Metro Retro
13 years ago this week in Metro Times: Louis Mleczko and Tim Dugdale recount the history of public transportation in Detroit. In the 1920s, the city had 363 miles of track used by 1,457 electric streetcars and interurban rail cars. As the proliferation of private cars demanded more road space, the light rail system was…
Auto collective
The automobile is Detroit’s livelihood, its symbol, its soul. The first traffic light in the country was installed here in 1915. We built the country’s first urban below-grade freeway — the Davison — in 1942. We got the world’s first traffic tunnel between two countries. We Detroiters love our cars. But are we ready to…
Sawmill Man
Born and raised in the backwoods of Old Sand Mountain, Alabama (in an honest-to-god tarpaper shack), Joseph “Cast” King does not fuck around. See, at age 79, Sawmill Man is King’s debut album. He first hit the stage at 14 with the Alabama Pals and eventually toured the United States with his Country Drifters —…
A sweet menagerie
Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams seem to be creeping back, some decades after their deaths from similar causes — pickling of the liver. Capote was just released in theaters, and Williams has had a spate of revivals since 2003, the 20th anniversary of his death, in New York, Stratford, Ontario, and now southeastern Michigan. The…
Backslash
The devil’s puppet — Perhaps it’s that thick, black-as-the-devil’s-soul monobrow that lurks above his beady little eyes. Or is it was his constant, cantankerous bitching and killjoy demeanor? Maybe it’s just that ugly-ass striped sweater — whatever it is, Sesame Street’s Bert is most definitely evil. Eeeeee-vil! He’s also a testament to the tenacity, hilarity…
Boards of Canada
Boards of Canada are two Scottish techno-hippies who make the most beautifully melancholic and psychedelic fall-color funk ever. Theirs is a kind of damaged sound, like old scratchy sound track LPs or 8-track tapes warbly from too much dashboard sun. But where 1999’s Music Has the Right to Children was more languid than luminous, and…
The struggle in Katrina’s wake
You could see it coming. On Sept. 21 of this year, I wrote a column about the potential fallout of the Hurricane Katrina disaster that ripped through the Gulf Coast late last summer and destroyed the lives of thousands. One of the things I was concerned about was that folks who didn’t live in the…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 7 Hot Wax Wednesday MUSIC Downtown Detroit’s newest club, Pulse, has jumped right into the swing of things with its new midweek offering, Hot Wax. Each Wednesday, local DJs take over the posh nightspot with a head-to-head spin-off that has serious potential to earn club-kid kudos. DJs battle 8 p.m.-midnight. Winner takes the…
Piss is Perfect
The artwork is minimalist, a photograph reminiscent maybe of a Belle and Sebastian LP cover. But don’t be quick to judge, because something far more sinister than a pretty picture of a pretty girl lies underneath. Singer-guitarist Levi Bailey’s tongue is planted firmly in cheek, spitting rants on sex, society, violence and religion the only…
Turning a wheelchair into a love seat
Q: I’m a 23-year-old straight male. Due to a rare autoimmune attack three years ago, I have been indefinitely confined to a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. I was never sexually active before the attack, so now I’m left to face my sexual future from a significantly altered perspective. The important thing to remember…
Earth’s wounds
Meadow Brook Art Gallery’s current exhibition, Imaging a Shattering Earth, is a beautiful, must-see photographic exposé of the catastrophic results of human engineering on earth. And therein lies the problem. From the heartbreaking pictures of abandoned schoolrooms in Chernobyl, Ukraine, to breathtaking aerial views of a dried-up lakebed in southeastern California, the accidental and not-so-accidental…
Weekend warriors
Detroit Film Theatre offers a weekend festival featuring four samurai classics by a couple of directors not often heralded in the West. The weekend also showcases actor Tatsuya Nakadai’s remarkable skills. As one of the genre’s greatest performers, Nakadai displays his considerable range in all four featured films.
Fan the fyre
It’s a mild, 60-degree November day and D12 member Swifty McVay is drinking hot tea the way a 10-year-old might drink grape Kool-Aid. Tea? “I ain’t got the flu or nothing,” Swifty says. “I’ve just been on this tea-drinking kick for the last few weeks.” What’s more, the emcee’s stocky build, clear complexion, black T-shirt…
Proactive
Bazaar times — Proactive is a big believer in pursuing enlightened self-interest, and this week we offer up an item that makes doing so a snap. The Women’s Survival Center of Oakland County is a worthy nonprofit organization the offers free legal services, counseling, mentoring and more to victims of domestic abuse. The group also…
Aeon Flux
What is it that drives talented actresses to dive into a hot pile of cinematic crap soon after winning their first Oscar? Is a predisposition for professional self-destruction linked to the beauty gene? To be fair, Theron was paid $10 million (a career high) to bring the kinky animated assassin to the big screen and,…
Art Bar
American Life in Poetry In this poem by western New Yorker Judith Slater, we’re delivered to a location infamous for brewing American stories — a bar. Like the story of Paul Bunyan, tales of work can be extraordinary, heroic and, if sad, sometimes leavened by a little light. In the Black Rock Tavern The large…
The song that is the city
A city that fails to listen to its poets doesn’t know the sound and song of its own heartbeat. Here in Detroit, there’s no shortage of poets who can be found reading their work from the stage — in coffeehouses, bars and art galleries. At its best, to hear a poet read, to listen to…
First Descent
Snowboarding is what a bunch of zit-faced, overprivileged kids with endless supplies of really good weed do when they want to kill time in the winter. But according to the new documentary First Descent, it’s the ultimate anti-authoritarian rush, a life-changing mission to “battle the establishment and overcome prejudice,” as narrator Henry Rollins says. In…
Shining through
The G.R. N’Namdi Gallery is awash in color these days: resplendent yellows, dazzling golds, sulfurous reds, pulsing pinks, ripe oranges, softly radiant greens and luminous blues. With their cool and tropical spectra of color, Frank Bowling’s abstract paintings flash, flicker and surge across the modest, white-walled rooms of the gallery like a 1970s light show.…
Borrowing trouble
Last Tuesday, New York-based Moody’s became the second bond-rating agency to lower Detroit’s standing in the past two weeks. In one category, Detroit’s credit rating is now hovering two notches above junk bond status, and the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded the city’s financial outlook from “stable” to “negative.” It’s so nice they finally…
Running with the Boss sound
Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s third album, serves as both the final movement of his early career and the beginning of the legend he’s become. The 30th Anniversary Edition is handsomely boxed and features a completely remastered CD version of the album, a 48-page booklet of previously unpublished photographs, and two DVDs of archival footage:…
Helter smelter
Finally, in 2005, the world is ready for Jaymz, Krk, Kliff and Ringo. ’Cause back in 1968, when Paul McCartney had the brainstorm of merging the harmonic sheen of England’s phenomenal pop combo with the malevolent rage of yet-to-be-named heavy metal, the kind of music Metallica would one day be synonymous with, well, things didn’t…
Banking on change
Land bank proposals are all the rage in government this year. Since the Legislature passed land bank authority legislation last year, the state has created one that’s up and running; the city of Detroit’s been wrangling since spring with a proposal to create an authority; and now Wayne County’s stepping up to the plate. The…
Head cheese
Kristin Hersh’s vocals capture moments of desperation, defiance and surrender. She founded Throwing Muses with half-sis Tanya Donnelly (Belly) in high school, and released seven albums before going solo. Here are her monomanias. 5. Dope: The “war on drugs” and the incessant marketing of drugs blaring out of our TVs, the expansive vocabulary of parents…
All allegations
News Hits read with interest the latest scandal involving alleged attorney Geoffrey Fieger. It wasn’t so much the FBI raiding his law firm’s offices looking for evidence related to allegations that Fieger coerced employees into contributing to the campaign of former presidential candidate John Edwards, an alleged Democrat. Hey, they’re both trial lawyers. What do…
One cool cat
We’re going to assume that you’re already hip to Brian Setzer and his blisteringly badass catalog of tunes. If we’ve assumed incorrectly, Google “rockabilly” or “big band swing” — you’ll discover the dapper blond was once the frontman for ’80s rockabilly stars the Stray Cats, and is currently the leader of his own Brian Setzer…
Flat out
The abandoned brick house at 1533 Lillibridge St. in Detroit is quite inviting. This three-family flat, built in 1918, is accessible to everyone, from curious children to the homeless. The front and rear gates of the chain link fence are wide open, and the porch’s screen door has been ripped off for easy access, provided…
Brut strengths
Art Brut is about something else. Translated literally from French as “raw art,” it is a style — like the type of wine it may be named after — that is unbridled, filled with emotive power flowing from the unconscious and the irrepressible desire to create. We can thank French painter Jean Dubuffet for the…
Gifts for the gourmand
Our foodie with a few choice presents for the palate.
South by Southwest
The American highway is dotted with toll booths and coffee shops, small stops and oases alongside the vast scrolls of patchy asphalt that unite us all, even if the lines of connection aren’t readily apparent. And it’s here, between refueling and stopping to stretch, that we find Calexico drummer John Convertino, making his way from…
Letters to the Editor
Building enthusiasm Dear Ms. Mazzei: Thank you for the wonderful article about Detroit’s architecture (“Still standing,” Metro Times, Nov. 30). It is important to remind Detroiters that our city has a tremendous legacy that includes world-class architecture. You have done a great service to the city. And the article is beautifully done! —Armando Delicato, Beverly…
Time to get obsessed
For months now, I have refused to get obsessed with the war. This is partly because I’m a nasty old cynic and am thoroughly disgusted with the American electorate. Thirteen months ago, the worst president in the history of this nation promised to supply more lies, more senseless slaughter, coupled with the gradual economic ruin…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
MB54 comes from the land of the ice and snow! • Cold — A Different Kind of Pain (Flip) :: Coldplay. Coldpain. Coldpause. Coldeject. Coldreject. • Yip-Yap — Pro-Twelve Thinker (Strictly Amateur Films) :: If the names Korg, Roland, Casio and Stylophone mean anything to you, then you just might enjoy the primitive electronics krafted…
West Side story
Tucked into a side street in the Tireman neighborhood on Detroit’s old West Side, the brick duplex that sisters Gloria and Gale Peterson have lived in for more than 60 years is a modest but charming place. Bright white paint covers the wood trim, and window boxes filled with colorful geraniums decorate a clean-swept front…
Out of Africa
At Taste of Ethiopia, the temptation is not to dwell too long on the Ethiopian bread, injera, good as it is, but to see it as simply the vehicle for delivering the various we’ts (stews) and t’ibs (sautes) to your mouth. The flavors cooked up are so deep and so true, you may suspect you’ve…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Science writer Carl Sagan liked to say, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." He often invoked that idea in his crusade to debunk theories he considered outlandish, like the proposition that extraterrestrials are visiting our planet. Though I think Sagan’s measuring stick is usually quite useful, you should be careful about applying…
Southwest success
The big foundations that have begun targeting neighborhoods all have southwest Detroit in their sights. The area is often touted as the fastest-growing part of the city. A big reason for that is what’s described as a strong core of effective community activists — people like Vince Murray of the Bagley Housing Authority, a community…
The only garage band that matters?
Reams have been written about the Black Lips’ out-of-control live shows. The vomiting, the firecrackers, the penis-played guitar solos and the urinating into one’s own mouth all make for sensational headlines, but their records often leave listeners nonplussed. This release will change that. These lovable degenerates’ unhinged brand of out-of-tune garage rock — à la…
TV queens or farmbot squall?
Who’d have thought that reality TV would be the best thing to happen to country music since Shania Twain traversed the desert in a gaudy, leopard-print frock? Seriously, C&W hasn’t had a year this full of gloriously manufactured fun in, like, ever, and we have none other than the Fox and USA networks to thank…
Richmond’s riches
If Detroit is looking for a model of how city agencies can team up with nonprofits to produce a successful targeted investment strategy, Richmond, Va., has a template worth considering. For six years beginning in 1999, Richmond funneled about 80 percent of the city’s federal housing dollars — some $6 million to $7 million annually…
Oral Fixation, Vol. 2
Shakira’s English-language companion to June’s Fijación Oral definitely connects to that album musically. The Gustavo Cerati duet “Day and the Time” is simply Fijación’s “Dia Especial” sung in ingles, and Oral Fixation is her usual mix of heartfelt pop and ambitious balladry, Latin flourish, and rock and dance texture held together with throaty vocals and…
