The Merda files
Detroit, circa 1969: The house lights of the packed Casino Royale dim. The club’s vibe is electric, the fog of cigarette and reefer smoke thicker than a Scottish moor. Four tall figures emerge from the wings of the stage, one settling in behind his drum kit, the other three drifting over to their guitars. As…
Medicine man
Although it’s a French-Canadian production, this film feels like a British comedy like The Full Monty, relying on the tired formula of average folk who get into a comical fix because they need money. Although there’s a chuckle here and there, it never really takes off.
Kay Everett and other woes
De mortius nihil nisi bonum, which means, if my high school Latin teacher wasn’t lying, that one should never speak ill of the dead. Not before they have been room temperature for some time, anyway. Curiously, this is one of the few ancient customs that has survived almost intact, which was evident last week when…
Cowboys and Angels
In this coming-of-age tale, a young Irish lad moves to the big city and is swayed from an ordinary life by his gay roommate and drug-dealing neighbor. However, the story is presented in the off-handed manner of a mildly ambitious after-school special, leaving the ho-hum factor pretty high. It’s not that the film necessarily needed…
N&D Center
Friday • 3 Master Hypnotist Kevin Lepine Comedy Certified hypnotherapist Kevin Lepine has helped people quit smoking, lose weight and break a variety of bad habits, but it’s what he does as an entertainer that makes his unique mind-manipulatin’ skills a thing of popular appeal. Lepine delivers a hilarious evening of uncensored comedy by using…
Ten Years After
Nirvana is a cultural commodity that so many have staked a claim in. Aging Gen X hipsters recall buying the Sub Pop records and catching Nirvana shows at local dive bars. Twentysomethings remember vividly how the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” vid opened their eyes, made them chuck their Bell Biv Devoe and Warrant tapes out…
Smith on Smith
Utter the name Fred “Sonic” Smith and 99 out of 100 true rock fans will drop to their knees and genuflect. Despite his premature death on Nov. 4, 1994, at the age of 45, from heart failure, Smith’s musical legacy — as firebrand guitarist for the MC5 and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band and playing a key…
Loops from the Bergerie
Toiling for more than 10 years in a gray corner of their own invention, James Taylor and David Brown of London’s Swayzak look to be coming out into a world of light and color. Sort of. As a DJ team, Swayzak has delivered kaleidoscopic sets that have long been regarded as legendary. (As proof, listen…
Head cheese
Electronic sound-hound darkcube from the Detroit Techno Militia might scare the musical shits out of you. Darkcube’s brand of techno ain’t for the faint; it’s dark, fast and, according to Eminem, outdated. ’Cube and crew have been assaulting ears at raves, house parties and clubs for several years with their DIY, Underground Resistance approach to…
This is Music: The Singles 92-98
As much as the keening strings of “Bittersweet Symphony” have become staple musical cues for your typical heart-tugging sweeps-week piece, and “Lucky Man” is the inevitable sound track for every slow-motion dissolve on the eyes of a no-hitting pitcher or hard-luck veteran quarterback, it’s probably time to remind and/or educate the casual Verve supporter of…
Art Bar
On Sunday, Dec. 12, The Detroit Institute of Arts will open its newest exhibit, a spectacular collection of Venetian glass, in Murano: Glass from the Olnick Spanu Collection. Murano is a small cluster of islands in the Venice Lagoon, and has been home to master glassblowers for centuries. The DIA’s exhibit will focus on the…
Apocalyptic End in White
ICE, or Imperial Crystalline Entombment, offers listeners bitter cold and blistering rage. Apocalyptic End in White, the Maryland group’s ferocious debut, is the work of committed black metal ascetics. The album recalls Immortal in both its mythology and disgustingly fast technical ability, but End in White is ICE’s own for those very same reasons. Its…
Mustache metal
It’s appropriate that the only thing more entertaining than the Eagles of Death Metal’s name is their uncanny ability to make a clean distinction between what makes for great music and what makes for a great joke. After all, the line between cool and absurd has been straddled many times by the swagger skills of…
Thug Matrimony (Married to the Streets)
Two years after thugged-out Miami rapper Trick Daddy put out the gold-selling Thug Holiday, he’s still doggedly professing to critics that he “love the kids.” This after he got popped at a high school football game for coke and marijuana possession (mere blemish). And while a few tracks here (“Fuckin’ Around” and “Gangsta Livin’”) reference…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Oh, thank heaven for MB11! • Ron Artest — Motor City Madhouse (NBA) :: Bill Cosby is right. • B.I.G. Reloaded (Slaystation) :: Play online as either Biggie or 2Pac and solve the conspiracy! Assault and battery not included. • Ali Shaheed Muhammad — Shaheedullah And Stereotypes (Penalty) :: Shaheed my words because this stereo…
Mosaic Select — Don Pullen
The musical tumult of the ’60s inspired a handful of pianists to go at their keyboards with a physicality that suggested action painting or dance. McCoy Tyner and, later, Alice Coltrane fashioned grand waves of sound to accompany the saxophone explorations of John Coltrane; they were the famous ones. Cecil Taylor shattered the flow of…
Taking out the trash
Hamtramck activists didn’t take much of a Thanksgiving break this year. Instead, folks like Rob Cedar, city councilman and head of the Hamtramck Environmental Action Team, and representatives from the Sierra Club and the Ecology Center, worked to get the word out about a public hearing set to take place at 7 p.m. on Dec.…
Some heady responses
Dear Readers: A few weeks back I printed a letter from Mutilated and Comeless (MAC), a 24-year-old who lost the head of his penis — the glans — in a botched circumcision as an infant. MAC hasn’t had an orgasm since he was 16 years old, and the few women he’s slept with as an…
Carved out
The Hotel Melrose sits on Woodward Avenue, in Detroit’s Midtown area, like a lonely debutante. It’s been that way for a long time, a four-story relic that stills shows traces of its old beauty. It’s also got its share of scars. The Melrose, which has been vacant for at least 20 years, was also once…
We’re all in this brawl together
What happened a little more than a week ago at the Palace (you do know what I’m talking about, right?) ought to teach us one thing, and it has nothing to do with basketball: As far as the rest of the country is concerned, there is very little difference between Auburn Hills and Detroit. No…
Rerunning with the devil
’80s redux Makeshift arena shows on tiny club stages, ill-fitting leather trousers, preposterous drum reverb, chest hair springing from beneath pink Lycra, power-pouts and pointy bad axes, crappy coke and rum and Cokes and blue eyeshadow and blah, blah, blah, blurrrrr. You might recall the ’80s, particularly the hairball faux-glam metal and hard rock of…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The seeds of some trees are so tightly packed within their protective cones that only flames can free them and allow them to sprout. The lodgepole pine and jack pine can’t reproduce, in other words, without the help of forest fires. I suspect that you will come to resemble those fire-dependent,…
Letters to the Editor
Revolutionary spirit survives Re: Jack Lessenberry’s column, “We must get out of Iraq — now” (Metro Times, Nov. 17), I couldn’t agree more. People seem to have forgotten that there was a time back, oh, about 200 years ago when Britain was attempting to be the occupiers in our land. All they wanted was to…
Matinee idol
Randy Newman could do it. So could George Gershwin and Danny Elfman. Mark Mothersbaugh did it for a while. But it takes a rare kind of composer — one afflicted with a sort of a left-brain, right-brain aesthetic schizophrenia — to be equally talented at writing hooky pop songs and broad film scores, and occasionally…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat Comix
Teachin’ ’bout a revolution
Detroit’s public school system has taken a beating over the past decade. This we all know. Test scores continue to plummet, teachers continue to receive pink slips, and students continue to fall further and further behind the social divide. Enrollment is down 9,300 students since last year, and some education activists such as Freedom School…
Babs, be not proud
During the last Detroit City Council primary campaign, one of the dailies ran results of a somewhat silly survey in which candidates were asked questions along the lines of Barbara Walters’ infamous, “If you were a tree, what kind would you be?” Among other things, they were asked to name their best swimming stroke. Former…
Just like Mom used to make
In a time when old, brown salmon flesh magically turns ruby red for the retail display case, and one stray bit of infected cow brain or spinal column could turn our own brains into something resembling coarse peasant bread, the simple joy of eating is under tremendous strain. I learned about one of the sneaky…
Burgers from Beirut
The hamburgers at Famous are a sight better than fast food. Come for the fries or for the bargain steak (a special), or because the meat is halal. Or, come just because it’s a friendly place. The friendly cooks will ask how you liked your meal, and they actually seem to care. They offer a…
Turning back time
By the time you encounter Harriet Tubman, you realize that captivity is no longer an option. “If you want to run away, you better get in here,” the escaped slave and legendary Underground Railroad conductor tells you. You notice that she’s holding a pistol. “Do what I tell you,” Tubman advises. “If you don’t I…
The pen and the sword
Poet Raymond McDaniel’s debut collection is an aggressively avant-garde little affair, experimental in all the ways guaranteed to frustrate readers who don’t have much patience for experimental art. It purports to tell a (very sketchy) story about an unnamed female assassin, from (maybe) training to (perhaps) contrite retirement. It (sort of) tells this story through…
