Glugs of choice
Indecision addled your brain? Bust outta the funk with liquid experimentation taken straight from today’s headliners and top mixologists. Results are guaranteed to make you remember why beer comes before liquor. … TUBBY TOASTED! TUBBY TOASTED! Want to regain that lack of inhibition you last had when you were a toddler? Seeking blind faith…
Broad Hip-Hop Way
By now, you’ve probably already heard the “Ghetto Anthem.” And if you haven’t, you probably aren’t going to believe that it features a hard-nosed, tell-it-like-it-is MC flipping the script with the preadolescent chorus from the musical Annie (!). That’s right, the album’s title song — subtitled “the Ghetto Anthem” — actually borrows its hook from…
Party planning
Edith Worthy Boniface Human Services, defender of little people Metro Times: What is one thing that you want to get done before the millennium kicks in? Edith Worthy: Finish writing my two books: Much Love, a book about street gangs, and All Men Are Not Dogs, a book about relationships. MT: In the event that…
Lassus
This is music strict, pure and demanding. Four unaccompanied voices of the Hilliard Ensemble — David James, countertenor; Rogers Covey-Crump and John Potter, tenors; Gordon Jones, baritone — triumphantly negotiate the homophonic challenges of the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso. Born Lassus in Mons, Belgium in 1532, he moved to Mantua, Italy at the age…
Clinton’s real offense
On Saturday, members of the House of Representatives orated for hours in a passion-filled impeachment proceeding. But while this historic debate over peccadilloes and perjury roared on, bombs rained on Iraq, and the very real question of a much different impeachable offense — one Thomas Jefferson and company actually worried about — went unexamined. The…
Little Mama Blues
If you have an appreciation for country music, particularly for the Southern root relationship it has to the blues, then you’ll appreciate this CD. This one isn’t for blues purists, nor is it for fans of “butt-rockin’ blues.” There are no guitar pyrotechnics displayed here, although the woman can definitely work those strings to her…
Tickets to ride
It’s the age-old Detroit holiday season dilemma: How to go out and have a good time on New Year’s Eve without endangering yourself (or others) on the way there or the way home. In many other cities, it’s easy to stay off the roads on this or any other occasion — just hop on the…
Beethoven Symphony No. 9/”Missa Solemnis”
In a newly remastered series of Beethoven’s symphonies called “The Immortal Toscanini,” RCA has tapped into a gold mine. What’s more, each of the three double-CD sets sells for the price of one disc. Toscanini’s strengths are abundantly evident in this last installment, recorded in 1952 and ’53. The conductor’s pinpoint precision and sense of…
Name that trademark
The word “millennium” is hotter than a Y2K expert’s employment options these days, and hundreds of companies, inventors and investors have hustled to register their own official versions of the Year 2000. The idea is modeled after the “official” status granted to product providers and sponsors for the Olympics. But because there’s no international millennium…
Third Generation
For a record which is essentially two guys in the studio, the arrangements found on Third Generation sound pretty full and on the mark. Of course, with two multi-instrumentalists in the house, throwin’ down the full sound ain’t that hard. Wilburn (Squiddly) Cole — drummer for Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers — and Ras…
Jazz Inc.
The bottom line threatens the creative line in corporate America’s approach to the music….
Let’s Party ’99
Drink in the new year with a selection of potent potables; don your most festive dress; get there safely when you have a driving need to party; take the millenial quiz; & more… Glugs of choice by Chris Handyside Drink in the new year with a selection of potent potables. Festive dress by Sandy Jaszczak…
Little Voice posse speaks up
For actress Jane Horrocks, it started with entertaining a friend with her impersonations of famous singers, something she’d done most of her life. But this particular friend was playwright Jim Cartwright. Horrocks had starred in his first play, Road, and laughed off his suggestion that he’d write something to showcase her ability. Two years later,…
A holiday to remember
Family stories are like piles of fertile compost. They are made up of moments left behind by one generation, and if spread over the right places, can nurture many generations to come. Holidays are the best times to share those stories. That’s when there are enough young people around to encourage the storyteller and enough…
In One Ear
MOVE YOUR DANCING FEET So the riddle goes: What happens to ska kids when they grow up? If Detroit’s Porters have anything to do with it, the answer is, simply, “have a lot more fun, later at night!” The outfit — comprised of former members of horny ska -punk monarchs the Parka Kings, and party…
Dancing at Lughnasa
Dancing At Lughnasa tells the story of one summer in the lives of five unmarried grown-up sisters living in a farm house outside the small Irish town of Ballybeg in 1936. Narrated in a looking-back mode by one sister’s illegitimate son, it’s of the “things were never the same after that summer” genre which was…
Gomez-ticity
Since it’s the holidays, I thought I’d tell you I recently broke up with someone. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. I break up more often than your cell phone and have gotten good at it, even remaining real friends with this one. Not like when you say “Let’s still be friends,” and then you never…
Little Voice
The competing forces in the bittersweet Little Voice are a microcosm of the ways the music industry intersects with everyday life. There’s the recipient of the music, that solitary fan joyfully singing along with a favorite recording. Then there’s the commercial side of that equation, where talent is fused with ambition in order to create…
Xmas in the Year of the Locust
“Well, let me see if I have this straight. Bill Clinton may be removed from the presidency as a consequence of having allowed a woman who wanted to perform sex on him to do so. However, he is suspected of having tried to unsuccessfully stave off impeachment last week by taking the popular step of…
Down in the Delta
Conceived as “a lyrical ode to the notions of family, responsibility and pride in one’s ancestry,” Maya Angelou’s Down in the Delta presents a sketchy clash between two worlds: that of the corrupt city and that of the peaceful small town. The opposition between the ruthless cityscape (drugs, alcohol, gangs, graffiti) and the comforting countryside…
The expanding casino project
“I can’t believe how idiotic this plan is,” said angry Lafayette Park area resident Sally Bier to Economic Development Corporation officials. Bier’s comment came last week when the EDC revealed the latest changes to the Waterfront Reclamation and Casino Development Project plans for the three controversial casinos to be located on the Detroit riverfront. “I…
You’ve Got Mail
It seemed like a winning idea: Take the charming romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner (1940), where bickering co-workers don’t realize they’re secretly pen pals, and update it by having the lovestruck duo meet via the Internet. Better yet, add the team behind the 1993 hit, Sleepless in Seattle, and you can’t miss, right?…
The waiting game
A nonprofit group trying to create housing for homeless people with HIV/AIDS says it’s running into two problems: The Detroit city government and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corporation (CCNDC) has been trying to create permanent housing for this population for more than three years. But their…
Flamboyant Rudolf Nureyev transformed ballet in our time.
Scholarly, penetrating and meticulously researched, this biography unveils Rudolf Nureyev’s life in all its Technicolor glory. Diane Solway also taps into recently declassified Soviet archives, which shed light on the dancer’s early years in the former Soviet Union. While other Nureyev bios, most notably Otis Stuart’s Perpetual Motion, are rife with sketchy anecdotes, Solway’s chunky…
Both sides in suit mourn judge’s death
One of the nation’s most prominent African-American judges, A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., died last week of a stroke. His death is not only resonating throughout the country, but locally as well. The Yale Law School graduate and Harvard Law School professor was chosen to help arbitrate a race and age discrimination lawsuit that Detroit Edison…
Instrumental Hip-Hop
UK knob-twiddler Luke Vibert is one of those DJ Age producers who annoyingly refuses to stick to just one name or sound. As Plug, he plundered drum ‘n’ bass with such aplomb that Trent Reznor handpicked him to open up a Nine Inch Nails tour. Now getting back to the dry English wit and the…
Pitch’d
DON’T CALL IT A COMEBACK As techno producer Alan Oldham once said, “Detroiters are sick of hearing how stupid they are for not liking techno.” This may explain why the masses around these parts have turned to booty to get their groove on, and the hipsters to deep house, as heard in the sublime after-hours…
Hits – And Misses
Seal is an unlikely superstar who sells millions of records and poses nude on the cover of his present — and previous — CD. He made his way in the music industry via the English dance scene and eventually scored a mega-hit with the Batman-related “Kiss from a Rose.” The guy has scars on his…
Living room combat
Your scribe fully intended to compose a scintillating exposé on the impeachment vote. Alas, it was not to be. Instead, we have Operation Desert Fox to appraise, not as a political or military exercise , mind you, but as a media event. What is initially striking about the images of CNN, delivered in the incandescent…
Spliff Hop
When I was 10, Mother criticized Rudy Ray Moore. I didn’t know who he was. But he was too raunchy to be tolerated, and his albums had no place in a respectable home, as far as she was concerned. Then at age 12, I found Rudy Ray Moore. In the back of my father’s closet,…
Festive dress
Everyone has their own take on how to dress for the holidays. Some prefer to drag out those Mom-made sweatshirts with jingle bells and ribbons (just to make her happy). They’re perfect for ringing in the New Year over a poker game or at the bowling alley. Others adore the opportunity to be as glamorous…
Dubby Big Beat
Beginning with the fact that this British collective appears to have used pictures from Detroit’s 1967 riots for its cover art, it’s clear Monkey Mafia isn’t afraid to borrow from other sources to make a point. That would explain Shoot The Boss’ by-any-means-necessary mix of dance hall reggae vocals, record scratches and uptempo beat collages…
