City Slang: Happy Boxing Day
Happy Boxing Day guys. OK, maybe ICP wasn’t in keeping with the spirit of Christmas. To make it up to you, click the link below for some festive Aretha. CLICK HERE! Click here to join the City Slang Turntable community!!! Follow @City_Slang
City Slang: Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to everyone, and to all a Merry Christmas. I’m keeping this short – I have gifts to open. To keep you going though, enjoy the video below. CLICK HERE! Click here to join the City Slang Turntable community!!! Follow @City_Slang
Black Milk Offers a Early Christmas Present
Looks like Detroit rapper and producer Black Milk is giving out gifts a day early. This afternoon, he and soulful singer Melanie Rutherford released a new song that puts a nice spin on an old Paul McCartney Christmas classic. They titled it “Simply Having” and are giving it away for free download now. You got…
City Slang: Happy Christmas Eve
Hey there City Slangers. Like many of you, I’ll be spending the next three days with my loved ones. Not to worry though – to get into the spirit of Christmas Eve, enjoy the below video of the Stooges, with Ronnie Asheton, having a Nightmare Before Christmas back in 2006. CLICK HERE! Click here to…
Global warming warnings: Suggested reading for GOP hopefuls
With the exception of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, GOP candidates all subscribe to one or more of the following positions: 1) Global warming doesn’t exist. 2) If it does, it isn’t caused or exacerbated by humans. Or it probably isn’t. Or we can’t tell for sure. 3) Carbon dioxide isn’t harmful because it was…
City Slang: Lightning Love prepares new releases
Absolutely magnificent indie popsters Lightning Love will be releasing an EP early in the new year, and following it with an LP soon afterwards. The follow up to the November Birthday album, the new EP will be called Girls Who Look Like Me and will be unleashed in January via Quite Scientific Records. A song…
We Bought a Zoo
We Bought a Zoo C+ At a recent screening, one of my colleagues was surprised to discover how easily I tear up at films — hardly what some expect from a hardened film critic. But being vulnerable to having your emotional buttons pushed doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t appreciate (or resent) the manner in…
The Artist
The Artist Written and directed by Michel Hazanavicius. Starring Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, and Malcolm McDowell. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 A Silence is golden in The Artist, an effervescent salute to the shimmering, glamour-soaked Hollywood of our hazy collective remembrance: more nostalgic for a feeling…
Shea’s Lounge wishes Detroit a very merry X-mas! (A tale of sorts)
It’s gonna be a dismal Christmas, Most of my old friends are dead, It looks like the mistletoe Was hung by Edgar Allan Poe, And ol’ Santa broke two runners Off his empty sled. Mom ain’t got a job, And Dad’s too big a slob To get one, The tiny apartment is cold and crowded…
City Slang: Lettercamp with new member and new single
Electro-popsters Lettercamp has announced that Electric Six guitarist Zach Shipps has joined the band, effective immediately. In addition, Frontgal Liz Wittman contacted City Slang to tell us about the band’s new single. “The first single from the upcoming album [was] released December 19. It’s a track called “Oh Well,” and will be available December 19th…
City Slang: “Innervisions” revisited
Back when I was living in England, years ago, a buddy called Alex Kane who had played in the early ‘90s band Life, Sex & Death and now plays with AntiProduct told me in no uncertain words that Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions had saved his life on a number of occasions. At the time, that made…
Where the movement began
I’d like to offer my most profound thanks to Amy Cantu and her people at the Ann Arbor District Library for their heroic efforts in dredging up the past and making it live again in the digital age at their new website called freeingjohnsinclair.org, which further includes every page of the underground newspaper known as…
Silly politics
Scott Campbell is having a swell time. Brief history: In 1977, Campbell formed the Sillies, a beloved Detroit punk band. The Stooges and the MC5 were gone, and in their place were Destroy All Monsters and Sonic’s Rendezvous Band. Also playing around were the Romantics (formed that year) and, a little later, the Torpedos. It…
One man’s stand
Luther Fowler sits in a foldout chair and watches the neighborhood pass before him. He’s seated inside the open bay door of a warehouse on the corner of Conner and Canfield, where he has a cobbled together fruit market and a full view of east-side life. His perch has given him an assessment of the…
Cosmic Slop
It’s a warm day in Los Angeles and, in the heart of Koreatown, a couple of Detroit ex-pats are making music and cracking jokes galore. The innately talented producer-rapper Quelle Chris, a Detroiter off and on for decades, is clamoring inside of DJ House Shoes’ pad while the two hang out and, in Shoes’ words…
Where to Party 2011 Away
Champagne, confetti, balloons, resolutions, cheap party favors, "Auld Lang Syne," midnight kisses and 2 a.m. pizza buffets — the familiar trappings of a modern-day New Year’s Eve spent out on the town. While we by no means denigrate the equally fine choice of hunkering down inside in front of the boob tube, popcorn and flannel…
Letters to the Editor
Gaining percentage Thank you for Curt Guyette’s informative article "Occupy: On the move" (Dec. 7). It was a much-needed overview of the movement and its plans for the future. The movement has accomplished what many of us have been waiting for: a presence of protest on the national scene, a raising of awareness of the…
Don’t rail against buses
I remember the first time I heard about the possibility of building light rail along Woodward Avenue. I thought that was really neat. I had visions of hopping on the train in Ferndale, where I lived, and going to Detroit Tigers’ games. That would have been especially appealing because I didn’t have a car. That’s…
Who’s the daddy?
Q: My sexy GGG husband and I fuck a "good friend" semi-regularly. He’s hot, young, and game to fuck about every other week. We started out wearing condoms, but we’ve had the safe-sex conversation and our good friend isn’t banging anyone else, so we’ve moved to condom-free sex. A month ago, we had a hot…
Celebrity skin
Every year about this time, TV writers cobble together a year-in-review piece and rhapsodize over the previous 12 months as being transitional and monumental in the history of mankind. But this year, 2011, might actually justify that kind of hype. Five icons of the television industry — Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, Regis Philbin, Mary Hart…
The Who – Quadrophenia: The Director’s Cut (UME)
Pete Townshend has always preferred his 1973 rock opera over the more celebrated Tommy. It’s easy to hear why on this remastered box. The story’s central theme — basically teenage angst split into four distinct personalities — isn’t as straightforward as the one about the deaf, dumb and blind kid, but it’s a richer work,…
Teen-a-rama
Taylor Swift Speak Now CD/DVD Big Machine Taylor Swift has never released a live recording, and now you can enjoy it without paying more than $100 for a decent seat. If you were at her Ford Field concert earlier this year, you should be excited, as parts of this package were recorded in Detroit. The…
The Smashing Pumpkins – Gish: Deluxe Edition|Siamese Dream: Deluxe Edition (EMI)
The Smashing Pumpkins celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album with expanded versions of their first two records. Gish is still a messy introduction, overcrowded with fuzzy guitar attacks, songs that go on past their breaking points, and Billy Corgan’s incomprehensible ramblings. The follow-up, 1993’s Siamese Dream, is much better, pulling back on most…
Downtown Detroit’s Hudson Cafe starts the day
Hudson Cafe 1241 Woodward Ave., Detroit 313-237-1000 Handicap accessible Most egg dishes: $9-$11 Sandwiches: $9.50-$12 Hudson Cafe, named for the J.L. Hudson’s flagship that once stood across the street, does best when it sticks to familiar breakfast ingredients. In two visits, I was two-thirds let down the first time and mostly happy the second. Most…
Li’l help from my friend
There was a knock at my door. I knew it was Mulenga Harangua because he used a beat from the Funkadelic’s "Tear the Roof off the Sucker." It was a little involved but I recognized it from years of him pounding it into my head. I pulled the door open and held my dog’s collar…
War Horse
War Horse B+ Steven Spielberg probably dreams in Technicolor. Among the crowd of maverick young directors who forever changed Hollywood in the ’70s, Spielberg was the most in love with the art form as it used to be — a stark traditionalist in a wave of radicals. Even more than his cinema-obsessed friend Martin…
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here: Experience (EMI)
Pink Floyd’s 1975 opus — and follow-up to The Dark Side of the Moon, which made them global stars — features more musings on fame, psychoses, and alienation. But the songs here, especially "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" and the title track, are stronger and more focused. The latest special-edition release in the overhaul of…
Food Stuff
Forest’s veggies Forest Street in Detroit, that is: Ann Arbor’s venerable Seva, long a trusted name in vegan and vegetarian dining, has finally opened its outpost in Detroit. Drop in for lunch at 66 E. Forest, Detroit, with access through the pedestrian alley. Geeked for Greektown Congrats to downtown Detroit’s Greektown Casino on the…
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo B Though it doesn’t bring with it the box office clout of the Twilight books (maybe it’s the rapes, incest, serial killings and bisexuality), Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is its own kind of juggernaut, with 15 million copies in print and a small legion…
The Adventures of Tintin
The Adventures of Tintin C+ Recently, in a shameless bit of product placement, contestants on The Amazing Race were asked to find an actor dressed as Tintin hiding somewhere in Brussels, Belgium. The Yanks had no clue who the world-famous little character was, though it took only moments for passers-by to ID the intrepid…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
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…
Who’s your daddy?
OK, OK, OK, I’m sorry. My most sincere apologies for slacking over the past month but I’ve been busy trying to make a little history in Detroit. I’m almost positive you would rather see me making tackles than writing blogs lol. I also celebrated the birth of my first child, a girl, and have been…
