminal that its virtues are undone by a first-time writer-director who neuters his own political thriller of any thrills. Don Cheadle plays Samir Horn — a Sudanese-born U.S. operative and devout Muslim — who goes into deep…
Lost in Paradise
For Harmonie Park, it’s all plans and no vision
Sweet riffs
Question: How often is power pop so transmittable that you’re left understanding exactly why Staind is huge and George Bush leads the free world? Answer: When it’s a record crammed of sparkle and wonder, harmonies and longing, big riffs and sensitivity that’s obviously too good, too smart and too sweet to nail any sort of…
Outed online
When private peccadilloes make people pariahs
Bitter Company
Love Meets Lust has a good thing going. On the surface, this Detroit quartet’s sound is heavily ’80s-influenced dance pop that easily holds its own among the throng of bands currently pilfering that sound, including Bloc Party and the Rapture. And in a city that’s currently as well-known for birthing techno as it is for…
Foreclosure front
Rubie Curl-Pinkins sat smiling on the front porch of her Detroit home because … well, because she could sit on the front porch of her home.As the activists who helped her stave off eviction from the Holden Street property she’s called home for 45 years held a small rally Friday, Curl-Pinkins needed only three words…
Hamlet 2
Steve Coogan plays a rather ambiguously named Dana, an enthusiastic, daft and questionably swishy Tucson, Ariz., high school drama coach, desperate to reverse his flagging fortunes by putting on an original hit show. Essentially the same plot as Christopher Guest’s “Waiting for Guffman,” the kooky conceits leading up to the big show don’t generate big…
The City Has Moved Too Close to the Sun
I have long said that a bad day in Detroit is better than a good day anywhere else in the world. Maybe I’m just burned out from traveling, but in recent years, I have roamed around the world more than a few times, and these experiences have only solidified my conviction that there’s no place…
Rape match?
Suspect found in crime that put wrong man behind bars for years
Wail of two cities
A city where young hooked-on-boppers woodshedded and workshopped to become some of jazz’s heaviest weights of the ’50s and ’60s.A city that some of today’s heaviest still praise as their hometown. A city where such grand achievements still seem underappreciated. A city dotted with haunted clubs, where the ghosts of gigs past live on in…
Good news, bad news
On the plus side, at least Detroit’s inflation is low
A bass supreme
On a recent evening at the Dirty Dog Jazz Café in Grosse Pointe, Philadelphia native bassist Christian McBride sat next to Terri Pontremoli, executive director of the Detroit International Jazz Festival. On the wall behind them hung a framed photograph of a youthful John Coltrane — Philly’s ultimate jazz giant — hugging his tenor saxophone.…
Letters to the Editor
Sounds fair enough In “Sum of our parts,” (Aug. 13) Jack Lessenberry calls on the media to stop getting involved in the personal sex lives of politicians. How about we offer politicians a truce? You stay out of our personal lives and we’ll stay out of yours. As long as politicians pass laws prohibiting gambling,…
WILD WEEKEND
Well, now that we’ve got the annual Detroit Jazzfest issue out of the way, it’s time to come up for air and mention that there’s a fuck of a lot, festival-wise, going on in the metro Detroit area during this coming long Labor Day weekend. You’d think maybe they’d try to space these fests out…
