Dennis Coffey and Mayer Hawthorne rock Parliament. Dennis Coffey and Will Sessions rock The Majestic.
Detroit Soul heads around the world are anxiously awaiting Dennis Coffey’s self-titled record coming out April 25th on the Strut label. The album finds guitar legend Coffey returning to his trail blazing and innovative sounds of the late 60’s and early 70’s. If you don’t think you’ve heard Dennis before you have. That awesome guitar…
Eminem Casts Porn Star Sasha Grey in New Video
Michigan’s favorite TV advertisement star of the moment, Eminem, recently filmed a new music video for his song, “Space Bound,” and he’s got a nasty little vixen for a co-star playing alongside of him. Adult film star Sasha Grey will be playing Eminem’s love interest in the soon to be released music video. That’s a…
Help J Young the General and Red Pill Get to SXSW
Oh South By Southwest, why must you be so expensive? It’s a question musicians all over the country ask themselves each year as they pony up whatever funds they have to hit the annual music festival in Austin, TX in March and try to gain more exposure. A couple of Michigan based emcees, J Young…
People Moving With Illy Mack + Concert Tonight
I’ve always been a huge fan of French website La Blogotheque and their ever-interesting Take Away shows. The concept is that they film a popular indie band performing an impromptu song in public in only one take for better or for worse. A certain amount of editing goes into it of course, but what’s created…
Denmark Vessey’s New Video — “Work To Do”
Here’s a brand new video for the song “Work To Do” from Denmark Vessey who is easily one of the more gifted yet underrated emcees from Detroit right now. Vessey is one half of the group Crown Nation and has produced a number songs for various artists including this jam for Metro Times cover star…
Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids GRADE: B- There’s a darker, more interesting movie bubbling beneath Cedar Rapids’ modestly rude surface, but it’s mostly just a tease. Director Miguel Arteta certainly has the right pedigree. His Chuck and Buck unabashedly crossed into the merrily macabre, and his idiosyncratic assault on suburbia in The Good Girl unearthed acting chops I…
Unknown
Unknown GRADE: B- In Unknown, Liam Neeson plays a guy desperately trying to reclaim his lost personality, which is fitting, because the film itself spends long stretches in search of an identity. A clipped and efficient thriller with a tortuous Rod Serling bent, Unknown tries mightily to wrap itself in a heavy blanket of Cold…
East meets West
What’s it like to experience Cirque du Soleil from rehearsal to show? View this slideshow by our Velvet Rope photographer, Joshua Hanford (for the rehearsal), and (for the show) Ken Cadel, one of the top contributors to our Motor City Seen project. Cirque du Soleil brings some Eastern influence to bear on its body-bending spectacle…
Motor City Five
Lemmy! Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last three decades, you know already that anti-tender, legendary speed-freak Lemmy Kilmister fronts metal’s Motörhead, recently starred in his own movie, and he’s a messiah to many. Of course he ain’t no messiah, and he’s hardly a genius. He’s Lemmy though, living life like he…
The karma bums
For 11 years, the High Strung have been dragging themselves across the country, performing in libraries to nobody but a few angry seniors, in Southern state country bars to irritated locals, and even on the Guantanamo Bay military base. If they were to write a book, it’d be a road story, and they’d be some…
A day of rest
Thirty-three prayer beads lie strung in the loop that hangs softly in his hands. Thirty-three times he threads them between his finger and thumb, telling himself with each bead that God is great. This is how Mogtaba Shirdel, known as Mike, passes the afternoon nowadays, in the quiet backroom of his store, Mike’s Antiques. It’s…
The Housemaid
The Housemaid GRADE: B- Gorgeously shot, yet so cold and detached it’s hard to connect with, The Housemaid is a stylish melodrama that indulges in Hitchcockian iciness but only gets really interesting in its final over-the-top moments. Until then, director Im Sang-soo serves up a perverse family soap opera spiced with a social critique that’s…
Paying the price
In 2007, Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, wrote in Vanity Fair about the gloom to come and where the blame for it should be placed. "When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of…
Game up!
On a blistery and cold Michigan night, Detroit rapper Danny Brown emerges from his Royal Oak apartment dressed like some kind of hood hipster. Sporting a bone-tight pair of stone-washed jeans, black Chuck Taylors, an old-school flat-brimmed Detroit Pistons hat, and a shoulder-slung Spider-Man bag that has seen better days, it’s hard to imagine that…
Extended family
Last summer the guys in Akron/Family returned to indie-stalwart Chris Koltay’s Corktown studio, where they also recorded 2009’s Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, to track their latest LP. Released this month, S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT is a wild ride of noise-driven rock, new age, feel-good escapism and classic…
Saving DPS
Robert Bobb, the soon-to-be-gone emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools, went to Lansing last week, asking for what amounted to loan guarantees. The district doesn’t have enough money to make ends meet, and probably never will. Bobb says it needs to borrow $219 million by next month. But the district already owes a…
Anna Waronker – California Fade
Anna Waronker – California Fade Five Foot Two Once of hyped ’90s band That Dog and author of a worthy solo record nearly a decade ago, Anna Waronker has defined a kind of Southern Cal existence; she’s wife to Steve McDonald (he of the great, hugely undervalued Redd Kross), sister-in-law to a Go-Go and daughter…
Trailer Trash
Battle Los Angeles Columbia Pictures. Opens 3-11-2011 We’re hopelessly fond of any trailer that exploits the senseless destruction of Los Angeles, or those depicting invading ranks of scarily armed creature-machines marching up from the ocean floor onto Santa Monica beach. But it’s the trailer’s eerie juxtaposition of music (Jöhann Jöhannsson’s drone-dreamy "The Sun’s Gone Dim…
Couch Trip
Paula-Paula Intervision Picture All that can be said about director Jess Franco’s latest production is, well, what else can you expect from a movie by an 80-year-old man? If you answered "slow-motion lesbian go-go dancers" … Well, The New York Times says he’s "the elder statesman of EuroSleaze." Paula-Paula is billed as "an audiovisual experience"…
For all occasions
Blame it on the hippies. Or, better yet, thank them for inspiring what’s become the hardest-swinging all-occasions band around these parts. Baritone saxophonist Rick Steiger fessed up recently that he finds it hard to believe that the Sun Messengers — the band he formed three decades ago with childhood chum and percussionist RJ Spangler —…
Letters to the Editor
A modest proposal I read with interest Jack Lessenberry’s article, "Porn and other atrocities" (Feb. 9). Several thoughts cross the mind. One, the media are not only in the business of informing us, but also in the business of making money. With a cutthroat competition in an era of cable TV, Internet and the 24/7…
Paul Williams – Someday Man
Paul Williams – Someday Man Now Sounds The fading mansion backdrop for bespectacled songwriter-singer Paul Williams on Someday Man’s cover confuses; it suggests late ’60s L.A., but is closer to Manson’s creepy crawlers and dying hippie utopia than lilting melancholic pop of delicious major-minor chord and key changes. Up from the remains of Holy Mackerel…
On the Download
Sam Trapchak — "Lollipopocalypse" Livonia-born and trained at Wayne State and William Patterson universities, jazz bassist Sam Trapchak is based in the New York area. His debut as a leader, with his quartet, Put Together Funny, gets just the right balance of melody and screaming guitar on the title track of Lollipopocalypse (Raw Toast). —W.…
The west-side way
Al-Ajami 14633 W. Warren, Dearborn; 313-846-9330; $: Al-Ajami is comparable to a slew of other Middle Eastern restaurants in the area, but is much less expensive than most of them. Chef and co-owner Stephan Ajami offers more than a dozen seafood dishes. Also good are the chicken lemon, which combines grilled chicken and pilaf with…
Join us, we’ll pay you
Apparently you’ve got to pay them to live in Detroit. Two major incentive programs that encourage those who work in Detroit to live in the city have kicked off in the past month. One of them, Live Midtown, is for employees of Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center and Henry Ford Health System. The…
Food Stuff
Chew and view — Cass Café is well known for its airy interior, the inventive specials from its kitchen, and the boozy windjammers at its bar. But it also hosts first-rate art shows, giving diners something to ponder as they munch. The latest show, Corridor Collects 3, is no exception. Comprising selections from the Allen…
The last dance
Two dancers strut, moving in concert, but also independently, the gentle undulations of their outstretched arms recalling subtle movement of birds’ wings; their careful steps gently bringing them together, then apart, then together again. The dance is Beach Birds, and the choreography is inspired by observing actual birds. Drawing inspiration from unusual sources is but…
Das Hemp-Kapital
I’d like to start by thanking my Higher Ground co-host, friend and colleague Larry Gabriel for his fine column on hemp farming last week. As it happens, I’m staying this week at a splendid guest apartment above the Hash Marihuana and Hemp Museum in Amsterdam’s Green Row on the Achterburgwal Canal as the guest of…
Open that marriage
Q: I am a straight man. From high school through college and after, I loved me some women. Then I met my present girl 10 years ago. I fell head over heels for her. I still love her. But, little by little, she has become boring to me. Our sex life has cooled. Days run…
Good & plenty
ZamZam 11917 Conant, Hamtramck 313-893-9902 Strolling into ZamZam on a weeknight, our party for dinner felt right at home. That is to say, it wasn’t unlike a typical night eating in since we were the only people there. That’s more than a bit puzzling, because ZamZam offers an awful lot of flavor for an awfully…
That Superbowl ad: Detroit image vs. reality
That Superbowl ad: Image vs. reality I was going to let pass without mention all the positive attention being paid to that Chrysler Super Bowl ad featuring Eminem. But then I saw the commercial still being discussed Sunday on Detroit Public TV’s American Black Journal, and figured that I might as well join the crowd…
Eminem Headlines Bonnaroo 2011
The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival announced their lineup for the 10th incarnation of the annual music festival today. Among others, it featured Eminem as the first billed, as well as recent Grammy winners Arcade Fire and the return of Buffalo Springfield filling out the massive bill. Watch the announcement video from Conan O’Brien or…
Kettering’s starter motor turns 100
Few in Detroit are discussing this, but we’re about to arrive at one of the crucial anniversaries in the history of the automobile. On Feb. 17, 2011, it will be exactly 100 years since the first electric starter motor was installed in a car. Before that, cars were started by hand, using a crank that…
