Getting Progressively less stodgy.
Vijay Iyer Jazz Club @ the Max (Orchestra Hall) 12/15/06 Detroit, MI Cutting-edge jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, who combines elements of world music with straight ahead acoustic jazz, and whose style of playing resembles Keith Jarrett and McCoy Tyner at the apex of their popularity, was the featured attraction Friday evening at the Jazz Club…
Remembering Ahmet.
Not many record executives have touched so many aspects of pop culture as the late Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records. The son of a Turkish ambassador to the United States, young Ertegun and his brother Nesuhi felt the love in black American music and returned it (making a big profit in the process). Ray…
Land of Os.
By press time for our 12/20/06 issue, rumors had been swirling about the state of Oslo, the downtown Detroit sushi bar and lounge that’s hosted the local and international electronic music community since opening in 2004. What’s really going on and why it happened is still murky, but you can be sure that Metro Times…
Smoke Break, vol. 5:
We’re taking it to the streets for the fifth volume of Smoke Break, just two dudes complaining about making their year-end Top Tens. Yeah, how fucking hard the life of a rock critic is. Yeah man, really. Making lists. That’s a real bitch. Well, good talking to you; my break’s about over, and I want…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Freaked-out and hot-footed
I thought your response to FOG was spot-on. The fact that she dumped a guy whom she had contemplated marrying over a foot fetish (of all things) was bad enough — from what we can infer, the guy was never overbearing about his kink, and rubbed FOG’s feet for her pleasure (relief after a hard…
An exile’s tale of Christmas
Tuesday morning a thin rain hung over Santiago. My grandfather made a pile of books in the back yard and directed me to bring more from the library. Our house was a simple concrete affair, ranch style, with an enormous palm tree in the front yard. Ligustrinum bushes surrounded the courtyard where he worked and…
Dark, forbidden and sinister
The Darkroom Anchor Bay Entertainment With all the M. Night Shyamalan fakes making flicks with twist endings, it’s easy to get jaded and apply every road-tested conclusion to the latest mystery-occult movie you’re viewing. Maybe I’m getting stupider for watching them ’cause I didn’t foresee this twist in the distance. And it’s a good one.…
Dr. Death gets out of prison
When Jack Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder in 1999, he told me he was happy about it. “Now I’ve got them right where I want them,” he said. He thought there would be an enormous public outcry against his jailing. Outraged humanity would force his release, he believed, and that would be the end…
Holiday club bloodletting
At press time, rumors have been swirling about the state of Oslo, the downtown Detroit sushi bar and lounge that’s hosted the local electronic music community since opening in 2004. Oslo’s restaurant portion suddenly closed two weeks ago, and last Saturday’s Ghostly International holiday party was moved at the last minute to the Works. The…
Ground zero
It’s a bitter 22 degrees on a Sunday in late November. Six actors in dark leather coats trudge up eight flights of stairs to what’s supposed to be a rooftop shoot at the Russell Industrial Center in Detroit. One floor from the top they’re told they’re in the wrong place; the shoot is below. An…
Should we go full swing?
Q: My wife and I have been married four and a half years, and we both are bi. We’ve been propositioned by — and played with — a number of sexy friends heteroflexible enough not to want or need a full swap. So our play with others has been limited to oral and light petting.…
Night and Day
Wednesday & Friday • 20 & 22 Bob Seger MUSIC The Seeg, man. A four-night stand at the Palace would be a triumph for any pop star. But for Michigan’s own Bob Seger, it’s both a homecoming and a big thank you — not only did his fans hang with him during his 11-year recording…
Gourmet to go
Take it from Papa Joe’s William Hall.
Art Bar
Anyone can write a poem that nobody can understand, but poetry is a means of communication, and this column specializes in poems that communicate. What comes more naturally to us than to instruct someone in how to do something? Here the Minnesota poet and essayist Bill Holm, who is of Icelandic parentage, shows us how…
Head Cheese
Troy has always wanted its own Maroon 5! That isn’t a slight. Greenstreet, the quartet of twentysomething dudes that calls the burbs home, just draws from the same sonic well as Adam Levine and co., a sound that includes elements of Motown, slicker, more contemporary R&B and the easily accessible pop-rock of late-’90s heyday groups…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Everyone from the publisher on down to the copy boy is getting ready for the milestone 100th Anniversary Edition of Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout, the longest-running award-winning rock ‘n’ roll column in the history of Metro Times. Indeed, hardly a week goes by when someone doesn’t ask me how this payola-fueled publicist’s wet dream began.…
Changing our ’toons
Who needs Spike and Mike anymore?
Motor City Cribs
Slum Village’s DJ Dez shows off his digs.
Below the surface
Though she’s loath to admit it because she knows how absolutely cheesy and romantic it sounds, Gypsy Schindler says the first time she took a life drawing class, she cried. She fell in love with the model. She’s fallen in love with every model since then, no matter how tired, no matter how middle-aged they…
Handmade happiness
Mittenfest’s handle is inspired by our state’s famous shape. But the daylong event with music from more than a dozen acts nestled in the thriving Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti folk and indie pop scene also counts Christmastime among its inspirations, and winter, which brings the kind of chill that mittens were made for. You know, the homemade…
A study in searching
Detroit superintendent hunt gets poor marks.
Rhetoric shift
Someone in the audience was holding a sign that declared simply “Impeach.” U.S. Rep. John Conyers, who’d come to the University of Detroit Mercy lecture hall on a Friday night for a give-and-take with more than 100 people, started things rolling by offering a bit of informed advice to the guy calling for President George…
Letters to the Editor
A second chance I would like to say that was a great article on Mr. Todd (“Juvenile injustice,” Metro Times, Dec. 13). I attended one year of middle school and almost four years of high school with him. I was terribly shocked to hear that he was involved in any type of crime, especially a…
Love giftin’
Broke as hell this holiday season? Invoke your creative powers this year and give a gift that’s meaningful — not some overpriced trinket you picked up at Somerset. Give a poem instead. Give one or three or 15. Yeah, you could knit a cute scarf or burn some fabulous music mixes … but it’s likely…
Rich tastes
With the election, Happy Days are here again for many of us. What better place to celebrate the rare good tidings, along with those of the holiday season, than at that celebrated outpost of fine dining, the Rugby Grille in Birmingham? And while the price of a meal might make even Dick DeVos shudder, there…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Trouser stuffing
Live, they’re a fixture. But Brass Knuckle Heartbreak marks the first time Grande Nationals have gotten it together for an actual album. And from “Meet me at the Hotel” (with that great “Down in Detroit!” harmony), the convincingly salacious “Pink Sweater,” and “Spend the Night” — full of devilish grins, “tonight/right” rhyme schemes, and stay-out-late…
Rocky, punched out
The first half of Rocky Balboa is a melancholy mood piece, and it’s poignant to see the loveable lug in decline, still shambling around his old Philly haunts chasing ghosts of glory days. Adrian has answered the final bell, and a heartbroken Rock just can’t let her go. Even his crusty brother-in Law Paulie (Burt…
The Inspiration
Young Jeezy’s never been shy about his desire for wealth, and he makes such sentiments clear right from the start of The Inspiration. The opener, “Hypnotize,” with its repetitive hook of “I command you niggas to get money,” sets him up as half-hustler, half-motivational-speaker. Problem is, he can’t quite figure out how to make these…
Charlotte’s Web
Charlotte’s Web is produced by Walden Media, a company dedicated to bringing Christian ideals to mainstream family entertainment. You can tell that the movie’s messages are being communicated with a sledgehammer right from the beginning, when the creepily animal-obsessed Fern (Dakota Fanning) runs out in the middle of the night to stop her father (Kevin…
Kaleidoscope
It’s a veritable who’s who of Detroit jazz talent on this anticipated new double-disc release from bassist Don Mayberry. It feels like a huge family reunion, with vocalist Dennis Rowland, pianists Tad Weed and Kenn Cox, trumpeter Dwight Adams and multi-saxophonist Vincent York, plus two obscure compositions from late pianist Teddy Harris Jr. But there’s…
Pursuit of Happyness
Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a smart, hard-working African-American man struggling to keep his head above the treacherous economic waters of Reagan-era San Francisco. Chris thinks he’s found the ticket to a better life when he applies for an unpaid internship at the investment firm Dean Witter; Linda, sick of Chris’ schemes, walks out on…
The Architect
Anthony LaPaglia is Leo Waters, an esteemed architect and university professor who resides in the wealthy suburbs with his quietly dysfunctional family. There’s the obsessive-compulsive wife, Julia (Isabella Rosellini), who’s working up nerve to flee her pristine, gilded cage. There’s confused college dropout Martin (Sebastian Sans) and 15-year-old Christina (Hayden Panetierre, the cheerleader from Heroes)…
Eragon
A poor young farm boy named Eragon (Edward Speleers) stumbles across a blue stone in the woods. To his wonder and amazement it hatches a magical blue dragon (with the voice of Rachel Weisz). Meanwhile, a dark lord (John Malkovich), sensing the egg’s new owner, sends a demonic sorcerer (Robert Carlyle) and his evil minions…
Once Again
Coming off his multi-Grammy, platinum-selling debut Get Lifted, John Legend might have felt some pressure to follow up with something that would propel him even further into radio stardom. Instead, he approaches Once Again with the poise and professionalism of a veteran, writing well-crafted pop songs that clearly come from someone who’s confident (and rightfully…
Body of Work
Nitzer Ebb crafted synthesized bass lines that sounded like the Neptunes trying to play Metallica riffs on a keyboard, and Douglas McCarthy’s vocals gave pegged-pants proto-ravers something to shout along with. It was electronic body music (EBM), and it might as well have been Nitzer Ebb’s very own subgenre. Singles like “Murderous” and “Let Your…
